For 15 seasons, Grey's Anatomy has proven successful at mining drama from any number of places. There’ve been thrilling realizations dropped with no more than a knowing look and there have been actual bombs go off in the hospital itself. Grey's is a champion at producing scenes rife with high octane emotion within a broad range of settings and stories. It’s probably part of the reason the show’s endured for so long – we’ve been through everything with these doctors.
That said, they haven’t all been wins. There have been several moments and scenes on Grey's that were such huge missteps we forgot what we were watching for a moment. This list will detail all the times Grey's aimed high and truly missed the mark. Whether it’s a couple getting together that no one wanted to see or another crazy disaster that turned our everyday surgeons into blockbuster action heroes for a week, there are definitely plenty of dramatic misses to choose from.
The show’s absolutely had more hits than misses, but the longer it stays on the air, the more it has to top itself when it comes to emotional impact. At this point, we wouldn’t be surprised if a trio of dragons showed up on the roof demanding emergency appendectomies, but we have faith they’d save that kind of thing for the series finale in 20 years.
Here are 15 Jarring Moments That Took Us Out Of Grey's Anatomy.
The end of Reed
The Seattle Grace/Mercy West merger felt a little contrived, but the show was in need of new blood and integrated the new interns really well. Well-enough that when the hospital shooter Gary Clark came around, we were genuinely sad that some of these people became his victims. Well, genuinely sad and disturbed.
Clark's first victim was Dr. Reed, a competitive, not-so-nice Mercy West resident that was very good friends with April Kepner and not interested in making friends with the Seattle interns. However, her acerbic nature didn’t make any easier to see her get picked off by the shooter so violently.
Grey's audiences had seen that kind of attitude humanized in Christina Yang, so when someone so similar to her passed in such a horrible way hit us in a harder way than we expected.
George and Izzie
Grey's has taken its fair share of romantic missteps over the years (Owen and Amelia, anyone?), but nothing will ever top how uncomfortable it was watching George and Izzie get drunk and hook up.
The idea of two best friends realizing they had feelings for each other isn’t that out of the blue, but it only works if the actors actually have romantic chemistry with each other. Katherine Heigl and T.R. Knight definitely did not.
Watching the two come together was like watching a brother and sister make out.
There was no basis for their sudden attraction, and it also destroyed George and Callie’s relationship in the process. Nothing about George and Izzie's hook up made any real sense, and watching it play out for the first time made us want to look away.
MEREDITH'S MOM BULLIES HER
Meredith's relationship with her mother was by all accounts extremely difficult. Ellis wasn’t a warm woman and while she clearly loved her daughter, she was terrible at showing it. The show established Meredith’s unpleasant upbringing early on, but nothing could’ve prepared audiences how ugly things would get the day Ellis got her memory back.
Presumably Meredith getting into the same top surgical program as Ellis would’ve warranted some respect from her mother, but no such luck.
Instead, Ellis took issue with Meredith’s lack of competitive ambition and expressed her horror at waking up to find out Meredith turned out “no more than ordinary.”
It was venom on a level that felt way too far for Grey's, though if that’s what Ellis was really like, it did go a long way toward explaining how Meredith got so dark and twist.
RICHARD SINGS TO ADELE IN THE MIDDLE OF SURGERY
Grey's never did seem to know what to do with Adele and Richard’s relationship. It never really made sense that Adele would stick by Richard when he literally never prioritized her.
He was an alcoholic who neglected her both physically and emotionally through the duration of their marriage. It’s only after Ellis dies and Adele finally leaves him that Richard actually takes action to show her how important she is, just in time for the the writers to give her early onset Alzheimer’s just like Ellis.
It’s tragic, for sure, but it doesn’t change the fact that Richard never treated Adele with the love and respect she deserved. When a confused Adele winds up in the gallery while he’s performing surgery, him trying to ground her by talking about their wedding and singing “My Funny Valentine” just feels strange and out of place.
