Viewing Single Post From: 5.01~5.02 Dream a Little Dream of Me

Viewing Single Post From: 5.01~5.02 Dream a Little Dream of Me
oncetherewasaway	Sep 20 2008, 10:46 PM
McEditor Posts: 1,625 Group: .Grey Girls. Member #23 Joined: October 25, 2006	PODCAST Podcast 5.01/5.02 Derek and Meredith get their happily ever after, Cristina meets a man who says “So…” and the Chief gets steamed about the hospital’s new rankings. We’re here with the inside scoop on all that and more in our first official podcast for Season 5 of Grey’s Anatomy. Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. Last night’s 2 hour premiere was chock full o’ dreams. Here to tell us who had the most realistic dreams are Executive Producers Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers. They’ll also tease the next episode “Here Comes the Flood”, which airs Thursday October 9th from 9-10pm on ABC, or the next day at abc.com. Here now are Shonda & Betsy. BB: Hi, I’m Betsy… SR: I’m Shonda BB: …and this is Grey’s Anatomy. We’re back…Season 5 SR: Season 5 BB: It’s been a little while, we took a little break to try to get some more episodes going here, which I think successfully you’ve been doing, which is great. SR: We’ve been making episodes. BB: We got through the summer, it wasn’t too bad, wasn’t too hot, it was actually seasonal. SR: Yeah, it was OK. We did have an earthquake though. BB: We did, a tiny one. An “earthquake-ette”. That actually reminded us we live in Southern California where earthquakes might happen. But not like some of the movin’ and shakin’ that’s been happening over here, right? (laughs) SR: (laughs) That was the worst segue ever! BB: We’re a little out of practice, because we haven’t done this in like, 3 months? 4 months? SR: Yeah, it’s been a while. BB: So this is just like watching us crash and burn, which is much more exciting, right? SR: Yeah, we promise nothing. BB: Yeah, that’s probably true, but… just happy to be baaack… SR: Yes. By now you’ve seen this week’s episode, which is called “Dream a Little Dream of Me” BB: Which was 2 powerhouse hours of entertainment… SR: 2 very, very long hours of entertainment… we packed a lot into that episode. BB: And I think actually what’s interesting from this perspective is, you knew what this episode was, even before we stopped shooting last season. SR: Yeah, I knew what this episode was while I was writing the finale of last season. BB: She kept saying said I have this idea, and it’s a fairytale. It’s the other side of the fairytale. SR: Yeah, It’s what happens after you get your happily ever after. Because, I mean, Meredith and Derek couldn’t just ride off into the sunset and that’d be it, I mean, the show would be over. BB: Or stay in that field for the rest of their lives… SR: Yeah, but I did think that there’s something about what happens when your dream comes true in a lot of ways, what comes after that. I thought that was interesting. BB: And I think that’s what was great about it, that you also very, very early on, seemed to have the idea of the princesses and the fantasies, which were the two things… SR: Yes, I was very obsessed with the princesses, and originally like they were much closer to… to… well frankly the Disney Princesses than they were almost anything else. Like one was Snow White, one was Cinderella and one was Belle. Like we had a whole thing. And as it grew and changed and morphed and became different, obviously it grew and changed and morphed and became different… BB: But the essence was still the same, because in essence what you had was 3 women going to a ball, whose pumpkin crashed for all intents and purposes… SR: Yes, exactly! That’s very deep…that makes it sound deeper… BB: Thank you… there you go… SR: And what happens to them after they’ve had their happily ever afters with their Prince Charmings. BB: And also what I really, really love is the whole… this episode so much to me is about, the core of it, is about friendship and the definition of friendship, and what’s the next stage of friendship… Because everybody talks about the happily ever after for couples, but I think nobody really deals as much with the thing I love about this, which is what happens to the friends after the happily ever after. Which is also reflected with the princesses and the realization that one of them actually has been sleeping with another one’s husband… SR: Which is great, yeah… BB: …and yet they manage to heal, which is the big thing about having an amazingly close friend. SR: I always had this thing when Betty