Grey’s Anatomy finds itself thinking about brain death

Only three episodes into its debut season, Grey’s Anatomy finds itself thinking about brain death. I do not claim that the quality of this thinking, in a dramatic series that seeks to be a sort of “ER goes to the senior prom,” is likely to impress any licensed bioethicists. But compared with Congress in the Terri Schiavo case, the surgical residents at Seattle Grace Hospital look like Aristotle and Saint Francis of Assisi. And unlike Bill Frist, Peggy Noonan, or Tom DeLay, they are actually in the same room with the patient when they make their diagnosis, rather than on-call at the nearest television studio, sucking on the camera as if it were their feeding tube.But before getting to brain death, the new interns in Grey’s Anatomy will have to confront transplanted livers, diseased prostates, grand mal seizures, pancreatic cancers, nail-riddled skulls, their own coarse ambitions, and a rectal exam. (Sex, of which there are generous portions, must be squeezed in between shifts, like takeout pizza.) Our tour guide through the labyrinth, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), is uniquely positioned—daughter of a famous surgeon, owner of a Seattle house with rooms to let, ambivalent about following in her mother’s workaholic footsteps but still thrilled by her first experience of blood work: “That was such a high . . . I don’t know why anybody does drugs.” Though Grey’s Anatomy is situated to capitalize with sex, death, and giggles on the demographic delivered by its Desperate Housewives lead-in, I’ve given up trying to predict which doctor shows will be hits and which dead on arrival

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