Gray's Anatomy, My Ass.
G-Man Weighs In

The pitch: Friends meets ER, as if written by David E Kelley, and scored by the music supervisor for One Tree Hill.

The execution: Let's take the reason why ER was loved in its first season - Carter's POV - and make a series about a TEAM of surgical interns. Let's cast a thirtysomething familiar face to be the slightly unshaven sexy attending. Rob Lowe, no? Patrick Dempsey? Perfect. How about a cold slightly assholic black surgeon? Check. hell, we can even cast not one but several Asian regulars because you know, they're doctors.

The network exec says: Is it too much to have one of the interns be a former bikini model?

The writer: Hmmm... I'll have to see how we can justify that.

The exec: Hey moron, aren't you sick of top ramen? Bikini model turned surgeon.

The producer and writer: Done!

Exec number 2: Wouldn't it look like a rip off of ER?

The producer: No, it's set in Seattle, not Chicago.

Execs: Exactly. My mistake.

All this doesn't mean that it's going to be crap for sure. You never know the chemistry that correct casting can create, and if spinoffs can be good, there's no reason why ripoffs can't be too. BUT, this does not mean that you should have a scene like the one tonight, where a doctor opens a cooler and looks at a severed penis that a rape victim had just bitten off her attacker. Sandra Oh, fresh off best picture nominee Sideways, gets to deliver the line: "Talk about taking a bite out of crime."

DO YOU GET IT? Because I get it. It's very smart. It's a pun, a double entendre, if you will. You see, it's an everyday comment, but in the context of our knowledge that the rapist got his due, genitalia, and the glibness of the delivery, it's funny, you see.