Podcast Transcript Excerpts about Mer and Der

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Podcast Transcript Excerpts about Mer and Der
Topic Started: May 8 2007, 07:42 PM (111 Views)
merdermaid	May 8 2007, 07:42 PM Post #1
Posts: 157 Group: Grey Girls Member #254 Joined: April 24, 2007	Time has come Today You see the moment where Meredith and Derek meet – which I think is really important. Which I just have to say is so incredibly played by the two of them, I think it actually informs so much of what you see Derek is dealing with, all of last season, but you really get the context of it. Which is, he is a guy with an incredible amount of pain that he is hiding, and you see the way Derek hides stuff. And you see where that charm comes from. And most importantly, one of the most important moments for me is that you see what happened the night, minutes after he found Addison in bed with Mark, who was Derek’s best friend who she had the affair with. And you see that rage, and that pain, and how bad that was for him. That scene was really important to me for several reasons. One is, I wanted you to understand why that marriage was ending, in both the present and in the past, in terms of Derek sleeping with Meredith. Two, I wanted you to understand why Derek slept with Meredith, in a weird way, because I feel like, when you see that moment, and you see Addison’s betrayal of Derek, you can in a lot of ways forgive his infidelity – not that I’m saying he is completely blameless. And three, the big thing for this episode was to realize how much Derek loved Meredith. And that’s really what his arc is in this episode coming around to, is he clearly loved Addison, he clearly was incredibly hurt by her, but it’s not the same as when he met Meredith, and he’s a changed man when he meets her for the first time. And he’s a changed man when he goes to see her at the end of the episode. The other final thing that is also important to mention is that Finn shows up and declares himself, and Derek shows up and declares himself, and damn, aren’t they both romantic and cute. They are so saucy. And Meredith has got what she knows she should do, and what her heart wants to do, and she’s still not sure what’s going to happen. You got to keep watching to find out. I Am A Tree And the other thing that I thought was really great about the episode was the interplay of Meredith trying to figure out who she wants to be with, Derek or Finn, Derek or Finn, and then deciding that she wants to try dating, and she’d like to try dating both of them. And that really sets up some good stuff to come. I think absolutely, also in the previous episode the whole idea that Finn says “I’m good for you. He’s not good for you, I’m good for you.” And then you see him in this episode, be the guy who brings Izzie food, you know that he is good for her. He’s a good guy; he’s a very good guy. He cuddles puppies, you know, he’s a good guy, and you know what, his hair rivals Derek’s. He’s got awesome hair, by the way. He looks great in little flannel shirts, the nice flannel shirts her wears. But he is the guy who brings your roommate lunch when she’s sad, and doesn’t know you’re there. Which is just charming, and wonderful. So I think that it is great that she chooses to date both of them, but also, I think that is a terrific scene as well, where she comes home to check on Izzie and he is there, and you realize that he’s really a contender. Sometimes A Fantasy We hope you liked this episode, we loved this episode a lot. I was really proud of Ellen Pompeo, who plays Meredith, as you well know, for her entire performance as a girl on morphine. She did a great job with the appendicitis and the morphine, and I just thought she was incredibly funny, and very charming and heartbreaking when we get to the end. Yeah, because I think you really, really feel the choice that she’s making. It is incredibly difficult. And Finn may be right, you know, when Finn says “He’s going to hurt you again.” And no matter what has happened through…you can see in Meredith’s face that she believes that he will. She believes that there is this fatalistic feeling of ‘oh yeah, he will’ but you know what, in relationships like that, you don’t have a choice. Right, I mean, she can sort of be with Finn, and like him, she could not be with Derek or whatever, and love him. And really, she can’t go halfway. I mean, I love the moment where the voice over, done by Denny Duquette, says ‘I know who I am now’ because that is the truth about Meredith. She has figured out that this is who she is. And funnily enough she has figured it out after being high as a frigging kite, all day long, where she actually said what she meant. What is interesting is that there is no sense, when she looks at Bailey and says “You’re pretty.” It’s like, so great that there is no ability to censor, and it is like the one thing that comes out of that entire experience is an ability to be honest. Which is really interesting. And what was really great was that because Meredith is in this place where she is completely uncensored, and she can have this conversation with Addison, and she can have those conversations with everybody, Derek is on this journey of sort of coming to the idea that perhaps Finn is the better guy, which is reinforced by the conversation that Meredith has with Addison, which is one of my favourite scenes ever, and by his conversation with Finn, and his conversations with Richard, you watch him slowly come to this realization – and