OWEN ATTACKS CHRISTINA
When Owen came on the scene in season 5, he seemed too good to be true. Of course it turned out he was hiding a deep dark secret. His experience in Iraq had traumatized him to the point where he developed severe PTSD and either wasn’t aware of it or wasn’t willing to face it. That denial of his condition led to him getting triggered into choking Christina in her sleep one night.
It was an incredibly brutal and frightening thing to watch Christina be hurt at the hands of someone who’d been so gentle and kind. While it ultimately was an incredibly realistic (and perhaps necessary) depiction of the realities of PTSD, it was simultaneously shocking to see that kind of violence on a show like Grey's.
DEREK CHANNELS ELLIS
During the course of Meredith and Derek's relationship, Derek isn’t the best guy. He pursues Meredith even after she doesn’t want to see him as because she’s his subordinate, doesn’t tell her he’s still married, leaves her to try again with Addison and then makes her the other woman when they cheat together during prom night.
That’s what makes his callous treatment of her after she risks their Alzheimer’s trial to let Adele receive the drug instead of the placebo so, so troubling. Meredith made a dangerous mistake, no question, but in the season 7 episode "Unaccompanied Minor", the way Derek lit into her felt extreme.
Watching him dress her down and say things like “How is it you don't know the difference between right and wrong?” felt more evocative of Ellis than McDreamy.
ALEX "OUTS" IZZIE
Alex Karev has grown into an incredibly caring and sensitive man, but boy howdy, did he take a long road to get there. When we first met him, Alex was an unapologetic womanizer who took pleasure in making fun of anyone and everyone who threatened his ego in any way. Izzie became his target in the first season, and in season 1, episode 4, he posted pictures of her modeling in the intern locker room in an attempt to embarrass her.
That move was creepy and abusive then, and in the wake of the #metoo movement, it’s even more unpalatable.
Alex unapologetically shamed and harassed Izzie by doing that, and her response of pulling off her clothing and furiously pointing out that she was out of debt because of her work also feels uncomfortable. What Izzie achieved was laudable and it’s cringeworthy that Karev would’ve called her out like that.
MERLEX?
The only couple more unthinkable and unnecessary than George and Izzie was Meredith and Alex. Thankfully the showrunners never tried to feed us that nonsense in any real way.
We love Alex and Meredith’s uncomplicated friendship, and we only had to suffer through their awkward affection during the infamous alt-universe episode of season 8.
In Meredith’s fantasy, her mother married Richard, McDreamy stayed with Addison, Izzie became the hospital shooter, and Alex and Meredith were engaged. Even though we knew it wasn’t real (and even though Fantasy Alex was cheating on Fantasy Mer with Fantasy April) , it was still low-key nauseating watching them be romantic.
As much as we enjoyed Grey's foray into "What If" territory, we don’t ever need to revisit the abomination that was a glasses-wearing Alex cooing over Mer.
IZZIE AND GHOST DENNY
Before Izzie realized she had a cancer that partially manifested in causing her to hallucinate, there were a handful of episodes that just featured her seeing her dead boyfriend and not telling anyone about it. No one was sorry to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan reappear, but it was in such a strange capacity and interrupted the relationship between Alex and Izzie which had finally gotten off the damn ground.
The weirdness of the entire storyline is best represented by the scene in which Izzie gives in to her fantasy and hooks up with Denny’s ghost - loudly enough for everyone in the house to hear.
Not only was she low-key cheating on Alex, but the audience was aware that Denny wasn’t actually there.
It made the implication of what was actually going on behind closed doors something we’d really have appreciated not imagining.
CHRISTINA’S EYEBROWS
As much as we loved Christina and Burke’s relationship, there were some pretty good reasons it wound up collapsing on the finish line. Burke and Christina were extremely well-matched in terms of their ambition, but where Christina put Burke’s career ahead of her own in covering up his tremor, Burke never really did the same. He demanded more and more from Christina until he eventually realized that he just didn’t love her enough and left her at the altar.
