Grey's Anatomy Fires Mean Doctor

Regretfully, we watch Grey's Anatomy. It manages to be both the worst and the most embarrassing show on our DVR list--and we're still watching Desperate Housewives! Yet every week we fire up the digital recording with the hope that maybe Grey's will get better and reinspire whatever misplaced affection we felt for it during the earlier seasons. (Scary thought: Grey's Anatomy is already on season five.) And then every week, our hopes are proven unfounded. Perhaps the revival starts now.

Over at Entertainment Weekly, Michael Ausiello is reporting that ABC has decided to fire Brooke Smith, the actress who plays the loathsome Dr. Erica Hahn on the nighttime soap. Woo-hoo! Until the election results are announced tonight (fingers crossed) this qualifies as the best news of the day! We never want to see anyone lose his or her job. But when it comes to Grey's Anatomy, we'll make an exception. Now if they can only figure out a way to can Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, T.R. Knight, Sara Ramirez...

Anyway! If you haven't been watching Grey's (good for you), Ms. Smith's character has been embroiled in a slowly building relationship with Ms. Ramirez's. While their relationship has gotten slightly more advanced, um, sexually, in the last few weeks, causing one insider to say that ABC "had issues" with the way things were progressing, the network says the decision to fire her had absolutely positively nothing to do with the lesbian affair. Normally we'd cry foul, but in this case, we tend to believe them. While it may be naïve to think that the Mickey Mouse network would be comfortable with a mini-L Word story arc on one of their flagship shows, we actually don't think the relationship had anything to do with her ouster. It's possible they simply fired Ms. Smith because she was just wasn't very good. Accordingly, she was reportedly told that the writers "couldn't write for [her] character anymore", a reasonable statement considering that she and Ms. Ramirez have even less on-screen chemistry than John McCain and Sarah Palin do.

For now, Ms. Smith's character will ostensibly be replaced by Battlestar Galactica's Mary McDonnell, who shows up next week playing (another) world class heart surgeon who, in a twist, suffers from Asperger's syndrome. If you thought no storyline was too mawkish for Grey's Anatomy, you might need to reconsider.