Patrick does it so well – that when he sits down on the bed with her and says “Finn’s the better guy,” you know he believes it. But it is the very act of sitting down on the bed and telling her that Finn is the better guy that makes Meredith realize that Derek’s the one she wants to be with. It’s just kind of an incredible thing. It is. It’s also that Derek is self-aware, and has become self-aware enough to realize that he is willing to give something up that he loves because he may hurt her in the future, like he is concerned that he is going to hurt her in the future. It’s that relationship thing – it’s pretty awesome, it’s pretty good. Oh The Guilt It is also interesting that a lot of relationships at this point, are kind of at crucial points, both at breaking points…they are at these incredibly pivotal moments. I mean, like, Addison and Mark could go anyway, in a weird way, it seems like one thing, but who knows? George and Callie. To me what’s great is I feel like it’s this group of very incredibly complicated relationships, so you feel like you don’t really know what way George and Callie are going to go, I’m not sure exactly where Addison and Mark are going to go, it’s not completely clear cut, I’m not totally positive the MerDer of it all is going to have a satisfactory conclusion. And I think that is important. I mean, I would never say….I’m looking at this piece of paper, they give us these questions, and one of the questions is, “Is George and Callie’s romance over?” I would never say that anybody’s romance is over. I mean, it is a much more human, a much more troubled, much more twisted thing. Let the Angels Commit But it also makes you realize that Derek came from all of these nurturing, slightly bossy type ladies, which explains a lot. He grew up in this whole family of women, no men, which explains a lot. I mean his choice of Addison, what’s going on with Meredith. . . . Now, the other thing that is kind of cool, in terms of the whole relationship between Nancy and Derek, is like, where Derek ends up, in that it is going back to what you said before of Derek getting to a point where he realizes that he needs some space. Yeah, I mean, what Nancy says is really telling, she says, ‘I’ve never seen you single, you need to get away, get away from the women, get away from Addie, get away from the intern, you need to get away.’ And while Nancy, you know, they call her McBitchy, but she is really just protecting her brother, as best she can, because as far as she can tell, he has been incredibly hurt, and screwed up, and all they know is that one day he is living a life in New York, and the next thing he was packing up and moving to Seattle and living in a trailer, living in the woods and dating some intern. So for them, from the outside, when you look at it…I mean, if it was somebody I was related to, I’d be going out there to see what was wrong. So, I loved how protective she was, and the idea that Derek’s going to get away, and that he needs this space is going to be interesting to see how that plays out, and if he can actually figure out a way to take that space, or not, given who he is. From a Whisper to a Scream [Talking about Cristina} The responsibility is so overwhelming, and the responsibility for a full-blown surgeon, to be taking care of him like that, and the fact that directly and indirectly, she is responsible for her friendships all around her unraveling. The relationships that unravel around her between all of them, between her and George, the potential of Derek and Meredith unraveling, the effect that she has on each person there is devastating. Don't Stand So Close to Me The other storyline I really liked was the appearance of Molly and her Mother Susan in the hospital. If you saw our episode last season in which Meredith’s Father shows up at the hospital, and it turns out he has this whole other family that Mer knows nothing about, you know how painful that was for her. So to have Molly and Susan come back was actually something that we had been wanting to do for a long time, and watching Meredith try to navigate…It was interesting, because I kept saying in the writer’s room, Meredith needs to say to these people, ‘You’re not my family,’ and it needs to really mean something. I didn’t want an episode in which Meredith says at the beginning, ‘You’re not my family,’ and at the end is holding hands with them or something. Because the idea is that she is this girl without a family, and you have these very painful, poignant moments with her Mother at the beginning and the end, and you’re watching Meredith deal with the family she has, which is the other interns, and then there is her Mother, and then there is Derek, and it is a little late for her. And one of the reasons why I created the character of Meredith in the first place was I was really intrigued by this idea of somebody who essentially was alone in the world, and how that family would form. Though I love the moment with Susan and Molly appearing, and I love the moment where Susan says ‘we could be your family,’ and I thought that moment was really sad for Meredith because she can’t see it yet. It is that whole idea of why she is so close to her friends in the hospital, that over and over again it reminds you that for this group of characters, and for George too, who is in the process of going through something incredibly hairy with his Dad, where do your friends fit in, and in what way do your friends continue to be your family. Some Kind of Miracle Emotional