I'm so late to the party, but I confess: I'm a Grey's Anatomy fan. I watch it regularly. Every week. Each episode after the next. Only twice before in my life have I thusly been TV's bitch — first, Gilmore Girls (but they soon stopped talking so fast, and then it was less fun); then, West Wing (post-facto, in a dizzying run of DVDs).

Around the age of 8 I decided I'd never become a doctor (at a time when we frequently spent time at an OB/GYN uncle's home/practice, and multiple of my cousins were getting their M.D.s in proud Asian style); I couldn't take the gore. I'm wilderness first aid certified and am usually among the first to help examine a sidewalk scrape or chef's knife cut; handling the blood doesn't gross me out, but thinking about handling it does. But GA is less about gore than about grace, less about melodrama than about deadpan witticisms. Sure, there's tons of I-Just-Saved-A-Life!-sap, but often well-deserved, and it's always balanced with some good hard punchlines elsewhere. And for some reason it just fits where I am in my life right now — pummelling hard toward certain goals in a great and rewarding job, but absolutely clueless about what to do with the rest of life.

While casually browsing around on the internet a few minutes ago I casually got the idea to casually look for more news on Grey's Anatomy, and came across this excellently conducted and excellently written interview with Sandra Oh, who plays a career-driven surgical intern and social iceberg on the ensemble show. Recently her character's become a little one-sidedly heartless, but I've got my fingers crossed that this is just build-up for an eruption of humanity.

Part of what I like about non-glitzy magazines like this one (Saturday Night, a monthly Canadian magazine distributed within a newspaper) is that while they may not have access to the glitziest of glitziest people, they often have a handful of smart writers with the time and the drive to push and pull and research until they get an article with a life of its own, one that isn't eclipsed even by as strong a character as Sandra Oh's.

Anyway, read the article. In it, both Oh and the author (sorry, uncredited anywhere easily findable) spend considerable time talking Oh's being Asian, and whether and how that should matter. Her strong early roles as Asians is proving to be a blessing and a curse, as the article claims that "casting agents don't know what to do with her."

Really much of this throw-our-hands-up-we-can't-do-anything schtick by agents is garbage. Major props to Sondra Rhimes (a black woman, for what it's worth... and now I'm not sure I should have told you that since that knowledge gave a certain twinge to my thinking about this situation and surely will to yours), who, according to the article, "wrote the pilot without specifying a character's race — the role of Cristina had the 'Yang' attached only after Oh won the part."

See how easy it is? I understand that, unless a special explanation gets written into the script, an onscreen family ought to look like an onscreen genetic family.
But there are plenty of parts (come to think of it, Stephanie vs. Maya in Sideways) where race isn't written in and doesn't affect anything else in the story. We're coming to the point in reality where interracial relationships are sometimes just barely even noticed (Hi, A!), so shouldn't Hollywood begin to reflect this more widely as well?

In any case, warmest wishes of luck to Sandra Oh in getting what she wants: "Sandra Oh wants true celebrity — to be in a position where starring roles come to her. What she wants even more is to reach that elusive stage where it doesn’t matter that she’s Asian."