Meredith Grey

Dr. Meredith Grey
First appearance	"A Hard Day's Night"
Created by	Shonda Rhimes
Portrayed by	Ellen Pompeo
In-universe information
Gender	Female
Title	M.D. B.A.
Occupation	Surgical Resident at Seattle Grace Hospital
Family	Thatcher Grey (father) Dr. Ellis Grey (mother; deceased) Dr. Lexie Grey (half-sister) Molly Grey Thompson (half-sister)
Spouse	Dr. Derek Shepherd (boyfriend) Dr. Finn Dandridge (ex-boyfriend)
Children	None
Relatives	Susan Grey (step-mother; deceased) Laura Grey Thompson (half-niece) Eric Thompson (brother-in-law)

Meredith Grey is a fictional character and the series protagonist on the ABC television series Grey's Anatomy. The character is portrayed by actress Ellen Pompeo, and was created by Shonda Rhimes, who says that Meredith is the character who best reflects her own personality.

Background

Meredith Grey is the only child born to the marriage of Dr. Ellis Grey and Thatcher Grey. She spent the early part of her childhood in Seattle, Washington, where her mother was completing her surgical residency at Seattle Grace Hospital. Her parents’ marriage was troubled, and her mother was involved in a years-long affair with her colleague, Dr. Richard Webber. Eventually, their marital troubles proved too great and Thatcher left when Meredith was five years old.

Meredith was also a witness to the end of her mother’s affair with Richard; she was on a carousel at the park while the two adults argued, and although she did not understand the significance then, the memory would resurface in Meredith’s adult years as she began to unravel the truth regarding her parents’ divorce. Soon after, Ellis accepted a fellowship opportunity at Boston General, and relocated to Massachusetts with Meredith. Thatcher lost all contact with his daughter. Details regarding Meredith’s childhood are unclear, but she describes her high school years by saying: “I wore a lot of black. Had the whole angry pink hair thing going on. Wouldn't have been caught dead at a prom.”

Her college years were spent at Dartmouth, where she graduated in spite of excessive partying and drinking. Following her graduation, she had difficulty holding a job due to her partying. Ellis encouraged Meredith to find direction in her life, suggesting medical school even though she had told Meredith that she didn't have what it took to be a good surgeon. After an argument over Meredith's lack of ambition, Meredith spent two months traveling in Europe, returning home when Ellis was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. The diagnosis provided the impetus behind Meredith's decision to go to medical school. She also has a B.A. in acting from NYU

Overview

Meredith’s family life is complicated. She is estranged from her father, and her mother’s illness complicated their unconventional relationship. She considers her fellow interns as her family, and is often the peacekeeper when troubles arise among them. She considers Cristina Yang her ‘sister’ and best friend, often referring to her as her 'person', and is also close to the other interns in her group, two of whom (Alex Karev and Izzie Stevens) are her roommates. While he maintains his own residence, her boyfriend, Derek Shepherd, frequently stays at Meredith's house as well.

Professionally, Meredith shows great potential as a surgeon. Early in her internship, she stood out by making several difficult diagnoses and scrubbing in on advanced procedures. She is bright and promises to live up to her mother’s legacy, but has struggled with accusations of favoritism due to her relationship with Derek and her mother’s esteem as a surgeon. She has not escaped her share of trouble; she was once placed on probation for failing to admit to a popped glove in surgery until she was in front of the patient’s husband in an emergency situation, and has also been reprimanded for sharing her unsolicited personal opinions with patients.

Her friends often comment on the drama that seems to surround her, using phrases like “dark and twisty” to describe her. Meredith is aware of her issues and recognizes her tendency to be an avoider, and agrees with others’ observations of her as “scary and damaged”. She often referred to herself as the “dirty mistress” or "adulterous whore" in Derek's marriage to Addison, and she and Mark Sloan dubbed themselves the "Dirty Mistress Club". Meredith is driven and intelligent like her mother, to whom she also bears a strong physical resemblance. Although he was not present during much of her childhood, Meredith also inherited several traits from her father, including nervous stammering, a tendency toward messiness, and snoring.

Character History

After completing medical school, Meredith secured a position in the surgical residency program at Seattle Grace and relocated from Boston to live in the Queen Anne Hill home (located at 613 Harper Lane) that had belonged to her mother and grandmother. Ellis had been moved into a nursing home, and Meredith was soon to become completely responsible for all of Ellis's affairs. The night before her internship started, she attended a mixer for the new interns, and then went to the bar across the street for a drink. There, she met Derek Shepherd, a man whom she believed would be nothing more than the latest addition to her string of her infamous one-night stands, only to discover the next day that he was an attending neurosurgeon at Seattle Grace.

