A new season of ABC's Grey's Anatomy premiered last night with an episode that justified climate change protesters blocking traffic and breaking laws.
Thursday's episode, "If Walls Could Talk," begins with the cast of doctors late for their shifts at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital because climate change protesters have blocked a bridge. Emergency doctors unable to get to work should normally be a big deal, but the show brushes it off with excuses.
On the bridge, Dr. Atticus "Link" Lincoln (Chris Carmack) tells his girlfriend Jo (Camilla Luddington) that it will be a while before they can get across. Link, who does not know Jo is pregnant, seems unbothered by the blockage.
Link: Yeah, we're gonna be here a while. They shut down the whole bridge for the protesters. [Exhales sharply ] You okay?
Jo: Yeah. I'm fine.
Link: You sure? You look...weird.
Jo: Thanks?
Link: So... [ Sighs ] ...I Spy or murder podcast?
Jo: Actually, there is something that I should talk to you about. So, um...
Protester: Save our planet! Solutions, not pollution!
Jo: Is that trash?
Link: Hey! Stop polluting! Start living! [Chuckles ] What? They're saving the planet.
Jo: By throwing trash and risking their lives bungee jumping?
Link: Well, these events always attract a few rogue players, but it's the overall message that's important. [Protestors chanting indistinctly.]
Jo: Just do your thing already.
Link: Do you know what global warming has done to the insect disease vectors? The tick population has exploded. Do you want Lyme disease, Jo? The 10 hottest years have happened in the last decade...
Overwrought apolcalyptic predictions about the weather are the last thing a woman with morning sickness wants to hear about.
When an idiot protester falls off the bridge and hits a car, emergency surgeons rush to save him. In the surgery room, Dr. Levi Schmitt (Jake Borelli) criticizes the protests. Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.), a black surgeon, chastises him in response by comparing climate activism to the civil rights movement.
Schmitt: I don't see how gluing yourself to a train or blocking a bridge will save us from climate change.
Webber: You tell that to the people who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for civil rights. (Looks at nurse Bokhee) GIA stapler, Bokhee.
Levi: That is a compelling point, and I apologize.
Schmitt gives up his argument without a fight, instantly caving on his common sense position the moment Dr. Webber brings up the 1965 march in Selma, Alabama. He never even questions Webber's comparison.
The episode also includes a climate protester who once worked for an oil company. She feels so guilty that she is now devoting herself to trying to "save the planet." This activist also happens to be a lousy mother. She stresses out her pregnant adult daughter with all her arrests and drama. The activist's narcissism is at least an accurate portrayal of a typical leftist, whether intentional or not.
Grey's Anatomy engages in regular left-wing proselytizing with every episode, so much so that its dialogue is often unbearably cringe. Yet it remains popular, now on its twenty-first season.
I am sure it will become even more unhinged as the season progresses, especially as election day draws closer.
