Greetings, reader!
My Grey's Anatomy theme month continues, with this week's post focusing on one of the things the series does best: tear-jerking character deaths. Brutally killing off a beloved character is an art form that very few have mastered as well as Shonda Rhimes.
Goes without saying - a MAJOR spoiler alert is in order!
Here are my honorable mentions: Craig Thomas (William Daniels), Diane Pierce (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), Ellis Grey (Kate Burton), Heather Brooks (Tina Majorino), Kyle Diaz (Wilmer Valderrama).
10. Charles Percy (Robert Baker)
One never grows all that attached to Dr. Percy as a character - but that doesn't stop his death in the infamous season 6 finale from being utterly heartbreaking. What really gets me here is the reaction of Miranda Bailey, my favorite character of the series, who spends much of the mass shooting two-parter's runtime trying to save Percy from bleeding out after he's shot. Chandra Wilson's acting is grippingly believable in expressing how badly she wanted to save the intern who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
9. Henry Burton (Scott Foley)
A lot of fans would rank this even higher, and I can see why. Henry was a true sweetheart, and arguably the best love interest Teddy Altman (Kim Raver) ever had. As is the case with most of the sad deaths in the series, it's a surgery that seems to be going alright until something goes very very wrong, and it ends in multi-level heartbreak as some of the doctors blame themselves while dreading how to break the news to Teddy, who is in the middle of surgery herself. Classic Shonda Rhimes cruelty.
8. Mark Sloan (Eric Dane)
If you're wondering why this isn't ranked even higher, I suppose that it's partially because the show quite simply has even heavier character losses in its ranks, and partially because at least with this one, I was prepared. Things looked pretty bad for Mark's fate in the season 8 finale, and especially once we lost Lexie, I had sort of accepted that he's going as well - there's some heart-wrenching poetic beauty in killing off the star-crossed lovers who never got the timing right in consecutive episodes.
The season 9 premiere Going, Going, Gone jumps ahead in time to show the aftermath of the infamous plane crash once the victims have returned to the hospital, with a special focus on Mark Sloan as his fate is in the balance. The episode gives him a beautiful sense of closure, giving him moments with many characters with whom he shared a deep relationship while he's lucid in between procedures. In a bizarre yet fitting style choice, the episode ends with a dedication to Mark Sloan, in a way usually reserved for when an actor passes away behind the scenes, but used here because the fictional character was so beloved that he deserved such a tribute.
7. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey)
When talking about the show's biggest deaths, in terms of plot impact, this would undoubtedly be the GOAT - Grey's was never the same after McDreamy was offed. It ranks slightly lower in terms of pure sadness - don't get me wrong, it was heartbreaking and I cried like hell, but because it's Grey's Anatomy, there's a high f**king bar when discussing the very saddest deaths. A death like Derek's might be the show's saddest one in a normal show, but in the Mona Lisa of tear-jerking TV, there are six even more painful ones.
But, yeah. Derek had his flaws, but he was such a legend in his best moments. When you think about his most arrogant and insufferable moments, it can easily feel like "Yeah, he overstayed his welcome, the rest of the show might even be better off without him", but when you think about the infinite charm oozing from that smile and hairdo, you can't help but miss the guy. Obviously, the saddest part about his demise is its effect on those around him - Meredith Grey, a far superior character, loses the love of her life, Amelia loses a brother, Bailey and many others lose a dear friend, and Meredith&Derek's kids have to grow up without a father. There aren't probably any other deaths in the series that have caused as many tears after the episode of the death - there are countless times in the rest of season 11 as well as the seasons after it, where Derek's absense is felt in an emotion-provoking manner, and it never gets any easier.
6. Adele Webber (Loretta Devine)
On a purely rational level, this one shouldn't have been among the heaviest - Richard Webber's wife was old, she had lived a fulfilling life, she had been struggling with Alzheimer's for a long time so the viewers were sort of prepared, and she was a recurring character (as opposed to the main cast members that one usually grows even more attached to). But, of course, an emotion-driven viewer's reaction to a heartstring-tugging death scene doesn't stop to look at rationality.
In addition to the obvious reason of Adele being an iconic and lovable side character, the thing here is how the death is done - Shonda Rhimes is like a world-class chef but for cooking maximum-sadness death scenes, adding just the right amount of every necessary element to make the moment the ultimate, most tragic possible version of itself. Of course it had to happen on the night of Bailey and Ben's wedding, and of course the still-ongoing surgery is cut away from so that the viewer doesn't know what's up when we see Richard arriving at the wedding, and of course the man who JUST LOST HIS WIFE forces a smile when talking to Bailey because he doesn't want to ruin his dear friend's special day - and only when Meredith comes to talk to Richard, the smile fades, and James Pickens Jr.'s acting in the scene is so utterly f**king devastating that my heart breaks just thinking about it.
