Happy Thursday and welcome to the final installment of this semesters passion blogs on Greys Anatomy deaths. I know I know i’m sad to see this chapter of the semester coming to a close too. Throughout these last few months we’ve addressed every major doctor death, as well as the death of main character Meredith Grey’s mother. Seeing as that entry about Ellis Grey is the one that kickstarted this entire blog, I found it only fitting to wrap up with the death of her father, Thatcher Grey.
Not making his first appearance until episode 18 of season 2, Thatcher Grey was introduced initially as a deadbeat father. He had been married to and in love with Merediths mother Ellis, and was with her up until Meredith turned 5, when her mother cheated on him with a co-worker and then decided to leave him. Some time after his divorce from Ellis, Thatcher remarried and had two daughters (Lexie and Molly). He did not maintain any contact with Ellis or Meredith, and it wasn’t until his daughter Molly was pregnant and ended up at Seattle Grace Hospital that Thatcher’s new wife urged him to rekindle the relationship he had let die with Meredith and bond. This however wasn’t too successful, as Meredith never truly got past the way he just left and rebuilt a new life without keeping contact with her, and held the childhood grudge all the way through adulthood.
It wasn’t until Ellis (Meredith’s mother) died that Thatcher and his new wife Susan went to the hospital to check on Meredith to make sure she was ok and invite her to dinner. This certainly didn’t repair the relationship, but at least made the two slightly more comfortable with each other, and was a step in the right direction for mending the father-daughter bond. Not much later in this season (season 3), Thatcher returned to the hospital with his wife, who needed a simple procedure. Despite their best efforts, she died in surgery. When Meredith delivered the news to Thatcher, he slapped her, saying that Susan had trusted her and she let her down, and he returned to the hospital drunk on the day of Susans funeral to tell Meredith not to attend.
After Susan’s death, Thatcher started drinking heavily. As a result of his alcoholism, he was admitted to SGH for drunkenness and having his arm put through a window. Meredith stitched him up and they bonded again. After alienating everyone, he went into rehab and he soon visited Seattle Grace, twenty-nine days sober. He is next seen at the hospital with liver disease that was a result of his alcoholism. He was told he needed a liver transplant to survive. Meredith was a match and after some discussion, both Meredith and Thatcher agreed to the operation and it was successful.
After Lexie died, Thatcher stayed sober, but lost touch with Meredith. Richard found out through an AA friend that Thatcher had Acute Myeloid Leukemia and is in hospice care with only a few weeks left to live. Meredith avoided visiting him until she learned that Thatcher might not have even a few more days. She came to his house to visit and they talked awkwardly for a while. After they finished talking, he took his final breath and died.
This death was a bit of a full circle moment in the show, as so much of Merediths talks about traumas revolved around the dicey relationship she had with her mother, and the absence of her father growing up. However watching their relationship blossom a bit, especially after the death of Ellis, many watchers couldn’t help but feel a bit bad about the passing, as Thatcher truly was alone in his final months, one daughter dead, wife dead, and not on speaking terms with the other daughter. While his death wasn’t one that was necessarily dwelled on, it is still memorable in the grand scheme of things, and I think was a perfect way to end out this blog series.
It’s been a joy writing this series for the semester, and I hope everyone enjoyed getting a glimpse into the complexities of Greys Anatomy, have a great rest of the year!
Image Sources: https://greysanatomy.fandom.com/wiki/Thatcher_Grey
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1497730/
In his first real episode, Andrew emerges from a rescue vehicle carrying patients from a tunnel collapse. At the hospital, he identifies himself as a surgeon and says that he was on his way to work at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital when he saw the accident and joined the rescue. He quickly lends a hand in helping the victims and, because he is wearing a suit and seems confident in what he is doing, the other doctors assume that he is an attending. However, he is later revealed to be an intern, which causes the other interns to ostracize him from the get-go. Though he deals with alienation for much of his intern year, DeLuca eventually gains his bearings, and becomes a surgical resident as his ex-girlfriend, Sam Bello, arrives at the hospital as an intern. His sister Carina also joins the team at Grey Sloan and begins dating Andrew’s roommate Arizona, much to his dismay. Carina doesn’t approve of Sam, whom she feels is a stalker. Andrew and Sam eventually rekindle their relationship until she leaves to avoid deportation. Heartbroken, Andrew drunkenly kisses Meredith Grey at Jo and Alex’s wedding. He then realizes that his feelings for Meredith are genuine and begins to pursue her. After months of chasing her, Andrew begins a relationship with Meredith.
