The case for Meredith and McDreamy

It amazes me how many people hate the Meredith-McDreamy element of Grey's Anatomy. "Meredith is whiny and selfish. I wish she'd die."

Then why do those Meredith Grey haters continue to watch a show where they can't stand the narrator and main character?

I realize that I've always taken the side of the underdog/more-guilty-party. That's probably why I would've been a crappy lawyer. When I had to choose my moot court assignment, I chose to defend the guy who wanted to break into an apartment building to steal artwork off the walls and in doing so, punched a woman in the elevator to keep her quiet. I was the only person in my class to choose his side.

Back on track, some say, "Meredith and McDreamy are so selfish and mean. I mean, he's married!" I love the way people love to malign their relationship. Hello, Derek is in Seattle because he walked in on his wife doing the nasty with his best friend (a.k.a. McSteamy). If I had to compare the badness of Meredith and Derek together in the season two finale with Addison and McSteamy, I'd say Addison's affair was worse. First, she said it didn't mean anything, and second, she ruined a best friendship in addition to her own marriage. At least Meredith and Derek love each other.

If we want to argue about them being selfish and self-centered, let's look at several of the other characters on the show.

Some might say, "Oh, Izzie is so nice and bubbly. She cares about her patients!" While watching season one in its entirety in CA (my host had never seen Grey's before, my cousin and I saw Izzie's destructive tendency to become inappropriately attached to patients from the first couple episodes. To satisfy her need to be a "good person," Izzie has flaunted rules (i.e. doing a transfusion on the braindead guy in the illegal bike race episode and let's not forget stealing a heart from UNOS, which indirectly resulted in Burke being shot and possibly ruining the rest of his surgical career). Even Addison tried to teach Izzie a lesson about becoming too attached to patients and clearly, she chose not to learn the lesson because the heart transplant disaster took place at the end of the season.

After everything Izzie did last season, I'll be pretty angry if they let her back into the surgical residency program. It's really not like Denny was dying and needed the heart. She committed fraud to get him the heart from UNOS! Hey everybody! Izzie stole an organ because she went insane (remember the tearful scene where she coerces Denny to agree to her harebrained scheme? "WHAT ABOUT ME? WHAT ABOUT ME WHEN YOU GO INTO THE LIGHT? ::SOB:: SO PLEASE DO THIS FOR ME!") Yeah, talk to me about selfish and irresponsible now.

Let's also not forget her involvement in the awful Meredith-George incident.

And here comes probably the most "me first" person in the whole bunch: Cristina. In the beginning of her relationship with Burke, she used the personal leverage to get in on the record-breaking tumor surgery. Incidents like that are why they have rules against attendings dating interns. At least Meredith never did that.

In the end, it seems as though everyone has their moments of selfishness (some more than others). We're human; we're not perfect. And as TV characters, the flaws are exaggerated for our viewing pleasure. Deal with it. I could probably rant some more about how people need to see that Meredith and McDreamy are not the bad guys of the show, but people believe what they want to believe (me, for example, writing an essay-length blog post about a TV show), and it's not worth raising my blood pressure.