Grey’s Anatomy’s mix of drama and comedy has been key in its popularity and success, but as the show has been around for over a decade, it has also seen some not-so-popular moments, such as a musical episode that two of the show’s biggest stars, Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey, didn’t really like. Created by Shonda Rhimes, Grey’s Anatomy is a medical drama TV series that premiered on ABC in 2005 and has been unstoppable ever since, with over 15 seasons and counting, and while its quality has decreased over the years, it continues to be very popular with the audience.
Like any other medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy follows the lives of surgical interns, residents, and attendings as they do their best to balance their personal and professional lives, which often end up overlapping and making way for a lot of drama inside and outside the hospital. Grey’s Anatomy is led by Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), who viewers have seen go from an intern at Seattle Grace Hospital alongside other fan-favorite characters, such as Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) and Alex Karev (Justin Chambers), to head of general surgery at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. Over the course of 18 seasons, Meredith Grey has gone through a variety of situations – some fun and funny, others tragic and heartbreaking, and some others simply strange.
Falling into the latter category is Grey’s Anatomy’s musical episode, “Song Beneath The Song”, which even though was a fun twist to this usually emotionally heavy series, wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, including some cast members. As it turns out, Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey (Derek Shepherd in the series) weren’t fully on board with the idea of a musical episode and didn’t exactly enjoy the experience, sharing the feeling with some critics and viewers.
Did Grey's Anatomy's Musical Episode Work?
Grey’s Anatomy season 7 is home to the infamous musical episode, which revolves around Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) and Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) after they are involved in a car accident. Callie sees her own spirit standing next to the car, and it’s through this hallucination that she sees herself singing and the doctors treating her gradually joining her, which continues throughout the episode. Although the episode allowed the cast of Grey’s Anatomy to show their musical talents, it wasn’t a pleasant or fun experience for everyone. In an episode of Ellen Pompeo’s podcast Tell Me With Ellen Pompeo, she opened up about the experience of filming Grey’s Anatomy’s musical episode, saying it was “horrible” and they were “horrified”. Pompeo added that she warned the crew that she can’t sing, even though she wanted to commit to the episode and give it a try, but she was “not going to be good”. Patrick Dempsey agreed with Pompeo, admitting he “chickened out completely” and that it didn’t make sense to him at the time, and that now when you see it, “you’re like ‘oh my God’. At least they tried it”, and in an interview with USA Today, he called the episode “a big mistake”.
The reactions of critics and viewers to the Grey’s Anatomy musical episode were mixed, with some feeling the episode worked given the show’s music influence (as every episode except for one is named after a song), while others found it to be silly. Ultimately, the Grey’s Anatomy musical episode worked as an interesting twist to the show and the writers managed to make it fit its dramatic storyline, but it definitely wasn’t safe from silly moments and the discomfort of some of the cast was evident.