I contemplated a while if I should actually comment on that here on my blog as well, but as I’m a Grey’s Addict and a huge fan of Mer/Der and especially Patrick Dempsey, I have to give you my two cents. I enjoyed listening to the Grey’s podcasts during the early seasons, but after a while I got rather bored and sometimes pretty annoyed with them. Which might have to do with Shonda trying to tell me that there is a bigger picture behind the crappy storylines and that she had it all thought out beforehand when it was so obvious on the screen that she didn’t. I kept listening to them though, because I was afraid I might miss something interesting, spoiler-ish
In the current podcast there once again was one of this moments, when I just thought: WTF?!? How can it be that those writers once came up with this wonderful series and great characters, but now obviously don’t know how to write them properly? How can it be that an actor has a better understanding about his character than the writers? So here is the transcript of the part which annoyed me to no end. But on the other hand it once again proved that Paddy Dempsey is the great guy I always thought he is…
“I wanted Derek Shepherd to say “Fetch” before he hit the ring with the baseball bat. And Patrick Dempsey said, in the name of ALL men, he could not be responsible for saying that to a woman. And I give him credit for that. […] I was a super fan of “Fetch!”. But he said: “I can’t go home to my wife or look at my daughter if I say ‘Fetch!’ before I hit the ring”. And he said, that Derek Shepherd will go dark. He can’t go down that far, he can’t do that. So the baseball bat said it all and Paddy sold it without having to say that horrible phrase.”
Seriously: Derek Shepherd saying “Fetch!” to Meredith, like she is a dog, which he threw a ball for? Even drunk and angry Derek Shepherd wouldn’t do that. There is no way he could sink that low. It probably would have ruined this character and the whole couple for me. It’s so insulting and offending. Much worse than all the things he said to her moments before. And I can’t believe that the writers would have expected Meredith to not be bothered by that and get back together with him in the next episode. Seriously… “Fetch!” ?!?!? So, I’m glad Paddy stepped in. You go, Paddy! :-)
I agree totally. “Fetch” would have been verbal abuse which the character of Derek would not have said, along with Patrick Dempsey would not say. Shonda created this character and now she’s trying to take away from this characte. Hmmm less screan time, changing the character, what does that mean???