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opinionatedqueer · 3 years

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Greys Anatomy let your characters go challenge

ot Disclaimer - this is my opinion and you are absolutely free to disagree with me on this! I’d love to have a conversation about it, but please don’t be mean thank you!

Over so many years and seasons it is obvious that some characters are going to leave and new ones will join. And that is normal, and necessary for the show to keep going and to not turn boring. Mostly, that works fine, some people will be upset about a character leaving, others will be happy, same thing for new characters, rinse and repeat.

Its pretty well known in the fandom that the characters get written off in ways that reflect the way the actor was like on set. Meaning, if they were assholes, they would leave in dishonorable ways, and if they were nice, their character would get a happy or heroic ending. (One big example of this would be Isaiah Washington, whose character Burke left by leaving his fianceé at the altar after he outed TK Knight as gay and harrassed him for his sexuality. TK Knights Character George died from saving a woman who was about to get hit by a bus.)

However, in most of these situations the caracter left the show because the actor didn’t want to/couldn’t play them anymore for whatever reason.

The other option was characters getting written of for plot reasons, not because of the actor. And here is were Greys Anatomy sometimes can’t let go.

The reason that i was inspired to even write this post was the most recent episode (S17EP14 Look up child). In this episode, the character April Kepner returns to introduce a way to get another Character, Jackson Avery, to leave the show with her.

April Kepner is a character introduced in the sixth season as a extremely religious and insecure character, who slowly works herself up to being a trauma surgeon. Over most of her plotline, her “main thing” is that she is inexperienced regarding romantic and sexual matters, saving herself for marriage because of religious reasons. At some point she breaks this promise by sleeping with Jackson Avery the day of their board exams, which she ends up failing. They continue to have sexual interactions until they at some point break up and April meets the Paramedic Matthew. They get together and plan to get married, however both April and Jackson still have feeling for each other despite both dating other people. Jackson ends up confessing his love to her at her and Matthews wedding, and they run away together and marry each other in some random small church on the way. They get pregnat, the kid has fucked up bones and dies immediately after birth, following which April decides to join the military as a trauma surgeon for a three month tour. Se ends up staying longer, losing more and more contact with Jackson and they decide to divorce shortly after she comes home. She realises she is pregnant, but doesn’t tell Jackson to not complicate the divorce, but guess what, it does it anyways. They figure it out after a while and want to raise their child as coparents. In the fourteenth season April has another crisis of faith and becomes a really wild partygoer to deal with that, eventually sorts her shit out and gets back together with Matthew. They leave the show to take care of homeless people in seattle, good for her.

Personally, i was glad when she left. I didn’t like April, she was annoying and insecure and holier that thou religious. Even other characters and actors describe her character as that (though in the “and thats charming” way, which... noo...). She had shortly left the show before for a few episodes at a time, for example when she was in the military or for a short while before it was made public that she was back together with Matthew. And every time she came back, and it just felt weird. These could have been good endings for her, but they kept bringing her back.

Similarly, the relationship between her and Jackson kept being revived, despite clearly not working. There were multiple episodes specifically marketed as “Japril” Episodes, and they were all annoying and just ended with them deciding again that their relationship didn’t work, no surprise there.

And now, in the recent episode, she returns again. And gets back together with Jackson. I get that she just came back to create an open for him to leave, but i still think it wasn’t necessary. Jackson actual argument for leaving is that he wants to take over his family foundation to create more equality in medicine.

(This season heavily features current 2020/2021 topics, and the episodes about the black lives matter situation was actually pretty well made in my opinion, especially the station 19 episode (i have seen PoC talk positively about the episodes and they felt good to me as someone who is very invested in the movement, but i am a white person so please correct me if I’m wrong here))

And that would have been a good exit already, i don’t understand why April had to come back at all.

I assume it was just fanservice, since she actually had a pretty big fanbase during her time on the show, and a lot of people really like their ship.

But, to me, it just feels like the writers are too lasy to come up with new storylines for the characters and just keep bringing together and then spltting up their couples. And that is annoying, in my opinion, sometimes you jut have to now when a certain plot point gets boring and you might want to come up with something new.

Japril just didn’t work, but they still kept getting pushed together just to break up again. I really hope that both of them finally leave for good and don’t just randomly come back.

I guess my point is, the show needs to learn when to get rid of certain characters and plotlines. Even if you have to kick a fan favourite, sometimes thats just what a show needs to be able to grow and get better or even just stay good.

(I realize that starting this blog with a post about Greys Anatomy might be counterproductive, but i don’t care. All my friends are gay and don’t really give a shit about it and i personally dont even think its a good show but i have been watching this shit since like seventh grade and now im just somehow attached to it. Point is no one is actually gonna understand if i were to talk about this show irl, but thats what the internet is there for amirite)

#my rambles #rant #greys anatomy #april kepner #jackson avery #japril #if this is even remotely coherent please have conversations with me about it #in the answers #i am so fucking starved for human interaction

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