Cristina’s Farewell and How Grey’s Anatomy Got it Right (but Almost Got it Wrong)

Last Thursday I eagerly watched the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy, waiting to see how the program was going to write off one of the most interesting female characters television has featured.  In fact, I eagerly watched the episodes leading up to the finale as well, waiting for the foreshadowing that would reveal the final story for Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh).  During the build up to Cristina’s final episode I held my breath and at various points, swore at the television set, and begged the televisual fates not to mess up one of the best feminist storylines ever by weakening her departure.  With every tease, I was more convinced that I was going to be disappointed, but thankfully, in the end, Grey’s Anatomy did one of their star characters justice.

In one of my first academic essays (republished here), I argued that Grey’s was a feminist postmodern blended genre (mixing the medical drama with the sudsy stylistics of melodrama).  It followed in the footsteps of Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives in its effort to showcase female characters who struggled with choices concerning both careers and relationship, revealing the straddled fence that sometimes is feminism.  Younger me writes:

These shows with their strong female protagonists (of both career-driven and relationship-driven types) offer very different depictions of what it means to be a well-adjusted, happy, successful woman in contemporary America. These shows also explore the dynamics of female support systems (constructed / pseudo-family units) and they embrace and constantly re-define female sexuality, without embarrassment or apology, in nearly every episode.  But more specifically, Grey’s can be read as a product of (and / or response to) its two predecessors.  In particular, I argue that Grey’s struggles to deal with the often oversimplified choice that women have to make between work and family, career advancement and marriage, autonomy and love.  Grey’s follows the footsteps of both Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives, addressing this conundrum in its own way, expanding on and critiquing its predecessors’ stances on the issue.

Like its ancestor shows, Grey’s tackled various plots related to women’s health issues (e.g. abortion, abuse, fertility) and work discrimination (e.g. Izzy is disrespected because she is attractive, Bailey loses authority once she becomes a mother).  But the character’s whose feminist-themed storylines remained unflinchingly delivered was always Cristina’s (e.g. her decision to get an abortion in two different seasons, her struggles to see marriage and career as coexisting options). 

But it was not just her actions that made her a feminist character – she was depicted like no other female character on the small screen.  In an article for Cosmopolitan, Lauren Hoffman denotes what made Cristina stand apart from the typical female primetime character:

Audiences typically like their television heroines optimistic, kind, put-together, and maybe a little spunky… Grey’s itself has had plenty over the years, from Izzie Stevens (smiler, baker, and marrier of dead men) to Arizona Robbins (healer of tiny humans and wearer of roller skate sneakers).  Compared to them — compared to anyone — Cristina is undeniably dark and twisty. But what’s progressive about the way the show has framed her character is that being undeniably dark and twisty doesn’t make her an anti-hero. In a world where women are often encouraged to smile, be nice, and keep their feelings to themselves, Cristina does, feels, and says what she wants — and she's not painted as a bad person, or even an unhappy one, for it. That makes her a downright revolutionary character.

Although Cristina did develop emotionally throughout the ten seasons of the show – and the final episode highlights this well – the program never undid what was at the heart of her character:  her self-confidence, ambition, and ferocity. 

During the lead up to her big goodbye the show provided quite a bit of misdirection through cleverly edited promos for the episodes to come that allowed viewers to predict her story ending in various different ways.  After she failed to win the Harper-Avery Award (due to behind-the-scenes politics), her departure from the Grey Sloane Hospital was inevitable.  The episode teasers allowed viewers to imagine for a moment that she would be leaving through some romantic reunion with Preston Burke, her original love interest on the show.  Although the thought of seeing their chemistry again was enough to make me excited to watch that particular episode I was horrified at the prospect of Cristina’s story ending with the stereotypical “happily ever after” (especially from a man who had hurt her so severely).  In the end, he was not offering her that reunion, but rather his place at the helm of a prestigious Cardiothoracic Institute in Zürich.   After this job offer dangled in the air, the trailers for the final episode led viewers to believe that Cristina wasn’t going to get to move on to that position because the promotional clips hinted that she was going to die in the mass casualty that the hospital would be dealing with (another of its infamous season-ending catastrophe episodes).  And this teaser didn’t end with the promos, the final episode itself let viewers hold their breath for at least ten minutes waiting to learn if Cristina (who had announced that she was going to the mall that experienced an explosion) was alive.  And during this ten-minute period, again, I yelled at the television asking why it was impossible to let a successful female doctor make the difficult decision to leave her home, friends, and lover, choosing to follow the path that was best for her career advancement.  But, thankfully, she wasn’t dead.

