I am a creature with many addictions, and Grey's Anatomy is definitely one of them. I've been addicted since my sister Danielle (oh so wise Danielle) introduced me to it back in it's 2nd season.
As you probably already know, Grey's Anatomy is a show about a group of interns who are fighting their way through the end of their education. They are interns at Seattle Grace Hospital working under some of the greatest doctors in the country. And of course, what do you get when you combine stressful working conditions with beautiful people? That's right, great television. Although I wouldn't have this on when my young kids were around, it's a mommy show, not a family show.
Meredith Grey, the show's namesake, is a new intern who's got a lot of issues. I've seen Meredith, or rather Ellen Pompeo pop up in a few random shows. She played a stewardess in Catch Me If You Can.
And she showed up as an old crush of Ross and Chandler's in a flashback on Friends.
Back to Meredith Grey. Her mother was an internationally known surgeon who won the Harper Avery award for inventing the Grey Method (which, to be honest I don't really know what that is). Anyways Meredith decided to celebrate her last night of freedom before she started her internship at Joe's Bar. She ended up meeting a cute guy and having a little too much fun.
The following morning she promptly kicked him out of her house and hurried to work. She met her fellow interns, feeling like maybe she could handle this, and then she met her boss...
Her mystery man from Joe's Bar turns out to be Dr. Derek Shepherd, a first class Neuro Surgeon at Seattle Grace. Derek, who is quickly re-named Dr. McDreamy by Meredith, Christina, and Izzie, is not taking no for an answer from Meredith. He wins her over with his flawless charm and perfect hair until they are the couple everyone loves to hate. Derek is played by Patrick Dempsey, a name you probably recognize. I love Patrick Dempsey something fierce. Here are a few of my favorite rolls he's played.
Can't Buy Me Love is my personal favorite. If you've never seen it please go find it. It's awesome! He plays Ronald Miller, the poor nerdy boy who mows law after lawn to save up money for a telescope he's had his eye on. Although his secret ambition is to be part of the popular crowd. When he goes to the mall to buy his telescope an opportunity presents itself to get his foot in the A-crowd door. The schools head cheerleader, Cindy Mancini is in desperate need of a lot of fast cash. Ronald makes her a deal she can't refuse. Awesome, hilarious movie!
Sweet Home Alabama is a love triangle at it's best and it's worst. I say that because it's a love triangle where you have to choose between two good people. Patrick plays Andrew Hennings, the son of the current Mayor of New York (played by Candice Bergen, I love her). He falls in love with Melanie (Reese Witherspoon), a rising star in fashion design. After they get engaged Melanie heads to Alabama under the pretext of telling her parents her good news. In truth she's planning on tracking down her husband and finally getting the divorce she's been begging him for. Once she's back home her country roots come out and she finds herself torn between the savy, sweet boy who loves her in NY, and the down-home passion of the boy who loves her in Alabama. Love, love, love this movie.
Made of Honor is the story of Tom and Hannah. They met at Cornell University in 1998 when Tom, wearing a Bill Clinton mask slips into her bed in the middle of the night thinking that she was his 'Monica' he had made plans with. After a fiery meeting they become fast friends and keep it up for the next ten years. Tom, who invented 'coffee collars' is a rich playboy who follows the strict rules he's made for himself to the letter when it comes to dating. Hannah leads a less exciting life, spending most of her time restoring art in a museum and hanging out with her BFF Tom. When Hannah takes a long trip to Scotland Tom, who had always believed he had it made, starts to question his priorities. He decides to finally ask Hannah out when she gets back. Unfortunatly for him, Hannah comes home with a surprise. A large, wealthy, handsome, and royal Scottish Duke named Colin. Hannah asks Tom to be her Maid of Honor to everyone's surprise, and occasionally horror. Equally surprising, Tom accepts. He's determined to use this chance to not only be the best Maid of Honor that he can be, but to get Hannah to realize that he's the man she should be with. It's too bad he's got a brides maid trying to sabotage his every move in retaliation for a one night stand they had
Funny, funny movie that has an extra bonus of having a future Grey's character in the cast. Colin, the Scottish fiance will eventually be Dr. Owen Hunt at Seattle Grace.
