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The big TV news - besides that little thing called an "election" today - has to be what popped out of "EW" last night, where Brooke Smith announced that she had just been fired from "Grey's Anatomy."
Fired. Not just written out. But gone. Off the set. Good bye. Don't let the door hit you where doors hit people....
It was an amazing post, and here's what she told Michael Ausiello, who broke this: "I found out in mid-September soon after shooting the monologue that aired last week where Erica has the revelation that she's gay. They even came down and told me it was a great scene…one of the best they ever shot on the show. So I was really, really shocked. I was floored when they told me [I was being let go]. It was the last thing I expected. In fact, when they told me I asked, 'When is this happening?' And they said, 'The [next episode] is your last,' which is the one that airs this Thursday. So it was very sudden."
Now, which is the scene of which she speaks? You know - it was last week, where Erica and Callie are in bed, and Erica basically goes haywire, saying how that was the best, most awesome, most incredible, most -oh-my-GAWD,. flat out INSANE sex she ever had.
Then, she starts telling Callie about a time when she was a kid, and saw only green blobs,. went to the doctor, came back with glasses and realized - wow! - the green blobs were actually leaves on the trees. And Callie, oh, Calliecalliecalliecallie...YOU are my glasses. I am (she went to say) SO GAY SO GAY SO GAY.
You remember. How could you forget. Callie was embarrassed. She leaves. End of scene.
What was wrong with any of this - other than the fact that "Grey's" had suddenly morphed into "The L Word?" Smith, a very good actress, was fine. The scene was memorable. And, in fact, believable, rare for this show.
Then...about a million people wrote Disney and told the company that they will never, ever again take their children to Disneyworld EVER.
Oops. That's one little problem with graphic sex scenes and declarations of lesbian love on a show owned by a company which also owns huge family-oriented theme parks.
But WAIT, you say. "Desperate Housewives," "Brothers & Sisters" "Ugly Betty" "General Hospital" - to name four prominent ABC franchises that have or have had gay storylines. They didn't prompt cancellations. True, but...I submit that Callica had turned into something that even ABC had not bargained for, namely a highly charged sexual relationship between two women. This wasn't "The Ellen Show" or a quick lesbian smooch on "Roseanne."
This was sex, in a bed. Two women...
On American commercial TV, that's pure dynamite.
But I submit, there was a problem with Erica Hahn, and it's been the one I've had with her for the past season. When she joined full time back in '07 season - though I think she first came aboard in May of '06 - she was an amazing character and addition. Here was Dr. Erica Hahn - whom some of us remembered from "Silence of the Lambs:" This tough, brilliant, domineering woman. She was, for a singular moment, the only practicing adult in all of Seattle Grace. Her sexuality was, perhaps, ambiguous, but it was also irrelevant: While Meredere were doing their thing, and everyone else was an emotional basket case, here came Hahn: The one central figure who actually SEEMED like a surgeon, and BEHAVED like a surgeon. She abused Yang and Sloan with relish, and with that icy stare froze everyone in place.
Smith absolutely grounded the show the minute she came on screen, and she was a salvation for "Grey's," coming as she did in the wake of the Isaiah Washington fiasco.
(Irony alert! Washington is ousted because he slurs gays, and Brooke Smith is ousted because she PLAYS one...)
Then, Hahn grew a heart. She got soft. Like everyone else at Seattle Grace, she drank from the tainted water cooler, and got silly, fell in love, and became - just like everyone else - more intent on her personal life than her professional one.
It was a sad waste of a great character.
So...ABC may have ousted Smith because of the overt gay storyline. But the demolition of a once great character probably had something to do with this as well.
(Pix: Bob Damico/ ABC.)