According to CNN, Isaiah Washington will not be returning to Seattle Grace Hospital. His contract was not renewed.
The season finale of Grey’s Anatomy set things up for this eventuality, but it still comes as kind of a shock to me. First he gets passed over for Chief of Surgery, and then he comes to realize, standing at the altar, that his fiancee really doesn’t want to marry him.
So how is this going to change things on the show, combined with all the other changes that are happening between seasons 3 & 4 (Kate Walsh and T.R. Knight also leaving, Chyler Leigh jpoining as Meredith’s estranged half-sister, etc)?
Well, I can’t deny he’s an ass and needed to go, but if anything it’s a shame to lose him only because the romantic relationships were the only thing that gave me a break from the relentless neurosis.
Well, the show had been getting kinda shaky with the whole Meridith drowning thing. Now that they are gonna lose at least 3 central characters, I think the show will be starting an inevitable decline. Plus, that new show they created around Addison sucks.
Meredith said all along that Cristina & Burke getting married was what she (Meredith) needed to prove that things can work for girls like her. (Typical Meredith behavior - Cristina’s wedding is all about her.) With Burke gone and Derek getting hit on by her half-sister, things don’t look good for our girls.
And as for Burke being an ass, I gotta disagree. Burke the character was driven and focused, a little emotionally remote, and very centered on his career and professional reputation. But as for Isaiah Washington, who knows and who cares. Really. The guy made his own bed earlier this year, and seemed to me that he was at least trying to repair the damage. But this thread is more for I’m talking about the show, not the actors off-screen antics.
I see Meredith and Cristina becoming more like they were in the first couple episodes of season 1. Yang focused exclusively on work, and Meredith falling back into the “drink tequila and sleep with inappropriate men” stage. I don’t see either of them recovering easily from these hits to their already fragile self-esteems.
George will choose to start all over again as a first year intern, but only at another hospital.
bacon Have you seen the new show? The rest of us only saw that two-hour combo. The shows producers have already said they handled things wrong in presenting the characters that way, and are changing things for the series premeire.
And since The Chief didn’t make Bailey the Chief Resident, he’s going to fast-track her to Chief of Surgery. Maybe some kind of apprenticeship thing. C’mon, Callie’s good, but her promotion really came out of left field. There’s got to be a reason for it to end that way.
I am not a fan of the show but reading this saga pisses me off. Ok it’s a very mild pissed off. Either what he did was bad enough to be fired or it wasn’t. Fire him on the spot or don’t. If you string the guy along and make him jump through hoops before firing him, then you are a corporate weasel. Doing it this way just means they could fire him without confronting him. Gutless weasels.
According to this, which jibes with what I recall from the time, he did. And whether he actually said “faggot” or used some other, unspecified slur, his demeanor at the Golden Globes press conference where he addressed the rumors painted him as a 100% Grade A asshole to me.
Unfortunately, Chyler Leigh is one of those people who has gained something of a “show-killer” reputation. She’s not in Ted McGinley’s class, but she’s got the bad mojo, certainly. Grey’s will have to work hard to survive!
Although nothing is official, T.R. Knight (George O’Malley) seems to be on the way out too. The rumor that he wasn’t coming back started at the same time it was made known that Private Practice, the spin-off featuring Addison, was going to be made.
According to E!, Knight has signed for $125k/episode for season 4.
My personal theory on Washington was that they decided a while back to can him, but wanted to get the full wedding story line done first, rather than have Burke disappear midseason.
I was going by what was written in this thread, but apparently, TR Knight will be back next season. So make that 2 people leaving so far. Apparently Katherine Heigl hasn’t signed yet.
I agree that McGinley shouldn’t be considered a “show killer.” He was more of a replacement character in shows that had already jumped the shark, such as Happy Days, The Love Boat, and Dynasty, and was added to those shows in their declining days. He was a success on Married With Children. He played Jefferson D’Arcy for longer than David Garrison had played Steve, the character he had replaced, and I liked Jefferson as a character far better than I liked Steve.
No, I saw what you saw. I still think it will be a bad show. They are trying to duplicate GA with less interesting characters and a less conducive setting. I could be wrong but I doubt it. Spin-offs are usually terrible.
I’m not expecting much, either. But I’m willing to give it a shot.
I did not know that Knight re-upped for the new season. I figured he was out because of the rumors and what happened to him on the last ep.
I still think that the show’s JtS moment was when Susan Grey (Meredith’s stepmother) was killed. Meredith’s death was handled well, and did a lot to tie up the loose ends of some stories that had been just hanging out (her mother, Denny & Izzie to name two) and finally getting her in a position to appreciate what she has.
As for Chyler Leigh - yeah, I know that this is the third series she’s been cast in as a regular, and the other two went bye-bye. But she’s a friend of a friend (they went to high school together down this way), though I’ve never met her.
No surprise. I saw the look on Shondra Rhimes’ face backstage at the Golden Globes when Isaiah Washington made the “I didn’t call him a faggot.” line. She wasn’t happy. Can’t say as I blame her. She’d just won a very prestigious award and it was a great opportunity to give a show of unity and move beyond the recent unpleasantness. Washington, for reasons known only to him, decided to drag everyone back into the muck.
Heigl was on “Ellen” and it was very clear that she sided with Knight. Now I see she’s holding out for more $$. Oh, if only they could get rid of her character and get some new interns. That show desperately needs a transfusion of new blood.
I like Preston Burke’s character. He’s pretty up-front about how he is and what he wants; I just don’t understand why he wanted Cristina’s neurosis around.