Meredith initially refused Derek’s advances and wanted to keep their relationship professional. Eventually, she gave in and agreed to date him. Their relationship was complicated from the beginning when Meredith’s supervising resident, Miranda Bailey, caught Derek and Meredith half-naked in his car. The ultimate blow, however, came with the arrival of Derek’s estranged wife, Addison Montgomery-Shepherd.

Meredith was angry that Derek had lied about being married, but she eventually decided that she still wanted to be with him and confessed her love for him and begged him to choose her. While Derek struggled over his choice, ultimately his sense of obligation to his marriage vows won, and he left Meredith to return to his wife.

Meredith was left devastated and reverted to her old behavior of tequila shots and drunken one-night stands, even as she and Derek continued to experience strong feelings for one another. This period of abandonment led Meredith to search out her father, who still lived in Seattle; their reunion failed to give Meredith any closure regarding her childhood, and in an alcohol-influenced decision, she had sex with George O’Malley, only to cry in the middle of the encounter and drive a wedge in their friendship.

Meanwhile, Meredith and Derek had begun a tentative attempt at friendship, and Derek had even adopted Meredith’s dog, Doc, when she was no longer able to keep him. Her confession of her liaison with George upset Derek, but he advised her to keep apologizing until George listened. Meredith took up knitting, declaring herself celibate after the incident with George, although she began dating again when she met Doc’s veterinarian, Finn Dandridge. Derek was extremely jealous of Finn and mistakenly believed that Meredith was sleeping with him; his jealousy manifested as anger, and after a fight in which Derek criticized Meredith’s promiscuity, their friendship appeared to be over.

Meredith’s personal life was significantly complicated around this time when she learned that her father had remarried after her parents’ divorce and had two more daughters. Her youngest sister, Molly, was admitted as one of Addison’s patients, and Meredith had the opportunity to speak to her, although Molly was unaware of Meredith’s true identity. From Molly, Meredith learned that their father had been a devoted and loving father, and was incredibly proud of Molly and her sister Lexie, a med student at Harvard. Meredith also met her father’s second wife, Susan, who told her that Thatcher did care about her, and that her sisters knew she existed. The news of her father’s second family was overwhelming, and Meredith spent most of Molly’s stay avoiding her father.

After making the difficult decision to euthanize Doc, who had been diagnosed with bone cancer, Derek and Meredith attended a hospital-sponsored prom held in honor of the Chief's dying niece. After a heated argument in an exam room, Derek and Meredith had sex, but before they could discuss the implications of their actions, Meredith was called away to deal with Izzie, whose fiance Denny had just died.

The next day, Addison found Meredith’s panties, which had been left in Derek’s tuxedo, and pinned them to the hospital bulletin board while Derek went to Meredith’s home and professed his love to her for the first time and promised to wait while Meredith made her choice between him and Finn.

Meredith recognized her feelings for both men, and decided to date them both before making a decision. Dating two men was not all fun and games, and the stress soon began to wear on her. While they were dating, Meredith was admitted for an appendectomy, and Finn’s concern for her during her illness led Derek to reconsider his pursuit of her. As she recovered from surgery, he told Meredith that he was walking away, freeing her to be with Finn, “the better guy”. Meredith, however, had already decided that Derek was “the one” for her, and broke up with Finn. She kept the break-up from Derek for another week, and made the unfortunate timing mistake of telling him just after Addison had confessed that she and Mark had not just been a one-night stand, as she had led Derek to believe, but had actually lived together for two months after Derek left for Seattle.

Meredith’s introduction to Derek’s family was no less problematic; she stopped by the trailer one night to talk to Derek and discovered a strange woman lying across Derek’s bed and Derek, wearing nothing more than a towel and a very startled expression. She would later learn that the woman was Derek’s sister, Nancy, but the explanation of the misunderstanding did not make Meredith any more appealing to Nancy, who continually referred to Meredith as the “slutty intern”. Derek defended Meredith, leading Nancy to acknowledge Derek’s feelings for her, but Nancy encouraged her brother to take some time to figure out what he wanted rather than worrying about the women in his life.

Following Nancy’s advice, Derek asked Meredith for time to take some space for himself, and then embarked on a very brief camping trip, which only cemented his desire for Meredith. He found her in the very place they had first met—Joe’s bar—and they agreed to start their relationship over from the very beginning. With Derek back in her life, Meredith had a stable foundation to deal with the family drama that would soon arise.