Oh
Enchanted, the modern world's fairy tale. The film stars Amy Adams as Giselle a damsel living in your classic cartoon, fairy tale forest in Andalasia. She's waiting for true love when Prince Edward (James Marsden) shows up to 'finish her duet'. Everything seems to be going perfectly when the Prince promptly proposes to Giselle, but his step-mother, Queen Narissa refuses to give up her throne. She manages to trick Giselle out of the friendly world of Andasasia and into modern New York City. Hopelessly lost and trying to find answers in billboards she runs across, or rather falls on top of Robert Phillip (Patrick Dempsey), a 'realist' divorce attorney and his young daughter. With a little coaxing from his daughter, Morgan they take pity on Giselle and decide to help her out. Everything escalates from there. Price Edward soon follows Giselle's path to NY, Giselle makes things awkward for Robert and his fiance Nancy, and Queen Narissa adds poisoned apples to the mix. It's a great show to watch with your kids that you'll actually enjoy! Especially all of the
musical numbers!
I also found out that our favorite Seattle Grace Dr. is in the new
Transformer movie! All I know is that he plays Dylan Gould, who is the boss of Sam's new girlfriend. But you better believe I'll find out more soon!
Sandra Oh plays Christina Yang, an ambitious (and that's putting it lightly) intern who quickly finds a soul mate in Meredith. Christina is always the first to raise her hand with the answer, arrives for rounds before everyone else, and at the head of her class of interns. While some may find that annoying, she's shown enough heart to win over her friends. She even finds time in her busy intern life to get a boyfriend!
I've seen Sandra Oh in
Under the Tuscan Sun as Patti, the best friend of Frances Mayes (Diane Lane). She happens to be the pregnant, lesbian lover of Grace (who is another Grey's actor, you might recognize her as Addison Shepherd). When Frances gets an unexpected divorce Patti sends her on a trip she had planned to take with Grace to Tuscany to help her recover. What she finds there is so much more than ice cream.
She also had a small role in the
Princess Diaries as Mia's school Principal.
George O'Malley (T.R. Knight) is, yet another intern. He's loyal, trustworthy, more than a little naive, and hopelessly infatuated with Meredith. Sadly she doesn't seem to notice, but either way he's there for her along with the rest of his friends when they need him.
The role that came to mind when I think of T.R. is the episode of Sesame Street I saw him in where he played the letter 'I'.
Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) is the intern most likely to be voted most popular. She's friendly, bubbly, positive, and gorgeous. She's known as Dr. Model to the people who saw the magazine spread she did when she was working her way through med school as a lingerie model. She had to pull out her trailer park roots to shut up the peanut gallery, but it was worth it to see the look on Alex's face. She has a bad habit of getting too involved with her patients. Which is never more obvious than when her favorite heart patient, Denny Duquettte checks in. (Jeffery Dean Morgan plays Denny, I LOVE him, check out
Supernatural and PS I Love You for more of him)
She has been in so many different awesome movies I couldn't possibly name them all, but here are some great ones.
I was surprised to find that she was one of the starring characters of Wish Upon A Star. I watched this movie years and years ago and I never realized it was her playing Alexia Wheaton. It's your classic 'freaky friday' movie where Alexia changes bodies with her younger sister Hayley. They live, they learn, they love. Good story.
And who could forget 27 Dresses where Katherine plays Jane, the all too nice girl on the wrong end of unrequited love with her boss. She is unfortunately so completely obsessed with weddings that she's almost forgotten to live her own life. Watch best scene ever here. Awesome movie. Watch it.
Of course there was Knocked Up where she plays Alison, a girl who got pregnant from a strange guy she met at a club. I'll admit that I only made it through the first half hour of the movie before I had to turn it off. Too many F-words. If it ever came on TV edited I'd give it another shot though.
The Ugly Truth was the first movie I've watched in a long time that made me cheer at the end of it! It is, sadly, rated R so try and watch it on TV if you get the chance. Katherine plays Abby, the producer of a morning news show that's about to be taken off the air. In a last ditch attempt to save the show Abby is forced to be teamed up with Mike Chadway, the rude and crude host of a local cable call-in show. Of course they can't stand each other, but as they work to prove each other wrong they may end up finding they do have ONE thing in common.
And then there's Life As We Know It. I love this movie, however I've already done a post on it. So check that out here.
