Life lessons according to Grey’s Anatomy

Periodically, I select a random television series and watch the whole thing, as much as I can get my hands on. Some of the shows come as recommendations from friends or family. Some are pop culture references that I feel the need to know.

With the variety of streaming services, I watch these shows when dining alone or when doing the dishes or folding wash. And I think I like seeing the various storytelling styles and the various characters built over the arcs of these long-running shows.

But no matter what– I just don’t like Meredith Grey as a person.

So with no further ado.

10 Life Lessons from Grey’s Anatomy

1. The people you love will die in car accidents at a young age. Or have catastrophic accidents and have miraculous recoveries. There are a lot of car accidents in the show, and some of them are downright crazy. Some people shouldn’t survive, and some should. Or some people get hit by a bus and die, others fly out a windshield and manage to bounce back from the most dramatic surgeries ever and don’t even have a scar. Drowning is also an issue.

2. Marriage is temporary. Just go with it. People get married quickly and divorce just as quickly. The average marriage on Grey’s lasts six months. And if it does last, people die in car accidents. People marry for love, for lust, for medical benefits.

3. 1 in 4 surgeons get brain tumors. At least. At least THREE of the main characters have specifically brain tumors and then in an unusual moment, one surgeon gets a spinal tumor in season 15. And brain. surgery, even with inoperable or cancerous tumors, is really easy to come back from in the Grey’s universerse.

4. Even if you spent a decade in school and have a lucrative career, feel free to start over in a new path on a whim. Doctors change specialties, or turn down impressive fellowships, or leave the country on a moments notice. And sometimes they become firemen.

5. You can easily change your name, leave the state and go to med school without anyone questioning it. OR if you run into immigration issues, the hospital can ship you off to Switzerland overnight so you don’t get deported.

6. Real friends cover up each other’s crimes and improprieties. I sometimes think this show should be named after the MORALLY GREY aspects of their lives. It doesn’t matter if you sabotage a clinical trial or beat the life out of someone, you can still be a doctor.

7. Most women doctors are lesbians or bisexual. A strange number of the female leads sleep with each other, but it takes until season 15 to have male characters in a gay relationship.

8. Doctors have no child care issues ever, even as a single parent with three kids. These doctors have the most convenient 24-hour day care that allows them to drop off their kids even if they are not scheduled to work.

9. Planes and helicopters crash A LOT. Not only do several characters die in a plane crash– but another character jokes about his plane crash. And those helicopters have a lot of mishaps.

10. Doctors have sex all over the hospital.

Column: Halloween requires vampire TV (2006)

The paranormal has certainly blossomed in the mainstream during the last seven years. Spurred by the Twilight series and somehow morphing to Fifty Shades of Grey, there seems a bevy of options for fans of the supernatural. Pop culture always has monsters to offer society, whether you look at the classic fiction of the nineteenth century (Frankenstein and Dracula among them) or the mid-twentieth century soap opera Dark Shadows or Anne Rice’s successful franchising of her vampire chronicles and Mayfair witches.

As a mom and someone rapidly approaching 40, I have reached the out-of-touch generation. I’m still stuck in the era of Buffy and Angel, when YA wasn’t even a genre let alone an attraction for adults. I love some Harry Potter, but Bella and Edward make me cringe. And the best thing about Fifty Shades? Certainly not the writing or the sex scenes, but instead I’m excited that erotica is getting some attention from the mainstream. I never thought I’d see the day where erotica hit the shelves at Target.

I always loved vampires as a youngster. Vampires offer an examination of our individual struggles of good vs. evil in our own souls, a close look at the struggles of addiction, and an exploration of personality and the tendency to dominate or submit. The older I get the more I embrace more monsters: the witches who challenge their own power and their place in the universe, the werewolf who has to keep his animal under control, the psychic who must decide what to tell people and what to keep secret.

These are the themes the intrigue me as a writer and why I write paranormal fiction in my free time. I have three finished paranormal manuscripts and I am currently revising the second book in the series. I hope to revise my synopsis and get pitching to agents and editors again but that’s a topic for another day.

Today’s nugget (that spurred this whole blog entry) is an entertainment column I wrote about family friendly vampire television shows available in 2006.

vampire TV