can’t remember anything, and is sort of perpetually stuck in this one moment. For me it was like, it had more than one level. It had the heartbreaking level, of she’s never going to understand what happened to her husband and she’s going to be constantly living in a state of grief, but on the other hand – her memory is short, do you know what I mean? BB: Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. SR: Her memory is short, which is sort of what has to happen to Sarah Beth and Bernadette Peters and Kathy Baker in order for them to heal their friendship and move on. BB: The whole opening of them arriving in this ice storm which I found like really both weird, mysterious, poetic and strange is that this car comes skidding up with these women in their phenomenal ball gowns… SR: I really wanted to do an ice storm, even though I knew like, OK it’s going to be October so I had this whole thing about global warming (a) and (B) I felt like it would be really cool to do an ice storm because I’ve never seen that, and in Seattle an ice storm would be interesting. And well, you know, I had something I wanted to do with an icicle so… BB: Which very early on, I remember you said “I’m going to impale Cristina with an icicle”… SR: ….and everybody was sort of like “What??” BB: When it sounds like that you think “Really? Seriously?” The really, really fun part actually being here, you know we bring up weather and a joke to begin with but the episode is about an ice storm and we do live in southern California, the challenge of doing an ice storm in Southern California is actually incredibly entertaining and strange. And kudos to “Shoots without a script” Rob Corn, who of course directed this double episode, and the incredible team of people that we have working here in production, because they actually frost-bit the whole area of the ambulance bay and did this incredible thing which to me really really looks, being from the East Coast you, being from the Midwest really, really looks authentic. SR: And then we did some amazing special effects on shots which were just perfect, lovely summer days in LA that we then turned into wintry days in Seattle which were kind of amazing as well. BB: For this incredible freak storm, which is great. SR: Yeah, freak storm… BB: Now I think also just in terms of, on the fairy tale topic, a very odd kind of Prince Charming walks in the door, which is one of my favorite things ever in the history of the damn show. SR: Yes, Owen Hunt. BB: Owen Hunt who, by the way? Saucy and spicy. But also, more importantly, really doesn’t give a crap what anybody thinks! SR: Well, I remember pitching the character to the studio and the network and everybody was like “So, what kind of guy is he?” and I’m like “Well, he just walks around and says “So?” a lot”. BB: And there was this long pause… SR: And everybody was sort of like “Well… what do you mean?” and I was like, he doesn’t care! He just says “So?” and he does whatever he wants. It’s awesome! BB: Which, in fact… SR: And the writers became obsessed with it, and in the first draft of the script, I think Owen said ‘so’ like 50 times, so we had to pull back a little bit on the so’s and use them sparingly… BB: You actually finally gave him a sentence, which was great… relatively early on but initially there was also this monosyllabic grunting of “So?” SR: I think that Kevin McKidd who plays Owen Hunt could grunt anything he would want and we would all be fine with it. BB: Well, and I’ve got to say, we are big fans of Kevin McKidd’s. I mean we had followed him in Journeyman, we saw him in Rome, we knew about him from Trainspotting and we were kind of freaked out that we actually got to work with him and that he was willing to play this part but he dug into it like a crazy man. SR: Yeah, he was wonderful. BB: He was really, really wonderful. SR: He took it very seriously. BB: I don’t know about you but, there was heat between Cristina and Owen. SR: There’s a little bit of heat, there’s a little bit of heat… I really loved their whole storyline. I thought that there was something really lovely about… he’s injured and he staples himself and then she’s injured and he carries her inside and it just was really great… and he pulls out her icicle… the whole relationship to me was really great and I love what it culminates in, which is that wonderful, amazing kiss. Which I adore. BB: Which is great, and it’s also finally great to see someone stand up to Cristina. Not in the Erica Hahn way of standing up to