amazing journey for Meredith. Meredith had been coming to this point for a long time, the idea that Meredith is slightly suicidal was something I had been putting forth for a long time. There’s something fairly depressed about her. And the idea that she would finally get the guy, get she wants but not really be able feel the happily ever after portion of it was interesting to Shonda. Coupled with all that has been going on with her mother and what Ellis’ lucid day and what Ellis said to her. In season 2 Derek says to Meredith “You were like coming up for fresh air, I was drowning and you saved me” and so the idea of letting Meredith drown and having Derek save her was part of their arc as a couple, and it felt fairly important. The idea that Derek saves her, but Meredith has to save herself. And the reality Derek can’t ever be her knight in shining whatever cause Meredith really does have to save herself was important. One their favorite thing of all time “I had intimacy issues, do you know how stupid that seems”. Which certainly gave them perspective of all of our lives, some of those things that you obsess about. She had to go thru this sort of this Wizard of Oz journey, Greek tragedy go down to hades kind of thing, Yeah it’s a very Wizard of Oz journey to realize that everything she wanted she already had, and its just a matter of appreciate that and acknowledge what it is. But to watch and also get to encounter certainly as part of this, the whole concept that we could go into this netherworld, this death world, and we get to encounter and learn something from our favorite patients. The idea is Derek saved her but she has to save herself. Derek really can't be her knight in shining armour. Meredith's "I have intimacy issues" - gave perspectice to her. Went through a wizard of oz/greek tradgedy - everything she wanted she already had. The whole concept of deathworld and get to encounter/learn from our favorite patients. Amazing idea - relationship with Ellis coming full circle. Loved that in death she was a doctor in her scrubs. Pass each other in the hallway was imports. "You are far from ordinary" is the one thing Mer needed to hear from Ellis. Takes care of the relationship; what was left hanging between them. KB is amazing, not many more places we could take Ellis. Connected with all this, Meredith has to admit the truth that she was giving up in order to go back. It wasn't about being suicidal - she let go, gave up - where's the meaning. Derek makes the point - she can swim. She gave up. So much about Derek and Meredith and their relationship. Denny tells her he wouldn't be this guy if you died. We find out what happened to Cristina, what feeds Cristina. This episode is not a love story about Mer/Der, its about Mer/Cristina - their friendship. We found out why she handled the Burke situation the way she did - what do you do when faced with something like this. Left open ended - Derek. Faces his worst fear in losing Mer. Realizes this is his worst fear and that it can come true at any time. Its not over for them, the issue is not over for them. Derek is in denial of the darkness. I'm strong and I'm this guy but he is a guy with a darkside. Freakout with Ellis. Shonda - his yelling at Ellis is what made it possible for Ellis to give Meredith the gift of telling her she is not ordinary. Totally connected. Derek didn't kill Meredith's mommy - just all events are connected. Ellis had a heart problem and Burke was with Meredith. Scars and Souvenirs What I thought was really moving and really different is this weird progressing relationship Meredith seems to be having with her dad and with Susan. It’s like Susan is suddenly making it possible for two people who can’t under any circumstances carry on a conversation with each other or even successfully make eye contact, It like Susan has suddenly decided its her mission to get them in the same place and to make it okay. It really difficult because you figure it’s Meredith is still, it’s a really long trip for Meredith to actually trust Thatcher. Meredith she still wants to kill him with a rock, I think. That a really good description because fundamentally he left this kid and never checked on her and never checked her out. And left her basically with the wicked witch of the west, I mean Ellis was like, not exactly the poster child for momdom probably, great surgeon though, an obviously incredibly impressive woman. But he left her and didn’t have the guts to stick up for his kid and moved away and started another family and not even visit or a letter or send a little birthday present, nothing, and he cops to that. He basically gave her his snoring ....that’s the big legacy. So I think that Susan is such a kind hearted and she that kinda that mom you want as a mom, she seems kinda rolls for the punches she probably talks to much and she cooks stuff. She’s the cookies and milk mom. The mom later on when you’re a teenager and you have friends and their parents don’t understand them, you can bring them to your house. It’s the slightly more grown up equivalent of cookies and milk. Susan kind of strikes as that kinda mom who rolls with the punches and Meredith has never had this in her life, which an adult who actually is being kinda cool to her, and kind of accepting her for what she is and not pushing her, but hoping these two people can get together. And poor Thatcher no matter how much he wants in his heart to make a connection with poor little Meredith he can’t say anything without putting his