Eh, I never said they were a group of good friends. ;-) I said they were a defined peer group with diverse internal dynamics – and that they do frequently choose to socialise, despite not being good friends. The show has a bunch of such groupings, fluid and flexible and overlapping as they often are, but those five original interns were the first of those groupings, and the dynamics within that group fascinate me precisely because they aren't all BFFs, or whatever. They are all so very different, thrown together by circumstance, and half the time they don't even like each other that much, but they remain connected, by circumstance and by each other (well, mostly by Meredith, because the one thing they all have in common is their friendship with Meredith. Which is a whole 'nother subject in itself). And as self-involved as they all are, nonetheless the pattern through the show is that when something happens to one of them, the others notice – if it is really bad, they hang around and watch and fret, if it is more minor they gossip and speculate among themselves (by which I don't mean that all their attention revolves around this thing, because it never does, but that it generally pings on their radar enough that we know that they know about it and have an opinion about it and what that opinion is, however much it is a mere aside to whatever is going on with them personally). That doesn't happen with the Alex-Izzie separation, it breaks pattern (maybe because there are too few of them left for old patterns to continue, maybe because of who those few are, maybe because of how the season is structured).
Both Meredith and Cristina have an established connection with both parties. When Alex finds out that Izzie has left him, he goes straight to Meredith. Cristina is there at the time, so they both see his reaction, which is shocked and heartbroken. Ordinarily, you'd expect that to be followed up at least by some kind of dialogue on the subject, albeit a throwaway snippet of conversation as part of a wider discussion about something else, just because people like to talk about each other, especially people at this hospital!
"Have you heard from Izzie?" "No, have you?" "Nothing." "What the hell is all that even about, anyway?" "Alex says he doesn't know." "Yeah, right. It's Alex. He must have done something." "I don't know. He just seems really confused." "Whatever. She'd better be back before her IL2 next week."
Something like that. Or an observation that they have heard that she was fired and can't blame her for flipping out about it – tie it back in to the ongoing cut backs and Meredith's earlier fears about losing one of her people, which has now happened. Instead we are given the information that neither Meredith nor Cristina have heard from Izzie, because we need that information for the storyline to progress, but we aren't given insight into what either of them thinks about it (and they've both been caught up in Izzie's drama enough times to have an opinion on this latest), because as far as that story is concerned they are plot devices rather than active players, having issues and storylines of their own to focus on. Which I get, I understand how and why it is played that way, but my gripe with that kind of disjointed storytelling is that however self-involved the various characters are, and however separate their storylines, it doesn't take all that much to join the dots between those discrete storylines and in so doing reinforce that all these things are meant to be going on at the same time within a fairly closed community.
…what the hell was my original point, anyway? Oh yeah, just that there are gaps in the storyline – in a lot of the storylines – that could have been interesting to explore. That was all. I agree that as far as fanfic goes it would be more interesting to explore retrospectively from post-season than anything else. The concept just got all caught up in my perpetually mixed feelings toward the way this show is structured, narratively!
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-06-30 02:24 pm (UTC)Both Meredith and Cristina have an established connection with both parties. When Alex finds out that Izzie has left him, he goes straight to Meredith. Cristina is there at the time, so they both see his reaction, which is shocked and heartbroken. Ordinarily, you'd expect that to be followed up at least by some kind of dialogue on the subject, albeit a throwaway snippet of conversation as part of a wider discussion about something else, just because people like to talk about each other, especially people at this hospital!
"Have you heard from Izzie?"
"No, have you?"
"Nothing."
"What the hell is all that even about, anyway?"
"Alex says he doesn't know."
"Yeah, right. It's Alex. He must have done something."
"I don't know. He just seems really confused."
"Whatever. She'd better be back before her IL2 next week."
Something like that. Or an observation that they have heard that she was fired and can't blame her for flipping out about it – tie it back in to the ongoing cut backs and Meredith's earlier fears about losing one of her people, which has now happened. Instead we are given the information that neither Meredith nor Cristina have heard from Izzie, because we need that information for the storyline to progress, but we aren't given insight into what either of them thinks about it (and they've both been caught up in Izzie's drama enough times to have an opinion on this latest), because as far as that story is concerned they are plot devices rather than active players, having issues and storylines of their own to focus on. Which I get, I understand how and why it is played that way, but my gripe with that kind of disjointed storytelling is that however self-involved the various characters are, and however separate their storylines, it doesn't take all that much to join the dots between those discrete storylines and in so doing reinforce that all these things are meant to be going on at the same time within a fairly closed community.
…what the hell was my original point, anyway? Oh yeah, just that there are gaps in the storyline – in a lot of the storylines – that could have been interesting to explore. That was all. I agree that as far as fanfic goes it would be more interesting to explore retrospectively from post-season than anything else. The concept just got all caught up in my perpetually mixed feelings toward the way this show is structured, narratively!