Grey's Anatomy Review

The early run deserves more respect than its reputation now allows. Rhimes wrote surgical residency as a workplace where exhaustion and ambition made people behave badly, and the first five seasons are structured cleanly around that, one case rhyming with one personal crisis per hour. Sandra Oh is the best actor the show ever had, and Cristina Yang is the only character permitted to want the job more than the relationship, which is why her exit is the point the series never recovers from.

Chandra Wilson has quietly held the whole thing together for two decades. What follows is a case study in the network incentive to never end anything. Cast members depart and are replaced by near copies, the same catastrophe formats recur on a cycle, and the show develops a habit of killing people for a ratings event and then grieving them for half a season. It looks like every other hospital drama, all cool blues and glass. Enormously watchable, wildly overextended, and worse than it used to be.