And, because Shonda is on a mission to make every single viewer burst in a fit of tears, we cut from Bailey and Ben dancing to a flashback/vision of Richard and Adele dancing, to My Funny Valentine (known to viewers as 'their song'). It's a cruel, cruel show.
5. Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh)
DID I MENTION THAT IT'S A CRUEL SHOW? They didn't have to take Lexie from us, especially like that. Lexie Grey was one of the sweetest, most pure and innocent characters on the show, and for her journey to end in the way it did is an absolute travesty (but, who am I kidding, great television). It's not just that it's a plane crash, or that the death is slow and painful as she succumbs to her injuries, or the effect her death has on Meredith and others - it's also that her love story with Mark (one of the show's greatest romances) has such a poetically tragic ending.
Being the star-crossed lovers they were always destined to be, they embodied the "never got the timing right" cliché by spending very little time actually together throughout their seasons in the series - and the fact that they were killed off, both due to the same plane crash, before they got their happy ending, is pretty damn depressing. At least Mark got to profess his love for her in the moments before she let go.
4. Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan)
Ah, the Citizen Kane of sad Grey's Anatomy deaths. The passing of Denny is the death that all the following deaths would be compared to, and while a select few managed to barely outdo it in my view, it is infamous for a reason.
There are many reasons for why it hits so hard - Jeffrey Dean Morgan was so damn lovable in the role, we spent so many episodes getting invested in the character and his story, his romance with Izzie was raw and real, and the manner of how it's revealed to the viewer is so utterly heartbreaking - after things had looked better for a while, a sudden complication and then cutting to Bailey informing Richard of Denny's death is just the absolute saddest possible way to relay this information to the viewers. This was a particularly hard one to get over.
3. Samuel Avery
I don't really feel like this one needs much of a description. Samuel was the newborn child of Jackson and April, and his fate makes the aptly titled episode All I Could Do Was Cry into one of the most heart-wrenching, hard-to-watch episodes in the entire series.
2. Andrew DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti)
All of the characters on this list are somewhat good people, because why would the death of a total monster be sad (I may have given a standing ovation when Jo's abusive ex-husband Paul was killed off)? While there are many factors that contribute to the sadness of a character death, the likability of the character is definitely one of the big ones - it's far from being the only factor, but there's a clear correlation. And that's a big reason for Dr. DeLuca being this high on the list - while all of the show's main cast members whose names don't rhyme with "Throw-in stunt" are generally good guys, there's arguably no one in the show's ensemble who is as pure as Andrew DeLuca.
When DeLuca took the fall for Meredith in the season 15 finale, potentially sacrificing his career to protect her's, I blubbered something amidst my tears about what a stand-up dude Andrew was, and my fiancée Martta replied "Not a bad bone in his body". Now that is something you can't say about many Grey's characters, as pretty much everyone has their share of flaws despite being likable for most of the time. So, while no one deserves a fate like this, Andrew was probably the least deserving of all, which makes it extra heartbreaking. And of course there were heroics involved - he put his life on the line to try and help a victim of sex trafficking, and that's what got him killed. A brutal, borderline unnecessarily cruel death, but one that sure scores a lot of points for today's list.
1. George O'Malley (T.R. Knight)
Say what you will about George - I couldn't help but care a great deal for him despite his flaws. Yes, he was an over-whiny victim-player at his worst, and I was very upset with the incel-coded direction the writers took the character in during seasons 3 and 4. Whether it's because of the way the brilliant T.R. Knight plays the role, or the endless potential the character had via his more lovable qualities and moments, I just really, really cared for the guy. In his worst moments I hoped he'd get his shit together, and, well, his best moments - the heroic heart-in-elevator surgery, joining the nurses on the picket lines when they go on strike, spitting facts to the neo-Nazi patient when no one else would, or helping an intersex child find their identity when their parents were busy being close-minded bigots - absolutely the stuff of legends.
When he was killed off in the season 5 finale, I cried more than I have during any other Grey's episode. It's not just that it happened, but the way it is revealed - the episode is ingeniously built to trick the viewer into thinking that the John Doe patient with the unrecognizable face couldn't be George, because we saw George at the hospital only moments before the patient was admitted, so in the first-time viewer's' mind George is still hanging around off-screen. When the reveal hits, it's the most heart-piercing moment of the entire series for me personally. Also, the specific manner of the death - dying because you jumped in front of a bus in order to save a total stranger EVEN THOUGH THE STRANGER HAD JUST BEEN MEAN TO YOU was absolutely the most George O'Malley thing one could imagine. Poor guy.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week as I continue my Grey's Anatomy theme month with a ranking of the show's 10 best episodes.
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