the eye ball's connected to the..... i've done it. watched the entire first season of the show that has taken sunday nights by storm: grey's anatomy. this is a show that i had dismissed as another flash in the pan that i would consciously avoid. of course, part of that reasoning was because people around me loved the show so much. my sister made it a point to drive from los angeles to san francisco in time to catch the show last weekend. my ex-roommate, whom i used to watch many a tv show with, watches the show. and she barely has time to eat, sleep, and fly off to foreign countries every few days. our three new england transplanted educator friends watch it religiously, and they go outdoors any time the thermostat hits sixty five (day or night). many others either are addicted to it, or follow the show obsessively. i can understand why. with only nine episodes in the first season, you either blinked and missed the show, or you followed it very closely. the infamous "code black" post-super bowl episode had my personal television watching circle of friends buzzing.

so, what do i think of the show? after i watched nine hours of it in essentially one sitting? it's pretty good, but far from great.

first off, the actress who plays the main character meredith (ellen pompeo) looks great in the part but doesn't have enough facial range to pull off the emotions that are required to make us really love her. does anyone love meredith? she kind of has two facial settings: forlorn and semi-sad, or chesire eyed with quirky grin. that's about it. she does benefit from really superb back lighting in certain shots, but that should not be confused with great facial expressions. she needs more face work. i can't tell if it's the character who is given nothing to do with her face, or if it's pompeo's fault. from pompeo's google images, i'm gonna go with the latter. she could probably star in one of those poker face ads just as effectively.

i'm not saying pompeo's entirely ineffective in the role, but she's not exactly the show stopper. you end up liking all of the peripheral characters more, which is strange for this kind of show. i mean, did you have to struggle to feel a kinship to felicity or angela chase (i mean, as a perfectly hetero male)? not really.

the show is less ER and more sex in the city than anything else -- a comparison that has been made by many reviewers. with a female-centric cast, episodic themes, and handy voiceovers, grey's anatomy is pretty much ripping out a page from the carrie bradshaw and friends playbook. one big difference, sex in the city is a far superior show. the supporting characters of sex in the city are essentially stock archetypes, but they flesh out very nicely. the supporting characters from grey's anatomy seem to just be one-dimensional caricatures with a sprinkling of "fun" quirks thrown in. to be fair, the show has only had nine episodes to introduce us to a large ensemble cast. but still, the characters in grey's anatomy don't seem to be all that well rounded -- yet?

also, the general plot archs and episode to episode continuities seem to be missing. i feel like we learn nothing about the characters (what really makes them tick), despite having spent a full season with them. one revealing tidbit is given to us at the beginning of one episode and then totally ignored the rest of the season. izzie bakes when stressed...but this fact is only shown to us in one episode. izzie is a pin up model, hello kitty underwear wearer, trailer trash, and misses her mom -- all revealed in separate incidents with no episode after effects. izzie has a boyfriend, now they just broke up, whoops. side plots (and characters) are flown in and out of every episode willy nilly, with no set up or follow through. it feels as if the writers were creating episodes on the fly, often losing sight of each character's themes and facts revealed from previous episodes.

and guess what? that's probably how they did it. i'm willing to give the mainly female writing team -- close to seventy percent of the writing team is female; a fun fact revealed in the making of documentary -- a pass on this point as they were probably experiencing unanticipated huge success and thus facing looming deadlines all (half) season long. but they better pick up the slack and have each episode seem less stand-alone than they they are now. the only thing that currently carries over from episode to episode is who got together with whom (and so far it's just two couples, neither of which are all that interesting).

the show recaps before certain episodes kind of highlight this problem. what do you need to know about grey's anatomy from week to week? a likes b, b likes c, c and d slept together, etc etc. the show is marketed as a glorified soap opera, but it doesn't really seem like one until you watch the oddly jarring "this is what happened before" segments. the reason for this? the show wants us to care about the romantic relationships, but the compelling relationships are between a bunch of friends and doctors, not who likes whom this week. the strong point of this show isn't about mcdreamy and mcnasty and the mc-romances, but the interns going through residency. am i right? at worst, this show will devolve into a less trashy melrose place; at best, this show will evolve into a cohesive "sex in the hospital" focusing on the growth and transitioning of friendships.