foot in his mouth. And way in. Way, way in. And you think on Thatcher point how scared he must of been of Ellis. You know how frightened made of him that he didn’t have the confidence to actually seek out his daughter and how bad he must felt about that. My favorite thing about that, is the scene when Thatcher goes off to fix the fuse and Derek comes in, and there’s great scene where the two of them are talking and they totally get each other. They totally get each other. Thatcher gets Derek in a way nobody does, no because he understand the life of a surgeon, but he also understand what it’s like to actually date a Grey. Yeah, love a Grey, which by the way, not an easy job, not the easiest thing in the world. No, no. Wouldn’t thinks so. So, I’m going to be interested to see if Susan can do anything can do to change this. Interesting to see a little bit of Derek’s past come back with his friend who needed surgery. Oh how cool was she! And by the way one of my favorite actresses, just incredible. Amazing and incredible, incredible to watch her work she was inspiring and so elegant. And I believe that she knew him for a long period of time and they have a huge history together. And he just went to this thing, he watched Meredith almost die in his arms. He’s almost a PTSD state, like he’s still rattled & shaken by the whole thing in a way that Meredith seems she isn’t.And here’s this person, here’s this other woman that comes in who he loves like a sister, & they were old friends and they know each other & he is been her doctor for so long.The notion she is going to let go of life in the way the Meredith almost did, is just way way too much for him to handle. And so he turns into, it’s almost like Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde thing, he turns into this bad surgeon Derek, he forcing this surgery.Its over the line a little bit, but he cant handle the notion that another women who he cares deeply about might go away. He can’t handle it, it’s just too much. My Favorite Mistake My favorite the moment in the whole episode frankly other that the silent scene in the linen closet between Izzie and George. The moment when Derek talks to the Chief about the fact that Meredith didn’t swim and he lays up at night listening to her breath and sort of hoping that she’ll not have get into that situation like again. And its basically his fear that he’s realized that its possible to lose Meredith and that’s now become the most important thing in his life. No, and you cant protect her all the time. But you also can’t protect yourself, you cant protect yourself if your in love with somebody who possibly doesn’t love themselves enough. Absolutely. So he’s pretty devastated, so I think that’s really interesting. It might bode something for the future .......or it might not. We might just drop it. Wish I had a British accent there so you guys probably believe me. Time After Time But the way that connects with the Meredith’s story with Susan is really wonderful because here we have sort of an adoption of sorts in its own way, of Susan sort of deciding to be Meredith mother in any way she can and Meredith not really allowing her to. And Susan’s sense of responsibility that she feels towards Meredith, the responsibility that she feels to take care of Meredith because everything that happened when Meredith was a child. She didn’t force Thatcher to try spend time with her, she didn’t get Thatcher to fight for her, she feels and enormous sense of responsibility to take care of Meredith because of that. It is a nice parallel. The two things connect really well. It also good in a strange way Susan keeps bashing at the door with no real expectation or hope that its gonna be reciprocated but there’s hope. . . I gotta say one of the things that bothered about this episode was the whole Derek, chief, Meredith issue and the situation that Derek is now finding himself in, which is you can’t win for loving Meredith.....like you can’t win. That might be considered the theme of every episode of our show. You can’t win for loving Meredith. Because he has risked so much for her and yet every single time he turns around it’s somebody saying, you know what, you’re not gonna get what you want. It’s just not fair. But it’s really compelling. And I don’t think the chief is wrong, no I don’t think the chief is wrong. And the problem is it’s Meredith world in a sense like she’s got the chief sort of feeling this responsibility to protect her, she’s got her friends sort of surrounding her and she’s got Derek who trying to find a way in with somebody who has intimacy issues. Who really doesn’t know how to be in a relationship. And now the very thing that Derek..... I think that Derek came out to Seattle thinking ‘I’m gonna be chief some day and this is my ambition and I don’t need women anymore, and I’m gonna be chief one day’. Except he picked up a woman in a bar and fell in love with her. And now I feel he caught himself doing same thing he did before which is, he fell in love with Addison and that is what he did for awhile. He was always very good at his career but that is what he did for awhile. And know he’s sort of intoxicated by Meredith and he’s putting himself in a position to get really, really hurt and that’s what he’s afraid of. I think it goes back to what his sister said, in that episode, which is that whole idea, ‘you always put the relationship first, you think that you have this balance and you’re never alone’, there’s something about Derek still needing