Viewing Single Post From: 4.02 Love/Addiction

Viewing Single Post From: 4.02 Love/Addiction
oncetherewasaway	Jul 27 2007, 01:20 AM
McEditor Posts: 1,625 Group: .Grey Girls. Member #23 Joined: October 25, 2006	[size=7]PODCAST[/size] 10.05.07 - Executive Producers Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers discuss the second episode of the season and preview next week's episode, "Let The Truth Sting", which airs October 11th. Meredith refuses to connect with Lexie, George tries to tell Callie the truth about him and Izzie and Mama Burke pays Cristina a surprise visit. We’ll have all those topics and more in today’s official Grey’s Anatomy podcast hosted by abc.com. Well, the name of last night’s episode was Love/Addiction and those two issues went hand-in-hand for everyone at Seattle Grace. Some, like Alex, literally had to deal with addiction, in this case a young baby addicted to meth. While other’s, like Derek, had to deal with it on a more spiritual level. Of course, the biggest surprise from last night – the reappearance of Mama Burke. Executive producers Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers join us once again to dish about last night’s episode, and give us some insight as to what’s coming up next week. That episode is titled ‘Let the Truth Sting’ and airs Thursday, October 11th from 9-10 pm on abc, and it available the next day on abc.com. Hi I’m Betsy Beers, I’m Shonda Rhimes, and this is Grey’s Anatomy! Well, it’s been a little while. It feels like it’s been a little while but it’s really only been since last week. It’s really only been a few days. It really has. But, you know, for some reason that week went incredibly slowly for me and I don’t know why. That’s because we packed a lot of stuff into it. It’s because we did, it was an action packed, fun-filled week which is good, but I’m really excited about this episode. First and foremost because, I love this episode because it’s love and addiction, two phenomenal things which I think are wonderful in their own special way, and dangerous and damaging as well. You figure out which is which because I’m not really sure. Iffy topic to explore. It absolutely is, and probably one we shouldn’t be exploring too much. But only in the context of Grey’s Anatomy I think it is certainly safe to do so. And also that we got to see, once again, the phenomenal Miss Diahann Carroll. Miss Diahann Carroll, playing Mama Burke. Miss Diahann Carroll back as Mama Burke. And I thought it was amazing that Burke actually sent his mother back. I’m not sure that Burke sent his mother back as much as Mama Burke took it upon herself to. That’s what I wanted to ask you because I have never been sure as to what the origin was, in a strange way. Mama Burke just decided Burke wasn’t dealing with it, or was refusing to do it, or if she just wanted to take it on herself, because she sure does show up with relish. I think there is something very gentlemanly about Burke. He wouldn’t say ‘you have to go back and do this,’ or ‘go back and do this for me.’ Yeah. But I do think that Mama Burke would be watching her son suffer and decide that she was going to do it for herself. Yes. That makes a ton of sense, and she also decided she wanted her necklace back. Oh, she definitely wanted her necklace back. There’s jewelry involved. And probably Burke wasn’t going to go back and get it. So she pretty much just took it upon herself to pick up her own jewelry. You know, I can totally understand why Burke wouldn’t want to go get it, because Burke left. You know, you don’t go back and get a piece of jewelry, so…Not when you’re the leaver, no. It’s like, ‘Excuse me, by the way I’m coming back to get my jewelry. I left you are the altar, but I’d like my diamonds back.’ Exactly. But I can certainly understand it from Mama Burke’s point of view. But that is an amazing thing to me, because Mama Burke sort of has laser vision. Like Mama Burke can see to the core of everybody. And what terrifies them the most – and digs it out with her hands and sets it on a table and pokes at it. What I kind of love is that Mama Burke is, she…it’s not her fault that she sees to the core of everybody. She’s smart. She’s smart, but they also…I think they are all missing Burke in their own ways. You know, George and Cristina and Derek. And so sitting down next to Mama Burke, for them is just a little bit, like, their confessional. And I wanted it to play that way – absolutely - on a lot of levels, especially for Derek and George. I loved the humor of poor Meredith going up to Mama Burke and chatting, and Mama Burke being like, ‘When you said it’s over, it’s so over.’ I love just her getting nailed to the wall for that. It’s also that great thing of, you give someone two options and they both stink. Or you’re actually joking in a terrible, terrible moment. Don’t worry, you’re being selfish. Oh, you’re being selfish. Which gives you kind of no options, and there’s that great moment, there’s this look on her face which is, ‘I just really got pushed to the wall on that one.’ Yeah, she looked, oh, it looks like she wants to run. It’s wonderful. And also that Mama Burke doesn’t think for 10 seconds that Meredith has come over to chat about Burke or the time of day. She knows exactly why Meredith is standing there. What I love, from the moment she says ‘You were the maid-of-honor,’ it’s over and Meredith is sort of lost. And Cristina in fact is cowering under a nurse’s station someplace, desperately giving away appliances in the hopes that she won’t have to confront her, which makes some kind of sense. Actually, I love that last minute with Cristina, that last scene with the two of them, because you really understand that Mama Burke, in her way, she is like Cristina. You know, there are things that are…she’s smart, she’s an incredibly powerful, intelligent woman, and gives a lot of perspective as to what that position is like. I always feel it is really revealing when she says to her ‘If I had been born in your time, I might have been a lot like you.’ Because the truth is they, in a lot of ways, are the same woman, they just can’t recognize it in each other. But in a lot of ways they are exactly the same woman. Which is personally, obviously what attracted Burke to Cristina, is that same strength and that ability to fight back and that desperate desire actually to protect the people that you love. I was going to say that the thing that is so charming in your mother, who is your protector when you are growing up, is not so charming in the person who is supposed to be your partner. Or it is sometimes when they are protecting your shaking hand. Yeah, but you are always going to resent it later. That’s true. You know what I mean? There’s a difference. There’s a difference…when your mother does it it’s your mother. When the person who is supposed to be your equal does it, then they have done something wrong. You know what I mean? I know exactly what you mean. I think it’s wonderful when she comes in and the apartment is truly empty, and it is the first time she really deals with the emptiness. I felt like it was a wonderful moment. There is something really haunting about being surrounded by all these wedding gifts, none of which she registered for, none of which she will ever, ever use because she doesn’t know how to cook. And also she seemed to have a large, large emphasis on appliances given the fact that Burke clearly registered for every cooking gadget in the world. Exactly. ‘Cos there are waffle flippers and blenders, and….But also there was something incredibly lonely about sitting there surrounded by all these gifts for a wedding that never actually happened. In an empty apartment. I think it is the first time she faces the idea that he’s really, really not coming back and she’s going to have to figure out her own way. Exactly. I also thought, first of all, that Ben Vereen did our show. Yes, thank you Mr Ben Vereen. That was amazing. Diahann Carroll and Ben Vereen in the same episode. It’s kind of like incredible, and actually meeting Ben Vereen was really exciting and kind of a thrill. It was a real…I think it was such a lovely, lovely role. He was such a lovely man and he actually listened to be drivel, and go on about how great he was and he was very very gracious. (Gush about Ben Vereen) So it was pretty much television history. I actually loved that whole mystery around Alex discovering the baby is on drugs, and that whole reveal I thought was amazing. And that Alex of course would be able to smell crystal meth because…it gives you a little more insight into what the heck did Alex come from. You know? A little writing tip for the people at home: don’t ever write a script in which the baby is supposed to scream incessantly, the entire episode of television. Just, when you are writing your scripts at home, don’t do that. It hurts. It actually hurts. And I’d like to say credit to the editors, and credit to the babies. They screamed. Those babies were excellent actors and they, true to form, chose to scream. Not anything we did, by the way, they were just screaming babies. They screamed loudly, screamed well, screamed as they had been trained to scream. Nature made them scream. But I think from now on we are only going to have baby storylines in which babies develop diseases which make them appear placid and really silent. Or they make cute little gurgly baby sounds, or sucking noises. Sucking