other things to mention since i've captured your unwavering attention:

the show shows the resident intern as wild west cowgirl and heroine. look at how the pretty ladies flaunt hospital rules and regulations to do crazy ass shit but then ultimately save lives. if i was in charge of training actual future doctors of america, i would ban this show for my students. seriously. every "good" thing the interns do is immoral, illegal, or done without their supervisor's permission.

the large number of minorities in central roles: on the surface a boon but it's almost too many. the entire senior staff of the show is black (the chief of surgery, the senior surgeon, the old scrub nurse, "the nazi"). coincidence? if you're gonna be all "we have so many minorities in our cast," at least put in some asians, indians, middle-easterners, even old white people up on the screen. you know, represent the other people who really run shit at the hospitals. put some more slanty eyed or brown people in the background at least. i have a filipino nurse friend from oregon, i know what's up. what hospital have you gone to all staffed by black people? i know, i'm racist, what of it?

"the nazi" isn't a fitting name for the no-nonsense senior resident, played by webster lookalike chandra wilson. the nazi is not only a totally unoriginal tv name (hello soup nazi?), it doesn't really fit the character. i feel like the nickname was put in early on during the show's creation and just never switched out. it's a bad nickname, and the writers know it too, since they stopped using it.

the sense of time in the show is all blurred. did the entire first season happen over the course of two weeks? three months? six months? i have no idea. sex in the city does an excellent job of giving you an idea of how much time has passed between episodes, without showing you an actual clock or forcing the issue. grey's anatomy: a month in the life? or one long ass day? hard to tell.

the whole romance thing with meredith and doctor mcdreamy: it's already boring. does anyone really care about them? the season one cliffhanger could make things interesting, but this is not an epic level romance like ross-rachel or angela-jordan. the scenes between them are really the most boring ones of the series. well, the most boring scenes next to.....

the whole "my mom has amnesia alzheimer's thing." ugh, talk about utterly boring. it was kind of interesting for a second but the mom is reduced to nothing more than a token amnesiac old person. meredith's visits with her mother are as painful for her as they are for us, the viewer. give it up already, kill her mom off. free meredith, free us.

the opening credits part of the show is just terrible. the music is memorable, but the actual credits part is pretty bad. i mean, fun idea, we get it (dressing up as a girl on the town versus dressing up as a doctor), but it's not memorable or executed well. and no show should start off each week by showing two bare feet caressing each other on a gurney. it just shouldn't.

for a show that i found myself enjoying immensely, the dialogue was kind of "sub-par." it wasn't rapid fire like gilmore girls, introspective like mscl, hilarious like freaks and geeks, pun-y like sex in the city, or otherwise all that clever or memorable in any way. which is almost refreshing. i mean, a show that actually goes against the grain of all characters being witty, smart alecky, and chandler-ish. not a bad change of pace.

the entire season was only eighteen bucks at costco. at first i was wondering how they fit an entire season on two discs. now i know. short season. great deal though. and fun show to watch. i give it a high recommendation despite all my griping. i gripe a lot, it's what i do okay?

last thing. sandra oh. seriously? i mean, i know i'm going to asian-american hell for slandering our most prominent asian-american actress but, seriously? she is not attractive. she in fact, repulses me. she's like one of those chicks you see at the club and your buddy says "oh yeah, i really dig her" and you immediately grab the keys and head for the exit. he's clearly drunk beyond the point of comprehension. i understand her sexy role in sideways, she's married to director alexander payne. but in this show? inexcusable. this is the latest, and greatest, clarion call for the idea that any asian woman, regardless of her actual looks, can be portrayed as an object of desire by (blind) non-asians everywhere. don't you see what what's going on here? orientalism people, o-r-i-e-n-t-a-l-i-s-m! congrats to ms oh / mrs payne though, for going from arli$$ onto much bigger and better things. go asians.