The news from Hollywood today is that Sandra Oh will be leaving Grey’s Anatomy at the end of the coming season. As a faithful Grey’s viewer since the very beginning, this makes me sad.
Oh, I’ll admit that it took a while for me to warm up to Christina Yang, the prickly, know-it-all surgeon that Oh has been playing for the past ten years. And, even once I grew to like her, there were still times I slipped back into not liking her again. In truth, I haven’t been in love with her this past season, but it’s been kind of a weird time for a lot of the characters, dealing with the aftermath of the plane crash and all. I was sure that Christina would find her way back into my good graces.
But while her absence will be felt in and of itself, it’s really the impact on the other characters I wonder about most. Notably, of course, Christina’s ex-(and future?) husband, Owen Hunt. They are better together than either of them are apart, so it will be interesting to see what becomes of him. Though, like Christina in general, theirs has been a weird relationship all season.
Mostly, though, how does Christina’s absence impact Meredith Grey. They are the best of friends—each other’s “person”—and I already feel bad for Meredith going on without Christina. And, incidentally, I’m assuming that “going on without” means that Christina ends up taking some spectacular job somewhere else and moves away, or goes to find her true self in the Himalayas, or something, but that she continues on somewhere else. There’s been far too much death at Seattle Grace lately. Or, more accurately, at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, which just goes to prove my point: when your hospital is named after two now-deceased characters, there’s been way too much dying going on. So I’ll spend the next season preparing myself and Meredith to say goodbye to Christina, all the while hoping goodbye won’t be forever.