Alex Karev (Justin Chambers) wasn't supposed to be in the same group of residents with the rest of the gang. But when he pissed off his first resident they sent him over to the one they call, The Nazi. Alex fought tooth and nail to get out of the crappy life he had back home to be where he is today. He's not about fudging the truth to make sure that he stays there. However when he meets a certain Miss Izzie Stevens he finds himself wanting to be a nicer person.
They have a very on-again, off-again relationship, but I've never doubted that Alex loves Izzie more than anyone else in the world.
Another surprise I came across was to learn that Alex played the roll of Massimo in The Wedding Planner. Massimo is the childhood friend of Mary (Jennifer Lopez) who's been hand picked by her father as her husband. Although he is ready and willing, Mary has fallen in love. Too bad she's fallen for the groom in one of the weddings she's planning. I can't believe I never realized he was Massimo! "We do the male bonding!"
Miranda Baily (Chandra Wilson) is the resident put in charge of this rag-tag group of interns. She's known around the hospital as The Nazi for her take charge, no nonsense attitude. She knows all and is on top of everything that goes on at Seattle Grace. Although that doesn't stop her interns from trying to pull one over on her.
Richard Weber (James Pickens Jr.) is the Chief of Surgery at Seattle Grace. He's been there since he was an intern with Meredith's mom Ellis. He becomes a little unsettled to have Ellis's daughter working at the hospital now, mostly because he'd had a long affair with her. Now he's trying to figure out where he stands with Meredith, along with keeping all of the arrogant surgeons under him in line.
Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) is an Orthopedic Surgeon resident. She's confident, strong, and not afraid to tell you what she thinks. George O'Malley makes a big impression on her and they have quite a relationship before she decides to switch teams.
Dr. Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington) is the cocky heart surgeon that loves to terrify the interns. He has his career all planned out, and the next step is to take over for Chief Weber when he retires. He wasn't planning on having Derek Shepherd move in and becoming competition.
He also wasn't planning on falling for the amazingly talented, and emotionally stunted Christina Yang. I've gotta say that I really liked them as a couple.
Just when Meredith was starting to see a future with Dr. McDreamy, Addison Montgomery Forbes Shepherd (Kate Walsh), the world-renowned neonatal surgeon comes into town. Addison is Derek's wife of 11 years who Meredith is, lets say 'shocked' to meet at the end of season 1.
What she soon finds out is that Derek left New York after catching Addison in bed with his best friend Mark.
Now she's here and ready to do what it takes to win Derek's heart back.
If you didn't catch it before, here's Kate in Under the Tuscan Sun with Sandra Oh.
After several seasons Addison took her character and moved to LA to join a Private Practice. Also a great show, but very emotional. I sometimes think the writers sit around thinking "What is the most heart wrenching medical/family problem I can think of?" when they're looking for new story ideas.
Mark Sloan (Eric Dane), a famous plastic surgeon is the very same Mark that was Derek's best friend in New York that slept with Addison. He's a perpetual man-whore who just can't help himself. He follows Addison to Seattle Grace with the dual purpose of getting Addison back and regaining Derek's friendship. Needless to say he's not welcomed with open arms, but that hardly stops him from making new friends. It's a little ironic that his first attempt was with Meredith. He quickly earns the nickname, McSteamy. I have 2 words to say about Mark. Dead Sexy.
Check out Marley & Me, Valentine's Day, and X-Men: The Last Stand to see more of this gorgeous man.
And finally there's Lexie Grey (Chyler Lee), that's right I said Grey. She doesn't make her appearance for a few seasons, but when she does Meredith is surprised to find that she has a half-sister beginning her internship at Seattle Grace. Their relationship is full of ups and downs, but eventually they find a way to connect. Lexie is also lucky enough to win the heart of Dr. McSteamy.
Anyways, now that Addison is in town Derek and Meredith resolve to be friends while Derek tries to salvage his marriage. I'm sure you can imagine how well that goes.
After drowning her sorrows in man after man she gets a dog. When that dog gets sick she meets...dum dum dum...McVet. Chris O'Donnel plays Finn the widowed veterinarian. He's everything any woman could want, sweet, sensitive, good kisser. Derek finally has some competition that might last.
Ok, so I know that's a RIDICULOUS amount of information to take in, but the bottom line is: This is a great show, it's highly addicting. They even have some episodes that have great action scenes in them! If you've never seen it now's a great time to start. You can watch in on Netflix Instant Play Here.
Here are some great tips for anyone looking to go down a size. I know I am! 