In Season 17, Andrew became an attending and seemingly recovered from the mania he dealt with in the previous season. In the episode “Helplessly Hoping,” Andrew dies after being stabbed by an accomplice of Opal, a human trafficker whom Andrew had recognized previously. He had followed Opal and called the police to arrest her, and when the police refused to help due to red tape, he called Maya at Station 19 while inside a car with Carina, who immediately comes to help. His efforts lead to Opal’s arrest, but he was already injured. He is taken into emergency surgery at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital and initially recovers and wakes up, but he then starts to code and is rushed into his second surgery, where his time of death is called at 22:50. He then appears not long after his death in Meredith’s “afterlife” dream sequence. There, Andrew and Meredith say their good-byes and we see Andrew reunited with his deceased mother, making his final appearance in the series.
When he was first brought into the hospital by ambulance, one knew who he was because he was unrecognizable from the accident. It wasn’t until Meredith went into check on “John Doe” that George took her hand and traced ‘007’ into it. Meredith quickly figured out that it was, in fact, George. Many people didn’t believe that it was him because there was no proof that he really did trace 007, and there was no reason for them to think it was him otherwise. It wasn’t until Callie Torres remembered that George had a birthmark on his hand that looked like Texas and went to check it that they were able to confirm John Doe to be George. His brain swelled during surgery and he was ultimately declared brain dead. Most of his organs were donated following the surgery.
While these wage gap calculations reflect the ratio of earnings for women and men across all industries, they do not reflect a direct comparison of women and men doing identical work. Through calculating it in this manner, experts have been able to capture the multitude of factors that are driving the gender wage gap, and have been for so many years. One of these is a difference in years of experience. For years, women have been disproportionately driven out of the workforce to accommodate caregiving and other unpaid obligations and thus tend to have less work experience than men. While the societal view that women “belong in the kitchen” has thankfully shifted as years pass, and the sexist idea is not necessarily the norm anymore, there is still a firm belief held by many that women should not work for long, and instead should raise children and be homemakers. Access to paid family and medical leave makes women more likely to return to work—and more likely to return sooner. However, as of March 2019, only 19 percent of civilian workers had access to paid family leave through their employers and only 40 percent had access to short-term disability insurance benefits to deal with their own medical needs. This factor, while stemming from overall inexperience and not necessarily direct discrimination, is a result of a sexist societal view that has yet to fully shift, leaving many women unfairly compensated even when they’re not choosing to take on the common role of motherhood or homemaking.
Right off the bat, Mark is nicknamed “McSteamy” byMeredith and her friends, and certainly lives up to the rather raunchy nickname, as some of his past actions are revealed and viewers watch his waste no time setting his sights on new women at Seattle Grace. However, this “charm” doesn’t go appreciated by all, as many of the nurses banded together to start a “Nurses United Against Mark Sloan” club, prompting him to change his bachelor ways.
extensive injuries he sustained in the plane crash and, as determined by his will, the machines would be turned off if he showed no signs of waking within 30 days. The episode alternates flashbacks to his life, where he revealed at one point that Lexie Grey would be who he grew old with. After he eventually did not wake up and was taken off of life support, it is revealed that Mark actually had a surge of good health upon his arrival back to Seattle Grace, during which he advised his protégé Jackson, ‘when you love someone, tell them’, and also officially broke things off with the woman he had been dating, both indications of just how much he truly loved Lexie.
viewers.
