Grey’s Anatomy and Covid-19

This conversation examines how Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 2005-), one of television’s longest-running medical dramas, addressed the Covid-19 pandemic in its seventeenth season (2020-2021). As scholars specializing in television studies, American history and anglophone literature, but also as fans, we discuss the use of melodramatic conventions and long-form seriality to process collective trauma during the pandemic. The discussion analyzes the season’s pedagogical function, showing how the series taught viewers about safety protocols while simultaneously addressing systemic racism through the Black Lives Matter movement, notably under the unifying theme of “breathing.” We highlight how the beach sequences, representing the liminal space between life and death, allowed the series to rehearse protagonist Meredith Grey’s eventual departure while maintaining her central voice-over function. We also argue that production constraints during the pandemic led to creative spatial innovations. Grey’s Anatomy’s melodramatic excess, cultivated over seventeen seasons, created a viewing contract that made the series uniquely equipped to represent the crisis’s overwhelming emotional toll. Our discussion also considers the political dimensions of the season, particularly its critique of healthcare inequality and its portrayal of Covid-19 as revealing broader systemic failures in American society

Ableism · Conversation · Liminality · Politics · Racism · Film in Education and Therapy · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Modern American Literature Studies