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“Grey’s Anatomy” has a heart that, somehow, someway, is still beating.
But almost 21 seasons later, it may be time to pull the plug on one of the most important television shows in pop culture history.
“Grey’s Anatomy” premiered on ABC in 2005 and was a TV juggernaut for over a decade. Fans fell in love with the crazy medical stories and the epic romances between Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Derek (Patrick Dempsey), Callie (Sara Ramirez) and Arizona (Jessica Capshaw), