I always cry at the end of that episode – always. It was very well orchestrated, I think. You’ve got the other women in the background in their figure-hugging, black and navy colored dresses, with their dark hair simply dressed, and Izzie front and center in her garnet-colored, poofy pink dress, and blonde hair all curly and beautiful, lying in bed next to her dead fiancé. And you have Alex, holding her, and George, Meredith, and Cristina, there with her, and Callie and Olivia in the background. Cristina, who doesn’t agree with what she’s done; Alex, who is still bitter that she chose Denny over him; Meredith, who’s dealing with her own boy problems; and George, the best friend. They all took the hit and went down with her when she snapped and nearly killed Denny and compromised all their careers as surgeons, but they stood by her anyway, to the very end. I think one of the things that I love about this is that even though she loses Denny, when you get down to it, Izzie doesn’t end up alone. She has the other interns. Her friends. As she walks out, George and Alex follow closely, refusing to let her be by herself.
Alex is one of my favorite characters on that show. He’s dark, angry, selfish, arrogant, and utterly obnoxious, but he has a soft side and is still damaged from his past family life – alcoholic, abusive dad, etc. – and he’s just a charming fellow. I was thinking how once in a while one of my guy friends will ask, why is it that girls always fall for the arrogant guys who seem bad but really aren’t and they don’t like the guys who really are just good? I’m always tempted to tell them that the good guys are never as good as they seem (Grigg: Women never go for the nice guys. Jocelyn: Please, men say that, but when you get to know some of these men who complain the most, you find out they're not as nice as they think they are.), and at least the other ones are upfront about it. But really, I don’t have an answer to that. Or at least, not a good one.
Part of me thinks that it’s the tangibility of contrast, and desire to affect change. With a guy who’s arrogant on the surface yet sensitive in nature, a girl feels singled out when he reveals that sensitivity to her. It’s easier for her to feel loved because she can see the difference in how he treats her, in how acts around her. It’s reassuring. She has physical, concrete evidence of his affection – or, of her effect on him. She feels special. Worthy. I can’t really explain it, but sometimes I wonder if that’s part of it.
The other thing about Grey’s Anatomy. Everything is so tangled up. Everyone is in love with everyone else – all of their love lives and connections and relationships are confined to the small world of the hospital. Yet, despite its melodrama and the unrealistic feel of it, is it a microcosm exemplifying a certain facet of humanity? William Arthur Ward said, "Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you." And Marcel Proust: "In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her." I feel like this implies that love can be a matter of convenience. In Grey’s, these people spend most of their lives around one another. They live in the hospital and the only people they see are each other. Is it that unnatural that they should grow to be attracted to each other? If a man is trapped on a deserted island with only one other woman, what are the odds that they eventually will fall for each other, out of convenience? What makes affection grow?
"If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment."
- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
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