That would’ve been heartbreaking enough if we hadn’t had to watch him do it to Christina’s eyebrowless face. Mama Burke famously shaved off Christina’s brows for the wedding, and it looked hilarious, but it also undercut the weight of her break-up with Burke. That said, as much as it shook us out of the moment, we still wouldn’t change anything about this classic episode.
JACKSON’S AWKWARD EYEFULL
When the surgeons all head to San Francisco to sit for their boards, Grey's made sure the audience knew exactly how stressful a situation this was. Meredith gets the stomach flu, April psychs herself out so much she breaks her vow the night before, and Jackson starts his day learning that his mom and Richard Webber finally consummated their feelings for each other.
It was bad enough that Jackson had to deal with his overbearing mother and a crazed April the night before the most important day in his professional life. But the added awkward factor of learning about his mother and Richard, then taking his oral exam all the while hearing her voice in the next room was enough to make us uncomfortable and distracted. We’re surprised April was the only one that failed her boards under these circumstances.
DEREK’S ACCIDENT
This show could go on another twenty years and there would still be people bellyaching about the way McDreamy was ripped from our lives and for very good reason. Grey's was largely built on the foundation of Meredith and Derek’s relationship as much of her personal growth was reflected in the way she dealt with loving someone else and letting herself be loved in return.They were a genuinely fun couple (most of the time) who served as relationship goals for a vast portion of the audience.
Naturally, people were distraught that Derek had to leave in the first place, and our despair was only compounded when we learned how he was actually taken out. He spends the entire day helping people in a car accident only to check his phone while he pulling out into the middle of a highway? Please - he’s a neurosurgeon and presumably a little smarter than that.
THE ENTIRE MUSICAL
The nice thing about Grey's is that after so many seasons, it’s still a remarkably watchable show. No, we don’t understand why anyone would still work at the hospital given the disaster it attracts, and sure, almost all of the doctors probably should’ve been fired (or arrested) by now, but it’s a testament to the characters and the actors who bring them to life that we’re still invested in finding out what happens with them.
That’s why when the show pulls stunts like a totally unnecessary musical episode, we’re willing to go along. The episode revolves around the aftermath of Callie and Arizona’s car accident and really nicely features Sara Ramirez’s killer pipes. That said, as nostalgic as it was to hear some classic Grey's hits sung by the cast (pour one out for Snow Patrol), it was ridiculous in the extreme.
IZZIE AND THE DEER
Izzie was such a frustrating character sometimes because we really wanted to root for her, but she didn’t always make it easy to do that. She’d worked incredibly hard and overcome a lot of adversity to make it into the surgical program, but she could also be petty and demanding, especially when it came to personal validation. The sudden onset of her extreme stance on animal rights as evidenced in her condemnation of operating on pigs for practice and her deer rescue was no exception.
The time she tried to save the life of a deer in an effort to gain the respect of her new interns probably should’ve been moving, but it was just dumb and strange. The idea that her interns would’ve taken her more seriously after she forced them to save a creature who’s anatomy they’d never even seen was just preposterous..
JACKSON AVERY: LAST ACTION HERO
The infamous Superstorm should go on record as the most bloated and ridiculously melodramatic of all Grey's “events.” The sheer amount of craziness that went down was enough to make us roll our eyes every time the show tackles another natural disaster, but there was one moment in particular that almost had us turn off the TV. It revolves around Jackson and April.
The two had already been involved in an annoying "Will They, Won’t They" storyline, but April just couldn’t make the choice to embrace the relationship. That didn’t stop her from being wildly emotional about the entire thing, to the point of running desperately out of the hospital screaming for Jackson when she thinks he’s been caught in the bus explosion. Then Jackson walks out carrying a little girl in his arms and we all had to make sure we weren’t watching an Expendables movie.
---
What jarring scene took you out of Grey's Anatomy? Share yours in the comments.