Viewing Single Post From: 4.03 Let The Truth Sting

Viewing Single Post From: 4.03 Let The Truth Sting
oncetherewasaway	Aug 12 2007, 01:00 AM
McEditor Posts: 1,625 Group: .Grey Girls. Member #23 Joined: October 25, 2006	[size=7]PODCAST[/size] ‘Let the Truth Sting’ 10.12.07 - Executive Producers Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers rehash "Let the Truth Sting" and preview next week's episode, "The Heart of the Matter" (10/18/07) George says ‘I love you’ or whatever, Cristina has pretend sad emotions and Really Old Guy wakes up. All that and more in today’s official Grey’s Anatomy podcast hosted by abc.com. Well, true to the title of last night’s episode, the truth came out! George was outed as a repeater by Alex, possibly ruining any chemistry Alex had with Lexie. Meredith told Lexie how she really felt about her mother and most importantly, George told Callie the truth about his one night stand. Of course, those were just a few of the stories from last night. Here with the full scoop, plus a preview on next week’s episode ‘The Heart of the Matter’ are Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers. ‘The Heart of the Matter’ airs Thursday, October 18th at 9:00pm on abc and is available the next day on abc.com. Hi, I’m Betsy, and I’m Shonda, and this is Grey’s Anatomy! Hi! Hi! It’s, um, cloudy today so I have to say it was a little tough to wake up. My brain is on a go slow. Yeah, I’m still in the morning sleepiness. Phone! Um, as we have actually said before, Jim, who was a wonderful assistant is no longer with us, but the wonderful Nancy is now…Nancy is awesome and she answers the phones and she also just does everything else as well. But, right now she is probably answering the phone because it stopped ringing. I also just wanted to say for the record Nancy answers the phone really freaking fast. Yes, she does. That was one ring. That was speedy. Because sometimes we get a couple of rings. She moves fast. She moves very, very, very, very zippy in terms of her movements with the phone. But we’re not here to talk about Nancy and the phone. No. No. No. Although we could clearly do that for like an hour, but I don’t think that’s what you guys came to hear…no offense to Nancy. No. Um, I think what we are here to do is talk about the second episode…the second episode…the third episode!...third…third episode…oh my god it’s the third episode already. Time flies when you’re…third episode of Grey’s Anatomy, which was called ‘Let the Truth Sting.’ Let the truth sting…absolutely. And this episode actually has one of my favorite things of all time which is Really Old Guy. Yeah. I have a real fondness for really old guy. And last season I sort of was like, ‘We have to have this really old guy who just sleeps in his room and everyone eats lunch in there and he never ever wakes up,’ and I knew when we put him in there that one time we were going to wake Really Old Guy up. You did. You actually…the other thing just for the genesis of Really Old Guy so that you guys know is, they eat in the cafeteria all the time and if I were an intern I would get really sick of going to the cafeteria like every single….we wanted a new place for them to hang out. And also where they could be alone. Like, it used to be the tunnels where they could just hang out where nobody could find them, be a group by themselves, and they still do the tunnels but Really Old Guy provided them with a special sort of privacy. Exactly, and by really old guy waking up and then expiring, I guess that option is gone. Yeah, for a little while unless there is another really old guy which I sort of doubt. And there would be no point in that. And for you trivia fans out there, it has been the same really old guy the entire time. We didn’t just have some really old guy in a bed before and then he woke up and we cast somebody else. Or we didn’t just rotate him around. That incredibly fine actor has been lying very patiently in a bed waiting for his moment in the sun, which I feel like he did brilliantly. He really did, and I gotta say when we first started casting Really Old Guy, the instinct was people said, ‘well, you just need someone to lie in bed,’ and Shonda kept saying, ‘no, you can’t have someone just lying in bed because first of all, if you watch, if you go back and watch all the episodes, and watch how really old guy did a coma…it’s awesome. Because he actually stirs at the right moment, he does weird crap at the right moment. He really is pretty great. And then, and then when he wakes up he’s such a good actor. He’s so good. He’s such a…I mean just the sweet and charming. It’s also the way he calls her ‘blondie.’ Yeah. I just love his little voice and…yeah. Its like, ‘I want…I want…’ ‘My name is Charlie!’ I just love him. Not that that was a real imitation of him. No, but…no definitely was not a real imitation of him. Both of our imitations actually sucked but that’s okay. That’s good. What I loved about him and the way we were able to use him in this episode was that he really sort of shock up Izzie’s vision of what was going on with her and George. Absolutely. I mean, absolutely. Bought a load of reality in which I thought was really wonderful. But he also gave perspective to each one of the characters when he first wakes up. He put them totally in context. Do you remember exactly where they are in terms of their food chain of life. Yeah, it’s really nice. Because the way he kind of reduces Meredith’s entire relationship over the course of this series in one sentence. It was blowing hot and cold. Which I think is actually just…it’s great. It’s sort of like, ‘thank you so much for actually kind of summarizing the show.’ Exactly. Um, but I think it does a fair amount for Izzie because she’s so traumatized at this point with her relationship with George. Yeah. She’s so spun. Yeah, she’s so spun. She has no idea what she’s doing….twisty and twirly. And I just thought the moment where she comes in and Charlie’s gone and he’s sitting up in that wheelchair was just lovely. And I also really loved the funeral for Charlie. I loved it….PHONE! I loved the funeral for Charlie too. I thought actually that was weirdly really moving, over the bed. Yeah, it was so interesting to have sort of a vigil in which someone wasn’t in the bed, they are talking to an empty bed but I thought it was really moving and really funny. And I love that Alex’s big insight is that Charlie hardly ever farted. You know what I mean? Like, they don’t know this guy. He was a really old guy in bed. And now, like, he’s gone and they didn’t really know anything about him except for Izzie which I loved. I think…which is really great…and then Izzie…it’s that whole thing of Izzie and hope and thinking she can change things, and that she can force Really Old Guy to stay alive, when in fact…it’s incredible to me that Really Old Guy had his own time clock. He knew…and it ties in really beautifully to George sort of having his own time clock…exactly…for when he can tell Callie. And how he’s going to have to do this and she can’t stop him. Well, because it points in this episode…you kind of…I totally sympathize with Izzie, but at the same time you want to hit her over the head with a shovel because so much other stuff is going on. But that’s what I love about Izzie. You always want to sympathize with her but you do want to hit her over the head with a shovel at the same time. Which is awesome, and I think it’s probably something we won’t necessarily ever see on Grey’s Anatomy. We are never going to hit Izzie over the head with a shovel. There’s no reason to. At least not for the next 3 seasons…unless we need someone else with a coma, in a bed. A shovel coma. The other thing I really liked was Cristina sort of pretending to be sad and stealing surgeries from Meredith. Totally. Because she’s pissed that Meredith is treating her with kid gloves. Totally. I think it’s also just so…the expectation is, even with Cristina, that she would be kind of screwed up about this entire thing. Of course. So I totally see Meredith trying to…trying to…contribute normal human emotions to the situation. I actually feel that what happened the end of last season with Cristina and the wedding dress and the getting the choker off and the crying in Meredith’s arms…I think that shook Meredith up a little bit. Sure. Like it’s probably one of the most vulnerable we have ever seen Cristina…one of the most vulnerable moments for her…ever seen Cristina, and for her it was like she was trying to take care of her and Cristina doesn’t want to be taken care of. Which I thought was just very lovely. It is, and you know, it is a continuation of the two of them taking the honeymoon together. Yes. Which we never saw but every once in a while it just amuses me when I think about it in the back of my head. Absolutely. The two of them in Hawaii, in a giant honeymoon suite, eating all the food. Eating the food from the mini bar, watching television and drinking tiny little bottles of liquor. Exactly. And probably not going out to the beach very much. Exactly. You know, because it’s like…snorkeling once. Exactly. But it was probably a really bad experience. And then being like, ‘well, it’s like we snorkeled, now we’ve done that. Let’s go back to the room and watch some television and order room service. And just bring in bottles of wine.’ Which is frankly how I like to vacate. This is actually randomly based on business trips and holidays that you’ve taken. Yes. But anyway that is just neither here nor there. But it kind of connects with the whole idea of…they have gotten to be really close. I think Meredith is assuming that Cristina would be processing the way that Meredith in theory would want to process. And in fact Cristina just wants to…or more the way Meredith thinks that the normal person would process, not necessarily the way she would process. Because Meredith truthfully does exactly what Cristina does, which is she says ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. I drowned, I came back from the dead and my mother died but really let me get back into surgery.’ Yeah. But really just trying to take care of her, which I thought was very sweet. The other thing that we did was Mark and Richard decided to do this tongue surgery that neither of them actually really knows how to do, and I love that whole idea of them feeling like you can’t…you know, getting a little upset because they think George calls them old. Absolutely. And Alex, you know, says something old about the world’s oldest intern. And deciding that they are going to do this surgery and then getting, sort of shamed back into being grownups by Derek. I just thought that was wonderful. It was really, really great. On top of which, how much we loved that whole story with the woman who is like, ‘I have so many things I want to say.’ And then basically what she wants to say is ‘your butt looks bad in those pants.’ Two puppies. Yes. Exactly. And, ‘your hair looks terrible.’ I just loved that, that like she just wanted to get real with her friends in a way you don’t get real with your friends sometimes. Absolutely, and that even not ever being able to talk again doesn’t necessarily justify doing things. When you kind of…it’s also the expectations of intimacy. It’s the whole thing you expect Cristina to, a normal person would be upset and would be moping around and would be clutching her gifts or a normal person would say to her friends ‘But I love you. The one thing I want to say to you right before I go under the knife so my tongue is removed from my skull is that I love you.’ And instead this woman basically just wants to make sure the woman aren’t making the same mistake with their hygiene and clothing. Which I think is really just incredibly awesome. And that there are these two guys who are so worried about their machismo and their youth around all these interns, and all this sort of like macho surgery testosterone desperately trying to prove that they still have it. In the middle of all this which I think is great. I also love we have Ed Herrmann joining us as the world’s oldest intern. So awesome, and we’ve been a huge, huge fan of his forever, and we never ever thought we’d be able to get him to do this role, and he was so charming and so lovely and there is a little bit of fun to be had with this guy. It’s very nice. He’s just amazingly terrific in this episode. I love that Alex has a weird coat of honor that allows him to say that they guy smells like arthritis cream but won’t allow him to yell at him. I know. It’s fascinating to me. It’s kind of like talking about your grandfather who’s sitting right next to you. Exactly. It’s that strange thing you do with like older relatives, which is ‘what are we going to do about Pop?’ and Pop is sitting right there. And I also really love how that tied in with Bailey. The idea that there is a pecking order of things. Exactly. And that that’s the reason there is a pecking order because that’s how we save lives, and getting outside of the pecking order is to mess things up and her realizing that she needs to be Callie’s number two. Exactly. Which I think is a big relief to poor Callie because Callie has got a lot on her plate right now. I know. But that’s also one of my favorite things is just Bailey coming into that room to sort of report, and waiting for Callie to say or do something anything, and Callie just being sort of unable to do anything but look at her paperwork. I love that. I know, I think that’s absolutely the case, and for Bailey to really understand that she doesn’t have a job, so her job is to help somebody else do the job as best as possible, which is something she has been doing for a long time and she sort of has to resign herself to doing it some more. And then there was always that sort of awesome thing…we debated this a lot in the writer’s room, the moment where Meredith has Lexie intubate the dead guy. We debated it a lot because it is one of those lessons that you teach and it is a hard lesson, and you want your characters to be kind and lovely, but you know, on Grey’s everyone is also really flawed. But what was kind of cool about Meredith having Lexie intubate the dead guy was…that’s what they do. That’s what doctors do. And it may seem really cold to us on the outside, but that’s exactly how those things work. You say ‘Go ahead, try to save his life,’ to somebody when they are practicing when you know the person is already dead. Well, it serves an incredible purpose, because a) the person doesn’t make a mistake, but you also use…you are in a situation with adrenalin and urgency, so…you know what? It actually brings to mind when Addison, with Izzie, had her take care of the baby all night long, who everybody knew was going to die, and she told her that the baby better be alive in the morning and she left her with that baby knowing that the baby would be dead. And