My Life, My Pace

I've written more than once (here and here) about how Grey's Anatomy has things all wrong when it comes to portraying young surgeons.  And my biggest problem in those posts was their whole Izzie falling in love with a patient storyline.  Well, that's not the only thing wrong with Grey's Anatomy.  I've completely neglected the other major plot that's playing out this season: the Christina and Burke story.

To summarize, at the end of last season, Burke gets shot while going back to Seattle Grace to check on Denny (thanks to Izzie) and has surgery to remove the bullet and repair the damage.  Of course, he was shot in a bad place, making it possible that he would never regain function of his right arm/hand.  The beginning of this season shows him struggling to regain function as he suffers from persistent and unpredictable hand tremors.  Both he and Christina cannot accept that he may no longer be able to be the God of cardiothoracic surgery and through her pressuring him and his own lack of balls to stand up to her, they form a team in which she is always by his side as he operates so that she can take over the instant there is a hint of a tremor.

This plot was annoying because as much as I like Christina because she is most like me, they take her whole not-being-quite-human flaws a little too far by having her refusal to accept that Burke was not better lead her to push him into operating when he clearly was not ready.  I may be a little emotionally- and empathy-lacking, but even I would not be able to do that because of the risk to patients.  But okay, maybe she's just that flawed.  I'm okay with that.  What I take issue with is how long they were able to get away with it even though there are more than two people in an operating room at all times.  Why didn't the OR nurses notice?  What about the other more senior residents who were suddenly all assed out of Burke's surgeries?  And what about Bailey after she also got assed out of one of his surgeries?  And then there was the matter of George freaking out because it was going to be his dad on the table.  None of these people did anything about what was clearly a very serious breach of ethics that was putting patients at risk.  In real life, they never would have been able to get away with what they were doing for as long as they did.  But they did in Grey's Anatomy because no one could tell so that they could have this really "emotional" episode this last week about betrayal as Christina betrayed Burke and ratted him out to the chief.  Which by the way was an act of revenge for his putting an end to their little team and not because she couldn't take it anymore.  If she couldn't take it anymore, she could have just waited because it was obvious that Burke was going to go to the chief anyway.  Her running all bloody out of the OR to the chief was revenge.  Pure and simple.  Which is just messed up because she was the one who pushed him into the situation in the first place because of her lack of emotional strength and empathy.  In any case, I'm glad that this little team of theirs is now officially done for because it just made me squirm each time I saw them go into surgery together because it just didn't make sense to me that they could hide their little secret for so long and because I was always waiting for something to go horribly wrong (she is just an intern after all).

Oh, and how Izzie continues to annoy me with her stupid self-righteous why-can't-I-do-shit attitude.  If it were me, I would have kicked her back out of the program two weeks ago for her ungratefulness.  But she's still here and she's still acting as if it's so unfair that she's not allowed to do anything.  No shit you can't do anything.  The last time you did something, someone died.  In real life, you'd probably be flipping burgers now since there's no way you would ever be allowed to even come near a patient ever again.  So shut up and grovel.  Seriously.