Matt's TV Week in Review
SEATTLE MED: Welcome, TV peeps, to the November sweeps, late-October edition, where not all stunts are created equal. First among non-equals is TV's still-reigning hospital soap, the durable Grey's Anatomy, showing it has lost none of its juice — and neither has the faux-documentary format — in a wrenching and pivotal episode seemingly inspired by last summer's excellent Boston Med. Or is it the local sweeps news? The show temporarily becomes Seattle Medical: Road to Recovery, with sensational teasers amid other infotainment hoopla, as hand-held cameras follow the doctors along the usual rounds of triumph (a double arm transplant, a regenerative trachea procedure in the pediatrics ward) and tragedy (Mandy Moore, from the shoot-em-up cliffhanger, is back, but goes into an irreversible coma after Bailey's routine op). The gimmick, though familiar, illuminates character as we watch them do their jobs from a new perspective while sparing us from the show's maddening tendency to overshare...