that time where he really needs to evaluate who he really is and what is he wants. And the chief not wrong in his thoughts. It’s a difficult decision. It’s a difficult decision, Derek is in such a hard place because he loves her so much and he’s fought for her so hard. And she almost died.....and she kinda doesn’t appreciate being fought for. That’s the thing that I look at and say but you can’t....then I look at her and then I look at her mom and ???? I wouldn’t either. It’s a conundrum. But then Bailey always clears it up for me. Bailey walks in, and Bailey seems to have a clear sense of these people want. Bailey says there really isn’t a question here. But the problem is for Derek there is. There always is, I think that incredibly realistic. I find that incredibly painful because the chief’s right, Derek’s right, Bailey’s right, Meredith’s right....everybody’s right. Somebody’s gotta be wrong. Desire Now, how are you feeling about Meredith and Derek, right now? I’m a little worried about the Mer. And I’m a little worried about the Der. The little MerDer is a little bit worrying. I think it is hard, I think it is really, really hard for him right now. It is really hard for him because for me, what was really important about the season, and the ferry episodes was that Derek realizes that the thing that he loves most in the world is no longer his career, and all the things that he thought it was, it is Meredith. And that he is with somebody who doesn’t necessarily want to swim. So he can’t necessarily trust her to actually be there. But I think it is much more than that, even metaphorically, and just emotionally. Metaphorically he is with someone who doesn’t necessarily know if she wants to swim. And for him, that was probably the most terrifying thing that happened, was that he was faced with the idea of losing her. Really, really clearly and cleanly, like he reached a point of realizing what life would be like without her, and now he can’t trust her to remain there. And so he feels like he always has to be the one who is hyper vigilant, and he is always around trying to swim for her. That is starting to both freak him out, and frustrate him because he doesn’t know if he can be in a relationship that’s like that, which I think is a very honest place to be, for a person. But then I have to defend Meredith’s side. This is a woman who has never really been in a relationship, who lost her Mother, who is desperately trying to figure out where her loyalties lie, and from the point that Derek came back said, you know what, Cristina was there when you weren’t there for me. So I think that she is somebody who is having a really active battle in her own brain, consciously or not, as to how much she wants to swim. But also the experience of drowning for her was a very different experience to Derek’s, and we talk about that in the next episode. But he comes out of that thinking, omg, I could lose her, and she comes out of it realizing that she doesn’t want to be lost, so they are in different places. But it is interesting how everything goes back to the water. We are deeply water specific with this episode, and with this show. It’s all about swimming. The Other Side of This Life. I think, obviously there’s just this incredibly, emotionally wrenching thing – the death of fake Mommy, as I like to call her. Susan was…what I loved about this episode is there is this wonderful build. Its hiccups and it’s casual, and its one little thing gets worse, and one little thing gets worse, and it is a horrible, horrible domino effect until they are rushing her into surgery, and then Meredith has to come out and tell her Father that his wife is dead. One of my favorite performances ever by Jeff Perry, who plays Thatcher, is him realizing…it is also one of my favorite performances by Ellen Pompeo. And what I love is that Thatcher, who has always been this meek, sort of quiet person, you watch him, and he can never really look Meredith in the eye. But he managed at a couple of points in this episode to meet Meredith’s eyes. He is making an effort, and he feels like he is getting to know his daughter. He hugs her. Yeah, he hugs her in his stiff little way, and then ends up at a point where he is slapping his daughter across the face, which undoes every little inch they had gained, quite frankly. But also, it is so sad because you realize that really, for him, Susan was all he had. Susan was the glue that had been holding him together since the relationship with Ellis ended. And Susan was his conduit to the outside world, because he is so in his head, and bumbling, and sort of strange and introverted, and Susan was this person who made the world okay for him, in this very, very basic way. And it is just heartbreaking for him, but also that Meredith actually started to let this woman in, to the degree that she did. She started to let this woman in, and because of it, she also started to let her Father in. And now this woman who was the only link she had with her Father is dead. And her Father is lost to her in a way that she is not going to know even more until later. But it is just so sad, and what I really loved was that by the time you get to the end, you know, Meredith said to Derek ‘I want to be better, I want to let you in, and I want to do that,’ but her natural instinct is to go to the place of ‘leave me alone, I’m going to drink tequila, and protect myself as best I can with the veneer of everything’s fine.’



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