Shonda Rhimes has been breaking hearts on US television for over a decade, and the talented showrunner, writer, producer, and director doesn’t show signs of stopping any time soon. Last week marked what may have been her most epic, brutal, and ruthless move yet when she killed off Doctor Derek Shepherd, AKA “McDreamy,” Ellen Pompeo’s co-star on Grey’s Anatomy. The show may be Rhimes’ flagship and the production that turned her first into a rising star and then into a key member of the Hollywood establishment, making history in an industry that’s difficult for women of colour to crack, but she wasn’t afraid to shake things up. The decision to kill off a main character over howls of protest from fans was a bold one, but also a fitting one for a production that was slowly starting to stale.
From the start, the relationship between the two characters has been cast as one of eternal love as they endure magnetic attraction, rocky relationship moments, and external hardships. It’s the star around with Grey’s Anatomy orbits, and the aspirational relationship for fellow characters and members of the public alike. Mer-Der was the stuff of a thousand pop culture commentaries and long sighs from fans who desperately want to believe in true love. It was also beginning to hold Meredith Grey back after ten years on television—it was incredibly difficult for her to grow and develop as a character once she’d achieved the American dream of a husband, happy children, and a fulfilling career.
This season, Rhimes experimented with conflict as Derek worked in Washington to pursue his own dreams, working on key neurological research, while Meredith stayed at home to focus on her career. It marked the first time viewers had seen a significant rift in the relationship and some were deeply unhappy about it, already raising alarms that this spelled trouble for Dempsey’s remaining time on the show. Last week’s episode crushed any remaining hopes with Derek’s death, and Rhimes made sure to twist the knife by giving Meredith and Derek a touching reunion first and making his death particularly pointless.
As if the decision to park his car perpendicular to traffic wasn’t bad enough, Derek suffered from ending up at the wrong hospital—not Grey-Sloane Memorial, where it seems that all things are possible, but a small hospital poorly equipped for trauma. In confluence of circumstances that evidently startled viewers, Derek went gently into that good night after Meredith wrestled with the ethics and emotions of choosing to suspend life support. As an unintentional side bonus, the episode highlighted the lack of good regional trauma centres in the United States, and the tragedies that occur as a result. Derek Shepherd is a fictional character: The scores of people who die due to limited access to good trauma centre represent a collective tragedy in a nation with a lumbering and decrepit health care system.
The programme is one about the complexity of human interrelationships and medicine, but fundamentally, it’s about the education and life of Meredith Grey. At times, she’s been almost eclipsed by her charismatic husband, in a storytelling mode that’s been frustrating as we long to see her grow into her own person, beyond his shadow. This season marked the start of that with Meredith’s lucky streak of surgeries with positive outcomes—which didn’t start occurring until after Derek left and she started focusing on surgery, not on her tempestuous marriage. We began to see her as an independent person, not as one half of Mer-Der. As a woman in her own right and as a talented surgeon, rather than the partner of someone else.
It’s an important turning point for the show. As the remainder of the season spins out and the show gears up for a (probable) 12th season, viewers should prepare for a very different landscape. Meredith finally has an opportunity to grow into herself as a character and assert herself as an individual, and I suspect she’s going to challenge other characters more while also dealing with the hardships of being a single mother balancing career, children, and the desire for a little time to herself. This marks a new and fascinating leaf in the life of Meredith Grey, and it will also irrevocably change her relationship to the characters around her.
Ellen Pompeo and Shonda Rhimes are clearly excited about the titular character’s future on the programme, which bodes well. While the exact circumstances behind Dempsey’s premature exit (he had another year on his contract) haven’t been disclosed and likely never will be, the party line is that it occurred ‘organically,’ in response to evolving plots and characters. Perhaps now Meredith can finally move out from under the shadow of her marriage and its dark and twisty past, developing her own life without his pervasive presence at her side.
I for one won’t miss Shepherd and his smarm, though many viewers seem to think differently, judging from the sustained misery and rage on social media over Dempsey’s exit. Already, desperate fans are calling for his return, though it’s unclear how this would be engineered, given that death tends to be rather final unless a programme is about zombies and/or vampires. While Dempsey could get a guest spot for the occasional dream sequence, it seems more likely, and appropriate, that he’s stepped firmly and finally off stage. Which ought to free up some budget: As of 2013, he was earning an estimated $350,000 per episode.