We're all still mourning the loss of Dr. Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd from Grey's Anatomy. Needless to say, showrunner Shonda Rhimes has some major explaining to do.
In an ABC panel at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Rhimes said that dying was the only way McDreamy, and actor Patrick Dempsey, could exit the show. (We'd like to know why he had to leave the show at all — but that's another matter.)
"The decision to have the character die the way that he did was not a difficult one in the sense of, what were the options?" Rhimes explained, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "Either Derek was going to walk out on Meredith and leave her high and dry, and what was that going to mean? That was going to suggest that their love was not true — that the thing we said for 11 years was a lie, and McDreamy wasn't McDreamy, and that was untenable. Meredith and Derek's love had to remain Meredith and Derek's love.
"As painful as it was for me as a storyteller, because I never thought that would happen, the only way to preserve that is Derek had to die for that love to remain honest," she added. "I couldn't have that he turned out to be a bad guy who walked out on his wife and kid…for me, the only way was to make Derek and Meredith's magic to remain true and forever frozen in time."
Ugh. Fine. We're still sending our therapy bills to ABC.
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