Grey's Anatomy and Anna Nicole (for Phu)

So Grey's Anatomy ended with a real OMG moment tonight. Except it was an "OMG, is it sweeps week?" kind of moment. As great as I think it would be for them to kill off Meredith, there is no one out there who thinks that she's going to drown. They sure did pull an ER tonight though with the whole epic disaster overwhelming everybody and letting them have their own OMG moments. OMG, how will Izzy save this man trapped under a car with no help and no medical supplies and nagging ill-groomed men standing over her? OMG, is Alex pulling an Izzy and getting too emotionally attached to the pregnant woman who he pulled out from under a concrete pylon? OMG, TR Knight must really be leaving the show if they're going to make his story line so boring. It's hard to be there and watch a show take that long slow motion leap over that great white, especially when we're way to addicted to stop.
GREY"S SHOULD NOT PULL AN ER! ER was watchable at one point. It was like an action movie and it had George Clooney. Grey's is not going to pull off the action movie thing. It would be like Ally McBeal trying to tackle serious legal issues or an extended serial killer arc on 7th Heaven (wouldn't that be great though). Grey's Anatomy thrives on 3 distinct appeals. 1) Pretty People, Sexy Problems, 2) People who are even more socially inept than we are, 3) watching the nice people either live or die and crying either way. The bomb in the guy's stomach was one thing but if they keep up with more of this "ratings grabbing" garbage, then there will be fast tracking shots and rapid editing in no time.

As for Anna Nicole, most people I talk to seem more than eager to piss on her grave. Granted, she was the Queen of the Celebriwhores. She was practically 40 and not anorexic and had no career to speak of, yet she was consistently in the tabloids. She wasn't born into extreme wealth like Paris, nor was she a talent squanderer like Lindsay. She was a straight-up scheming trashy gold-digger. She'd been in Playboy and Naked Gun 33 and 1/3, but come on, she was famous for one thing: she married the old dude who died shortly after and got her a big old chunk of his billions. She had that reality show and those diet pill ads and, yes, they were totally reprehensible.
But let's face it: her narrative is crazier and more compelling than anything that Soap opera writers could EVER come up with. She goes frim waitress to nude model to trophy wife to litigious widow to name in a Supreme Court case to diet pills saleswomen to reality show star to not really bereaved mother to paternity test avoider to sudden death. Maybe she was a soulless golddigger who got what was coming to her, but goddamn the woman had balls the size of Jupiter's moons and she, more than any other public figure who comes to mind (go screw yourself John Edwards) was the physical embodiment of the American Dream.

The American Dream died today in Florida. She was 39 and she will be missed.