Ranting On...Grey's Anatomy and the Broken Spoiler Culture

(Spoiler Alert-this rant includes spoilers from last night's Grey's Anatomy, even though you already are more than aware of what the spoilers include, hence the rant) I never really got into Grey's Anatomy.  It definitely seemed on-paper to be my cup of tea, of course.  I was a huge Desperate Housewives fan, I loved Brothers & Sisters-really this was the era where ABC could do no wrong in my book.  But the show itself wasn't something I wanted to invest too much time in-I was a little over-done on medical shows, and the cadence of Shonda Rhimes television programs never suited my slower-paced sensibilities to me (I saw How to Get Away with Murder, and it felt far more of a series of jump-cuts than anything else).  I of course knew of several of the actors on the show-it's been a phenomenon for a decade, after all, and one that has permeated pop culture to the point where Katherine Heigl, Patrick Dempsey, and Sandra Oh became household names (or in Dempsey's case, became them again).  And I am not one of those jerks who jeers at what seems to be a silly if hardly harmful melodrama on television and wishing that it would just get cancelled already.

But I am aghast that the show chose to continue on without its clear breakout star, McDreamy, after eleven seasons, not giving he and Meredith the happy ending that I think we all eventually expected.  It seems like a bit of a "jump-the-shark" moment even for people who don't watch the show-the series has become about McDreamy in a way that few others have (despite Meredith being the titular star), and while I get that the show has had a revolving cast door (as is evidenced by almost every first-season actor eventually leaving the program), this is probably one-step too far for the fans.  Still, though, what pales in comparison to this decision (I don't judge until I see where the writers go with it-many shows have successfully killed off a major character with a great increase in the quality of the program), is the fact that the media totally spoiled the entire endeavor.

I'm looking specifically here at Entertainment Weekly.  The magazine had an exclusive story about the death of Patrick Dempsey's iconic doctor, and the issue hit stands today, but in the process it also hit subscribers yesterday, hours before the show even aired.  The magazine certainly should have known that something like this would eventually set off a media firestorm-I get that print journalism is dying and that online content has myriad advantages that print couldn't even dream of, but there is still a responsibility to your readers, many of whom deserved to have their moment of revelation with Dempsey and his character on the show.  A decade is a long time investment with a program, and Entertainment Weekly essentially stole that from the internet.

And while they apologized, EW is more indicative of a journalistic culture that doesn't really understand how to write about programs and decisions in a way that people want to hear about them anymore.  Back in the 1990's, when EW first started, there was no such thing as a spoiler alert for a television program, because in the days before Netflix and DVR (or, quite frankly, TV on DVD), there was no need-we all watched the show at the same time.  Spoiler alerts were needed for movies or books, but not for television, an instantaneous experience for all involved.  Nowadays, of course, no one watches television live except your grandmother-this has left the entire television media landscape bristling at how to make a sustainable business model that keeps up with new viewing demands, but entertainment journalism also needs to find a way to adapt.

Because if you visit Entertainment Weekly's website this morning, any indication that they are apologizing is laughable.  As many as nine articles about McDreamy's death are featured on the website's front page, forgoing anyone who may have been hoping to catch the show this weekend.  This isn't something that's new for EW-it's hard to visit the site for even a day without seeing a spoiler from a TV show or a film ending from this past weekend.

I don't expect the website not to cover such events, but I do think that they are utterly ridiculous and over-the-top in trying to ruin surprises in entertainment projects.  They issue spoiler alerts in articles after showing a photo of the character that's getting killed off or married at the top of the page-this happens constantly, and people are savvy enough to know what the deal is when "Shocking Death or Ouster" is in the title and there's a picture of the person getting ousted right next to the headline.  They include casting news that is critical to a story's structure (saying an actor hasn't renewed their contract, for example) without giving any sort of credence to spoilers.  Admittedly, they are a news organization, but they are ruining the fun of the entertainment that they are promoting, which is a huge turnoff.  Admittedly some people live by getting spoiled (these are the people who seek out every piece of information about a movie before it enters theaters...these are also the sorts of people that are insanely obnoxious at dinner parties), but for the most part we want the surprise.  My reaction to all of this, quite frankly, has been to stay off of Entertainment Weekly's website, an internet hub that I used to visit on the daily and now just do on slow news days.  It's not okay to treat the programs that you are covering as both a news story and something you want people to discuss.  And this is yet another example of how Entertainment Weekly hasn't caught up to the way that modern viewers experience television.