Triage

I was exposed to Grey's Anatomy the same way the goats they tethered to oblivion on Bikini Atoll were exposed to radiation: a) against my will b) with disastrous consequences c) after being tied to a stake, fed a bit of lettuce, and told "everything is going to be all right." It is, I suppose, conceivable that the goats have, in the intervening decades, forgiven their murderers the pain inflicted upon them. If so, I think you’ll agree, goats are chumps. For the record, I am not a chump.

As one of my captors was putting the Grey’s Anatomy: Season 1 DVD into the player, I made the mistake of asking what, exactly, made Patrick Dempsey, who plays Dr. Derek Shephard and who – in the parallel universes of many of the show’s female characters and many of its fans - goes by the nickname “McDreamy,” so goddamned attractive.

I didn’t have to wait long for my answer. In unison: “it’s his personality.” And then, from Captor 2: “it’s a combination of his looks and his personality.” After a bit of thought, Captor 1 endorsed this take as well. Unlike people I’ve read about who were kidnapped by lunatics who threatened to shoot them in the face every day but who came to implicitly trust, and even love, I can honestly say I never felt even the faintest stirrings of Stockholm Syndrome as regards the people responsible for Grey’s Anatomy becoming part of my life.

Anyway, because I, going into Grey’s Anatomy, knew what it was some other people find so appealing about Patrick Dempsey, it makes since that you, going into this blog, have explained to you why I find him so unappealing.

It’s a combination of his looks and his personality.

Looks first: fucking shave already, Patrick Dempsey. Buy an electric razor that you can keep at the hospital and then, whenever you get a chance between your busy schedule of neurosurgery and perving on your students/employees, go to the goddamn bathroom and shave. Also, stop putting so much crap in your hair. I don’t know sort of product you’re using, but it looks like axle grease, so I’m assuming it’s industrial strength pomade. That shit can’t be sterile. Either cut your hair or resign yourself to the occasional bad hair day.

If you’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy, and, let’s face it, America, you fucking have, you already know the deficiencies in Patrick Dempsey – and I’m not going to get used to typing Dr. Shephard, so just get used to that – are far too numerous to list. I think you’ll find that if you start to think about any one specific thing about Patrick Dempsey’s behavior you find objectionable, what may at some emotional distance seem like a fairly isolated, if annoying, problem (for example, his habit of initially shooting down Meredith on whatever hare-brained quasi-doctorial Quxoticness she’s pinned her emotional stability to this week before quickly reversing course and doing whatever it is she wants this time, all the while staring meaningfully at her) metastasizes into this huge, all-corrupting soullessness that you find yourself recoiling from because you think it’s possible the horribleness that is Patrick Dempsey is going to leap through the television screen and out at you like a rabid dog going through the throat. Your throat. The throat you need to live, to go on living.

This is all by way of saying that much in theway there's no way to summarize the wetness of the ocean or the deadness of a nuked goat, there's no way to verbalize my hate for Patrick Dempsey. To do so would be to disrespect my hate, to unfairly limit it. To be faithful to both the enormity of my hate and the responsibility/need I feel to express that hate to like-minded television viewerS, I'll try to marshal my descriptive angels to the cause of blogging the trauma Grey's Anatomy has brought to me. It's all I have left.