I’d been so happy with Grey’s Anatomy this season, and then they went and pissed me off at the very end of the season and now I’m grumpy.

Everything was working really well, the writing was so good that I’d forgiven them the stupid mistakes of a couple of season ago. The sense of family that I’d been missing since George and Izzy left was firmly re-established with Meredith firmly occupying the central pivotal role that the title of the show had been promising for so long. While Meredith was the centre of many of the relationships, there was a complete network – any two characters could share a scene and have something interesting to talk about. The new characters all slotted in and as individual relationships broke and formed the network shifted accordingly in a satisfying fashion.

Each episode of Grey’s Anatomy has me completely engrossed, I don’t reach for my laptop and I often forget to reach for my tea, finding a stone cold cup when the credits eventually roll. Too many procedurals this year I’m criticising for the fact that not only do I not remember the case of the week a few weeks later, but I don’t remember them while I’m actually watching them. Grey’s Anatomy however can have me on the edge of my seat over a character who will never appear again. Week after week the cases are immediately interesting and connecting.

As many have gone before, Grey’s felt the need to try its hand at a musical episode, the lure of the many superb singing talents in the cast was too much for it to resist. The musical choices were superb, drawing from the excellent and unusual soundtrack which has led to me buying several soundtrack cds and even whole albums from newly discovered artists. Unfortunately, while I didn’t hate it, it just didn’t quite work for me. It started out well and I was again in floods of tears and sort of open-mouthed that it could actually work, but by the end of the episode it was all just a bit too desperate feeling, I became too aware of the fact that it just didn’t make any sense that people were singing. It was a valiant attempt, but ultimately it (and the story it was telling) felt too much like a random interlude which with the benefit of the time jumping episode that followed was fast-forwarded into distant memory.

Then we really hit the real problems with the writers making the very same mistake that almost had me leaving the show a few years ago – characters making utterly stupid decisions, behaving erratically and hypocritically, and getting themselves into impossible situations just in time for the end of season dramatic cliffhanger. It breaks the heart of the series, forcing the characters and the network of relationships to change for dramatic effect rather than logical ones. I get particularly frustrated with the endless stream of smart women on television who continually fail to understand how birth control works, unplanned pregnancies are sloppy writing as far as I’m concerned – two in a season is just insulting.

The end of the season left a bitter taste in my mouth, rather than phoning my Grey’s Anatomy fellow-addict to squeal about the excitement or to do a tissue count, it was to squeal “what the hell was that?!”. A really sad note to end an otherwise absolutely wonderful season.