noises are fine, too, but I think we have pretty much drawn the line now. That was the big experiment: screaming babies. Next time we are going to try to do the baby that giggles…the giggling baby. Those were adorable babies, by the way. Yes, like wow. Maybe we could have a baby with gas, or something. Ssssh. You are giving away gold! See, I come up with this stuff like this, and it’s amazing. Next week on Grey’s Anatomy, the baby with gas. But actually, what I loved about the story was that it really…you know, we had been talking about doing this crystal meth lab that blew up thing, and we didn’t want to do anything that felt ‘not our show’ but wanted to find a way to really tell the story. I thought that was a really great way to tell the story, was through Alex’s sort of discovery and understanding of what was going on with this baby, and that affecting all these other cases that were happening in the hospital. I thought that was great, and I also…you really understand the dilemma of that father. Like in this strange way, like first of all this father who is doing something which is clearly, absolutely horrible with is cooking crystal meth – and highly illegal, folks at home…and very deeply illegal - but the moment where the father really does love his kid, he just isn’t loving his kid in the right way. It’s heartbreaking. And I also just…I mean, I thought it was cool because the fun fact that I learned from this episode was that if you cook crystal meth in your house it covers every surface of your house, so you think you’re not getting…that you’re not putting the drugs out there to the world but you really are. That was the fun fact. We could actually put that on a cereal box. It makes me sound smart at cocktail parties when crystal meth comes up. That’s good to know. I’ve never been to a cocktail party where crystal meth comes up, but…I’m ready. That’s good to know. I might bring it up in a conversation just so we can test it. I don’t know, I just like in every episode we try to give out like one little piece of medical information that you know, you can carry with you around. And crystal meth affects everyone. It’s not just for the cooker, it’s for the user, it’s for the cook-ee, for the walker, it’s for the baby. For everything. For the baby in the house. Anyway, I just love that story. It actually made me worried about Ben Vereen. I was very worried about Ben Vereen because he was right downstairs and he was carrying that baby around, the crystal meth covered baby. Exactly. It was crawling in crystal meth. I don’t think we are being crack ups. Serious about crystal meth. Just say no, drugs are bad. It’s bad. It’s really bad. You know, the other kind of addiction that we dealt with…yes, yeah, yeah...nice segway…fabulous segway…well done…I know, I was like a talk-show host…The other kind of addiction that we dealt with was Derek’s addiction. Clearly to the Mer. To Meredith. Which is a big one. I loved the way Debra Kahn, who wrote the episode, layered in very subtly this idea that Derek had this addiction to her that he wouldn’t really do anything about, and that she…and this slow realization that he is never going to get what he wants from her. In this episode he sort of realizes that she is never going to give him any more than the sex and mockery, the S and M. And there’s that great moment where Mark comes up and says ‘Derek’s not coming over.’ And you see Derek standing on the balcony. And you know that he would love to be able to walk away from this girl, and he just can’t do it. Like he just gives in at the end to his addiction. And, I don’t know, we are happier for him, in a way, but I don’t think he is ever going to be able to walk away in that sense. He has so much more of an awareness of it than Meredith does because Meredith…she’s completely oblivious. She’s in the middle of it…she doesn’t have that same awareness. He’s smart enough and mature enough to know that this isn’t the way to go but he just can’t help himself. Which is what is really really interesting about it. Which I love. I mean it’s also like Izzie and George. Yeah. And where they are right now which is so tough, because on one hand it seems really easy at one particular point to say goodbye to your marriage and on the other hand this is really hard to do. Well, it’s one thing to sort of have that moment where you’re standing…you know, I love the moment where he’s standing in Izzie’s house and he’s like ‘I have to tell her, I have to tell her,’ and he sort of marches out and Izzie is sitting there, and she leans back and says ‘He loves me.’ Those moments are easy, but it’s the moments when you actually facing the person who you know you are actually going to have hurt and telling them this information. So, for me when Callie is begging him not to say anything, you completely understand and get it. Well, and it’s also what I think is this particular day where Callie had such a crappy day. I mean, if anybody got kicked in the teeth several times it was her. And she’s desperately trying to avoid what she knows the reality is on some fundamental level. And bury her head in work, and it just keeps going wrong because Bailey is way more experienced with the job, because Bailey had been doing to job without it being called the job. Exactly. Also just on top of which, no way when your marriage is falling apart in that way, when your life is falling apart in that way, how is she supposed to…and it’s happening in front of her eyes at work, how is she supposed to do her job the way she should be able to do her job. Come on. Exactly. Cut the girl some slack. Exactly, and it is one of the dangers of those workplace things, you know, that’s kind of like…don’t date your co-workers. Exactly. Especially if you are in surgery. Because you continue to make eyes with them with the little masky things, and that can sometimes be problematic. I also feel like Lexie and Meredith…like that’s at a really, really interesting place right now. Because I think Meredith is having a very, very hard time integrating this girl into her life right now. I also feel on some level for Lexie, like Meredith is a drug. In a weird, crazy world, um, and if you really think about what she said to George in the end of the last episode, in that big speech in the last episode, in a weird, crazy world for Lexie, Meredith is the shinier, happier person at this moment. She’s new, she’s fresh and she represents sort of a life raft in the form of a sister. Only Meredith is not shiny or happy, she is very dark and twisty and she is not interested in being anybody’s life raft. So I think there is something very interesting about Lexie constantly…she is trying so hard to make this connection with this person, um, because she is desperate for family. Because this woman is family and she’s desperate for some family. She is also a kickass surgeon. The thing is, she has come to this hospital, where she is everything…in Lexie’s eyes she is everything Lexie would want to be. And in a weird way, when you look at Meredith and all the things that have been really hard for Meredith, I look at Meredith from a younger sister’s standpoint…she went off to Europe, she found herself, she did all this stuff, she lost her mother, she’s stronger, she’s tougher and she’s wiser. She’s got these incredible relationships, she knows what she’s doing…yeah, she looks really good. Guess what? She’s got McDreamy. Yeah, like panting after her. From afar, from afar it looks like a pretty good life, in terms of how Lexie’s dealing with things right now. And I love the moment where Meredith says to her, ‘We did not grow up with the same father.’ Yeah. The truth is, is that this dad who was there for Lexie all this time of their childhood never existed for Meredith. At all. At all. At all. Like, Meredith never had that dad. They split, they went to Massachusetts and dad was left behind. So it’s like, that was it. This completely different world, and so I love the really heartbreaking moment where Lexie cries at the end. Because she’s still alone. You know, next week we have something really, really pretty good. We’ve got an excellent episode. It’s entitled ‘Let the Truth Sting.’ Absolutely. We’ve got a couple of really great things going on. I don’t want to tell you too much. But I do want to tell you that, that really old guy…we give two seconds to really old guy. You know really old guy? Really old guy is the coma guy, the guy who’s been in a coma forever, and the interns have been eating in his room, and hanging out in his room, talking about their lives and kind of ignoring him. A fine, fine actor who has lain in bed for months and months and months and months. Very patiently, by the way, with tubes and stuff. His time is coming. It is. I think that is all I can tell you. It is. I think that maybe really old guy has got more dimension than just lying flat, you never know. We don’t just have to use him as a tray anymore, which is how they used him. Fun fact number three: don’t use really old guys in comas as a tray. Not good. It could bite you in the…it could bite you, later. Well, I think clearly we’re cooked. We’ve said more than enough. The little dinger went off on the oven, and that means that we are baked, and we are toasty. This is Shonda Rhimes, this is Betsy Beers and it’s Grey’s Anatomy. This podcast transcribed by jenlou1986 on Oct 5 2007, 02:06 PM


4.02 Love/Addiction · SEASON 4