everybody thought that that was really, really cruel, but in a way what it does is it also seems your suitability…your endurance, your suitability, your ability to actually stick to things and what sort of resolve you have. It also teaches you to do stuff and it is horrifying, but you can…it’s the only situation they can leave you alone to make mistakes. Because they already know the outcome. Exactly. You are safe to actually make them. And what makes it different is that the whole situation is compounded by the fact that Lexie is Meredith’s half-sister that she doesn’t want to know or talk to. But for Meredith, you know, I really…what I love was that she really was just doing her job. Well, and what’s great about Lexie and Meredith is it’s like Meredith…Meredith who struggles not to take anything personally, Meredith who tried to distance herself and Lexie who takes everything personally. Exactly. And Meredith tries to distance herself, and also tries to deflect by taking care of other people. And I love the moment when…at the end when she sits down with Lexie with Lexie’s mom’s death note and explains to her everything that happened with her mother when she died, which I thought was great. I love the moment with Bailey, when actually…that incredible moment when Bailey says, ‘You’re her sister, you barely talk to her, you appear to hate her, you were the doctor in charge, her mother is dead and she thinks you hated her mother.’ It’s really, really lovely. I think that that’s…that make’s you realize where…that made me realize something in the moment which was much more what Lexie’s perspective is, because although we have certainly sensed Lexie’s perspective, we don’t know her as well as Meredith. Exactly. So Bailey is an incredible helping hand in that moment as well. That’s really the excitement of, of …this episode. I mean all those really cool relationships coming. I mean, there’s some really good stuff coming, so when you see sort of how this episode plays, and then especially with the George and Callie of it all, and Izzie of it all, you see what happens next week and watch how it builds, it’s pretty good. It is, and it’s also…I mean there’s a relatively devastating moment right at the end of this episode which is Alex actually outing George. Yes. Which I think also starts to set up things which we will be seeing in the next couple of episodes in terms of where Alex’s head is. But Alex can’t lie. That is part of Alex’s code. He can’t lie. There is no way he is going to stand around and listen to people call George a hero when he feels like George is the repeater. And in fact gives the wrong impression that it is easier than it is because what Alex learned through the experience with his older intern was that, in fact there is a reason why there is a pecking order. Exactly. And he applies that in that situation to these interns. All of them think he is being really mean and when I first saw it I was like ‘Oh god that is incredibly harsh,’ but there is a reason he does it. Because that’s his code of ethics. Yes. Which I think we will start to see more of and will get tested and pressured as time goes on in the next couple of episodes. In the next episode which we are calling ‘The Heart of the Matter,’ can’t really tell you anything about what happens, like we ever could. No, we never can which is…this is the part of the podcast where everybody probably just holds their head and starts screaming loudly to the universe. But I can say that it’s a little high noon over at Grey’s Anatomy. It is. I think, I think there’s some pretty…if you like the westerns…yeah, there’s some pretty amazing stuff going on. There’s a little world wrestling federation moment…there’s a little bit of magic. There is, so I think at the very, very least that’s worth tuning in for the whole episode. At the very least…you know, girl fight. Thank you for saying it…there’s…yes. I think you can look forward to a girl fight. We want to give a shout out to a couple of podcast fans we met, Jason, Justin, Jason…Jason and Josh. Jason and Josh who are really, really nice and they were almost exclusively fans of the podcast, and since we have never met anyone in person…PHONE!...who’s actually listened to our podcast, admitted to listening to the podcast I think in public, and maybe privately…we’re pretty sure that they’re the only people listening so we just wanted to say hi, and separately each of them have said actually that they were big fans, so we wanted to acknowledge that very, very fact. Thank you! Please keep listening, please tell your family to listen – and your friends – keep us on the air because we need the ‘podcasted nation-age’…okay…there, see…so as usual we have actually spun out of control and driven into a ditch which is how we like to end our podcast…always. Wheels spinning, car flipped over. This is Shonda, this is Betsy…Grey’s Anatomy. This podcast transcribed by jenlou1986


4.03 Let The Truth Sting · SEASON 4