The final episode showed her struggling, realistically, with how to leave the people and place that had been such a big part of her life.  It gave final scenes that revealed the type of person she had become there:  a caring friend (this is highlighted well in the final scene between her and Alex and in the closing scenes where he realizes that she has left him her shares in the hospital and the seat on the board) and a dedicated surgeon (this is showcased when she continually almost misses her flight because she wants to finish he heart transplant for a family she had spent a great deal of time with). 

I was really glad that the last in person goodbye that she had in Seattle was not with Owen.  Although I loved their storyline and half wished he’d be written off in a way that inferred he was leaving with her, again, the “happily ever after” romantic goodbye just didn’t seem appropriate for this character.  With their nontraditional, complicated relationship, the goodbye they received – a knock on the glass, a long stare, a sad smile, and a wave from the observation room above where Owen was performing surgery – was perfect for them. 

Appropriately so, the last in person goodbye was between Cristina and Meredith.  Since that show has done such a beautiful job developing the friendship between these two strong female characters over the years, it was so very fitting that their moment was the final Seattle-based screen time Cristina received.  And, apparently, I was not alone in feeling this way.  Hoffman expands:

True friendship, rooted in something other than cattiness, superficiality, or talking about guys, is a rarity on television — if only because spotting two strong, fleshed-out female characters on a single television show in the first place is still pretty close to spotting a unicorn… And so while Meredith and McDreamy might be Grey’s power couple, Meredith and Cristina are the series’ most compelling love story.  “You’re my person” has become so engrained in the way we talk about relationships that it’s easy to forget that Cristina Yang (with the help of Grey's creator Shonda Rhimes) is the one who originally coined it, and who taught us that being someone’s person can be entirely platonic. But that doesn’t mean their relationship is easy. While we see other strong female characters fighting in primetime …there’s an intimacy to Meredith and Cristina that makes their conflict both more interesting and more difficult to watch.  Meredith and Cristina fight hard, and they fight about things that matter and aren’t easily resolved: love, family, career… They’ve shown us that you can profoundly disagree with someone without losing your love for them, and that while it’s hard to stay close to someone when your life choices start to really differ, it’s ultimately very worth the effort. 

The line in Hoffman’s essay about Meredith and Cristina being the most compelling love story of the show is worth highlighting because while I’ve enjoyed many of the romantic storylines throughout the years that Grey’s offered, it is true that some of the most memorable scenes are between the two of them that underscored the deep emotionality of their relationship.

 So Grey’s got it right:  this final scene between the best friends took viewers back to the beginning of their relationship.  It was not all hugs and tears; it was upbeat, fun, and heartwarming:  they “danced it out.”  The image of them dancing around the on-call room, hair flying in abandon, will run through my mind for a very long time as one of the best representations of female friendship and enduring love… and plain old love of life… that I have seen.

But, the episode didn’t exactly end there.  One of the last acts of friendship Cristina did, beyond gifting Alex her shares, was to give Meredith subtle advice to not blindly follow Derek as he pursued his dreams in D.C.  Cristina commented:  “Don’t let what he wants destroy what you want.  He’s very dreamy, but he’s not the sun.  You are.”  And, perhaps inspired by this comment (and her own doubts), Meredith ends up telling Derek that she will not move to D.C. and become his “trailing spouse” and calls him out on valuing his career over hers.  Again, excellent move Grey’s:  ending Cristina’s final episode with commentary on an important woman’s issue. 

Cristina does get the last scene of the episode, as she looks out from her new office in Zürich.  This moment is interrupted by Ross entering to tell her that the board is ready for her.  And while I did feel it was cheesy that her star intern asked to leave  his residency to come with her (especially considering their past fling) and I thought it could have lessened the powerful choice to embark out on her own, ultimately his insistence that he wanted to choose his education and that she was the teacher he wanted, was a nice inclusion as it again showed Cristina’s growth (being that at one point in time she had no interest in mentoring other doctors).  Sandra Oh provides the final voice over for the episode about how fear of the unknown can leave you stuck in place and that it is only through faith that the future will be beautiful that you can take risks and move on and really experience all that is in store for you.  A good message to end on and, all in all, a great send off for a fabulous character.