Streaming: Meredith’s farewell – An era ends in “Grey’s Anatomy”.

Ellen Pompeo starred in the medical series “Grey’s Anatomy” for around 20 years. Now she says goodbye to the hospital in Seattle.

Some have known Meredith Gray half their lives. And no matter how things were going in your own life, the situation at the “Grey’s Anatomy” hospital was almost certainly worse. Now the doctor series is about to enter a new chapter. Actress Ellen Pompeo cuts back on the project, and her character Meredith Gray bids farewell to the Seattle hospital.

The doctor decides to move to Boston with her family and work there on research into Alzheimer’s. The episode “I follow the sun” is scheduled to run on the Disney+ streaming service from June 5th and a week later on June 12th on ProSieben.

Meredith Gray will, however – as far as we know – appear again in a later episode. And as a narrator she also stays on board. Nevertheless, something is shifting in the world of the clinic series. So far, Pompeo has been the face of “Grey’s Anatomy”.

Worked up to become a surgeon

Since 2005, her character has worked her way up from young resident to celebrated surgeon in front of an audience of millions. “I am infinitely grateful and humbled for the love and support you have shown me, Meredith Gray and the show for 19 seasons,” Pompeo wrote on Instagram in November. You will definitely come back for a visit. And then she thanked the fans with “a lot of love and great gratitude”.

In the hospital series, many characters have passed away or died over the years. Actor Patrick Dempsey, for example – he played Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd, Meredith’s partner. In any case, the list of characters eliminated is long. And the longer series run, the more likely it is that one or the other character will be omitted. What does that do to the audience?

“I think that actually always does something to people,” says communication scientist Daniela Schlütz. She is a professor at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, one of her research topics is fictional TV series. One motive for turning to long-running shows and sticking with them is parasocial relationships. So the feeling that you have friends on the screen. But it’s not as if the audience confuses this with relationships with real people. “Of course they know that these are fictional people.”

Different levels of grief

Nevertheless, you close a relationship with them. “One is simply interested in how things will continue,” says Schlütz. If a series character then gets out, it can make you sad. In particular, when characters die, it can affect you, and of course it’s staged accordingly.

You can sometimes observe a phenomenon called “Parasocial Breakup Distress”. When Jon Snow died on “Game of Thrones” – even if his story later continued differently – a study examined the reactions on Twitter and was able to assign them to different levels of mourning, as described by the researcher Elisabeth Kübler-Ross .

Other people, on the other hand, may be happy that new characters are appearing, says Schlütz. Some series do well if the cast is changed from time to time. Her personal favorite series is “Emergency Room”. “And there was only one person left from the original cast at the end.” The team has always managed to write great new people in the series.

Emotionally stressed but entertained nonetheless

If the departure of some characters can be stressful, why do people enjoy watching shows in the first place? “I think that’s exactly why,” says Schlütz. “Just because something is stressing us and maybe affecting us negatively at the moment, we are still entertained.” You also watch horror movies. Or films that scared you or where you could say: “Oh, I cried really nicely again.”

“Of course it’s much more pleasant to experience it on TV, in the cinema or wherever than in real life,” says Schlütz. In “Grey’s Anatomy”, for example, important topics are discussed – dealing with death is important. It’s good to think about and talk about your own mortality. In the series, however, it is not someone from your own life who dies, but you watch from a safe distance from the sofa.

In any case, the chaos that Meredith Gray had to endure in “Grey’s Anatomy” is something you’d rather watch from a great distance. And it doesn’t even have to be the big catastrophes like plane crashes or killing sprees. In fact, there is so much drama happening in each episode that one episode can be exhausting. But from a safe distance, so far with Meredith Gray at the side. Let’s see how things will continue in the future.

dpa

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