Written by Duana

I’m the type who finds a song lyric for every occasion. I would quite happily sing through my life, and though I haven’t done it in years, I’m pretty sure I was that girl, circa high school or early university, who made people sit down and listen to a song because maybe the way the (lame) lyrics were played out just made so much sense to me.

This also matters because I remember when singing wasn’t cool. When it was the lamest thing in the world to express yourself through song, or at least the musicals wherein people burst into song for no particular reason.

Tonight…may have been where we came full circle.

Look, I haven’t been following Grey’s Anatomy for a long time, and yet I knew exactly what was going on. And Grey’s Anatomy has always done that – made sure that the jumpers-in could catch up with no problem. But tonight’s musical event didn’t seem like it needed to be about Callie because it was the right place for Callie’s story to go, but because Sara Ramirez is the best singer on the show. The people who sang most of the songs – Chyler Leigh, Kevin McKidd, Chandra Wilson – are the ones who are the best singers, not those who are most involved in the story.

And the storyline – the most emotionally manipulative story we could think of, where the surgeons have to choose between saving a beloved doctor and her unborn baby – is just so incredibly maudlin. Like do you think there might be some emotions associated with that?

The most real part – the idea that a woman’s female lover and male baby-father argue over whether to save the baby or the woman – is just so weakened by the fact that these songs, most of which have been used to great effect as the soundtrack to this show, get embarrassing when they’re made literal. “How to Save a Life” was milked to a degree that was honestly, kind of embarrassing as they’re literally…Saving Lives…

We do, I believe, get it.

And yet, even after this over-the-top emotional rending of garment, this kind of felt trite. Anyone who didn’t think Callie was going to wake up – and accept the marriage proposal, no less! – by the end of the hour has not watched TV before ever.

I think Shonda Rhimes and her team are talented. I’ve always said this. I do. They deal in immense volume and know how to push all the right buttons. But this seemed like a scenario in which they let a general appetite for “let’s do what’s hot right now” supersede the balance that Grey’s Anatomy has always maintained between the dramatic and the ridiculous, a line they have walked to much better effect.

(Lainey: and the baby looked fake!)