her, professionally, but like – this guy… SR: He felt like a formidable opponent BB: He does, and I think one of the things when you were first talking about this was the idea of somebody who was a formidable opponent, not only for Cristina, but for everyone at Seattle Grace… SR: Yeah, for Derek! And for Mark… BB: … and for McSteamy, because I mean Sloan is like… they’re both like, what the hell are you doing? You’re marching through here and you’re doing all of this crap… SR: Which I love, which I love… it’s just a very different energy than the hospital has seen before, which I’m excited about. BB: I think it’s really, really cool… and kind of great. SR: Yeah, I thought it was very interesting to see, and do this part. BB: I just really, really love Cristina’s karmic icicle when she yells at her best friend, and she gets an icicle through her heart… SR: Yeah, I love that Cristina basically gets to say the thing that I have been thinking, frankly, and I know that lots of people have been thinking for a long time which is “Shut up about your relationship with Derek!” BB: Just stop, just stop it, just please, please don’t say any more about this thing… and it was kind of a relief to have everyone come out and say it. Also I think the other, obviously the big thing, which to me is going to affect the season gigantically, the idea that Seattle Grace which we started with way, way back in 1928 or whenever we first started working on the show; we started with the idea of this hospital being an incredibly… SR: Like, one of the best. BB: One of the best… elegant, fabulous… that we start the season and this hospital has slipped so precipitously, I mean… SR: Yeah, I love that. BB: I mean, how much harder everyone’s going to have to work to… SR: That was really important to me, to start the season off with the idea that they are playing catch up in some way. That all of the arrogance they have about their hospital is sort of thrown in their faces when their ranking slips, not just to 4 or 5 – but to 12… which I thought was really hard and difficult for them to deal with. And would be hard for the Chief, and I love that he says they’ve gotten complacent, and that people have become lazy, and it all culminates in him saying that the surgical training program is officially changing, and that was really interesting because you know that something big is coming. BB: Which is going to be incredibly fun to watch. I also loved watching the Chief viciously overreact. Like, the Chief doesn’t measure his reactions, which I love… SR: The Chief does not like to lose. BB: No, he doesn’t man, and he turns into just… like steam coming out of his head! SR: … Yeah. BB: Which on one hand, the Chief is one of the most rational, great bosses in the world and then sometimes, one of the things I love about the Chief is, sometimes he’s not the most reliable boss… SR: He’s just as competitive as our residents are, which is what I think is interesting. BB: Exactly… and you never lose that. SR: I mean he’s… he never lost that drive, he’s still that competitive guy, which I thought was really interesting. BB: I think, like Alex is in a really…. The relationship with Alex and Izzie seems to be in a really, really interesting place too. SR: Yeah, I mean, I think for Alex the fact that she told anybody anything about what had gone on between them in the finale of last season, when he sort of cried, was more than he could take, for him, there’s no forgiving that. I think that that was a very interesting place for them to be. BB: Absolutely. And the weird thing is… SR: And he’s making out with skanks at the end of the episode, I mean, no offence to the skanks out there… BB: By the way, we’re not anti-skank… that’s not the issue… SR: Nope, love every last one of you. BB: I mean, the world needs skank… stuff… so… there we go. But I think in truth, for Izzie… SR: For Izzie it was a little bit mortifying, and for Alex you know… little bit of a backslide. BB: OK, so, the dream sequences? I just loved the Meredith/Cristina one. SR: The old ladies? BB: For all the personal reasons that are obvious. SR: I have a huge… I mean for me, that was my favorite. I love, I have to say I love the one where, you know, Meredith thinks that Derek is dead, well we see that Derek is dead, because it always made me cry because it always felt so real to me? And it was really shocking the first time I saw it, I read it and… BB: You actually started crying… SR: Yeah, I knew what happened next, and so I was like “Derek’s dead… oh my