Ellis Grey became very agitated when Meredith was forced to break the news that Richard Webber would no longer be visiting her, having chosen to go back to his wife. Ellis was confused and relived their initial breakup, blaming the fact that she’d had a daughter as the reason Richard wouldn’t be with her. Later, Ellis showed concern over the prospect of raising her daughter alone, leading Meredith to realize that although their relationship had been troubled, Ellis had done the best she could in raising her.

At the same time, Meredith’s sister Molly was readmitted to the hospital for a c-section. Meredith scrubbed in and helped deliver her baby niece, Laura, who was born with serious complications. Meredith acted as a go-between for the family and Addison while the baby was in surgery, which enabled Susan to extend an invitation to include Meredith in their family, even though Thatcher had not told his daughters that Molly’s doctor was actually their sister. With Thatcher at the hospital, Meredith was forced to face her father and her similarities to a parent she’d never known. She opened up and asked Thatcher for his side of the story, only to learn that he’d stayed away simply because Ellis told him to and started over with his new family. While tension remained between the two, Thatcher did provide a solution to Meredith's snoring, which had become a point of contention with Derek, by suggesting wax ear plugs.

Meredith's family life was further complicated when Ellis experienced a completely lucid day, giving mother and daughter an opportunity to mend their troubled relationship. Rather than embrace the opportunity, however, Ellis expressed great disappointment at how "ordinary" Meredith turned out to be, criticizing Meredith for allowing her relationship with Derek to sidetrack her from her career and failing to have chosen a specialty. During her period of lucidity, Ellis declined to undergo heart surgery to correct her arrhythmias, but her wishes were in conflict with Meredith's power of attorney. The two argued intensely over the issue and Meredith insisted that Ellis would have the surgery before storming out of Ellis's hospital room. Later, Meredith returned to explain that she wanted Ellis to undergo the surgery in the hope that a cure for Alzheimer's would be found in the near future, giving them a second chance to know each other. Unfortunately, Ellis's lucidity had faded and she was only able to recognize Meredith as someone who reminded her of her daughter.

Following a disastrous accident involving a ferryboat, Meredith was one of the doctors sent to the scene to assist with triage. Meredith quickly came across a young girl who had been separated from her mother, and kept the child with her as she assisted a wounded patient near the edge of the dock. In his pain, the man lashed out and accidentally knocked Meredith into the water. The young girl led Derek to the site of Meredith's fall and communicated what had happened. Derek jumped in after her and pulled her out, but despite continuous CPR, she was still unresponsive upon arriving at the hospital. Her colleagues began desperate measures to save her, but she remained hypothermic and asystolic for several hours until she was revived following a near-death experience in which she encountered former patients, Doc, and her mother, who died while doctors were working on Meredith. The near-death experience provided closure to Meredith's complicated relationship with her mother and refueled Meredith's will to live. However, the event placed strain on her relationship with Derek, who was initially overprotective following the incident, but later began to question whether he could persist in a relationship where he was constantly "trying to breathe for" Meredith.

Thatcher and Susan reached out to Meredith after Ellis's death and cremation; Susan suggested they have dinner together, and Meredith hosted her father and stepmother at her home. The conversation was awkward and tense at first, but by the end of the evening, progress had been made to heal their damaged relationship. Susan continued to reach out to Meredith, eventually confessing that she felt guilty for not encouraging Thatcher to maintain his relationship with Meredith during her childhood, and Meredith began to open up to the idea of an "overprotective" mother figure, as opposed to the "overbearing" mothering she had always known. However, shortly after the death of Ellis, Meredith lost her stepmother as well when Susan died following a rare complication of a usually routine procedure. In his grief, Thatcher slapped Meredith and forbade her to attend the funeral, blaming Susan's death on her trust in Meredith.

Meredith also made strides professionally, performing a complicated harvest procedure on her own after returning to work, taking comfort in the fact that it would have made her mother proud of her. However, in the wake of Susan's death and the confrontations with her father, Meredith froze during a critical exam that would determine her future in the internship program. The other interns pleaded her case to Chief Webber, who arranged for Meredith to make up the test privately.

The events of her intern year came to a head as Meredith helped Cristina prepare for her wedding. Derek confronted her over her level of commitment to their relationship, telling her that she was the love of his life, but that she needed to end their relationship if she was not in it for the long haul. Meredith did not address his concerns, and after Burke and Cristina's wedding fell apart, Meredith left to help a distraught Cristina, leaving her relationship and future with Derek uncertain.

External links

• Bios of Grey's Anatomy characters at ABC.com
• Gray and an anatomy of her busy hospital - Hospital intern with a similar name (Meredith Gray); The Sydney Morning Herald