God…” so that was really hard. And I love, of course, Izzie’s at the end, her dream sequence but I think that Cristina’s is the most honest and pure, and sort of non-romantic and practical… and yet incredibly charming and speaks to the nature of what’s important to her and what friendship means to her. The idea that they’ll be two 90 year old women… BB: … routing on cereal boxes… SR: …. and cutting chicken… BB: … cutting chicken in their kitchen. SR: Like, that’s her dream, which I found to be incredibly sweet and charming. BB: Well, it’s that it’s so based in reality, and it circles back to the whole idea that …. (something about friendship…) SR: … and that dreams don’t always have to involve a boy, ladies! BB: OK, they can sometimes just be… hanging out with a good friend, eating chicken. SR: Exactly. BB: Which is always such a good thing, even if you can’t see and you’re a little shaky and you’re kinda grouchy, which I really, really liked. The two surgeons are eating chicken… SR: and they looked really good, I mean I feel like their old-age make-up was incredible. BB: I didn’t recognize them. SR: I saw them on set, and I remember thinking like… why did we bring in two actors to play them? BB: I thought we were actually going to do prosthetics. SR: … and then Sandra opened her mouth and I was like “Oh my God, they have the most amazing make-up on”. That was the Bermans, who are incredible for that. And Norman. BB: They did an amazing job. Absolutely. SR: Yeah. BB: Well, it was a nice way to start. But next week actually I think connects really, really well with this week. SR: We’re going to see a little bit more about, you know, what’s going … what’s going down with Erica and Callie. BB: I think that yeah, that was an awkward way to end the season and I think that they’ve got to work out where the heck their brains are on that one. SR: I think that they’re going to have an interesting place to go. I love they have that moment when they both discover that they’re both kinda virgins… BB: It also means that actually, as we move forward with this, it’s being handled in a different kind of way than I’ve seen, which is two people who actually don’t have any clue what they’re doing. SR: Which I love. BB: Which is opposed to a highly confident human being, dealing with… they’re both very lost in the woods, which I think is terrific. SR: Yeah. Next week’s episode is called “Here Comes the Flood”… BB: I believe in two weeks you’re going to be seeing Here Comes the Flood, because the fine people of this country are going to be watching a Presidential debate. SR: Debating… which I think is important and I think you should all really watch that too. Also voting… BB: Voting’s also good. But evaluating your opinions, based on the points in the debate. SR: Exactly. Don’t vote on clothes, or looks, or hair… BB: … or what your favorite movie is… SR: No. BB: Because sometimes that’s not a good thing. SR: Watch the debate. BB: Debating’s good because issues will come up and everybody will have feelings about that. SR: And if you’re not registered to vote, register to vote right now so that you can vote. BB: So that’s our public service announcement for getting out to vote there, which is good… SR: Voting. BB: Voting… SR: It’s for you… BB: It’s a good thing. SR: Yeah (laughs). BB: And also by the way, just for the record, it gets you out of the house… you might meet somebody… you never know who you might meet at the polling place. SR: That is where all the cute guys are. BB: They are. They’re hanging out, thinking about voting. Not necessarily getting coffee… SR: Your own personal McDreamy might be there… BB: He might just be standing there with a little punch card, with a ‘chat’(?) or whatever the heck people do in different states… SR: I don’t know what they do. BB: I don’t either. But if you see them, with that little sticker that says “I voted”… SR: That means they’re hot. BB: Chase them. Chase them like a cougar! (laughing) SR: Exactly… exactly… BB: So clearly we should hang this up now… SR: (laughing) We should stop talking now… BB: Because umm… we’re done! So umm… I’m Betsy… SR: I’m Shonda… Both: … and this is Grey’s Anatomy. That’s it for this podcast. We’ll be back next time with another inside look at Grey’s Anatomy. You can catch “Here Comes the Flood” on Thursday October 9th at 9pm on ABC, or the next day at abc.com Posted: Sep 28 2008, 07:41 PM NoTroutForMe/Amanda Edited by oncetherewasaway, Oct 20 2008, 12:05 PM.


5.01~5.02 Dream a Little Dream of Me · Episodic Chat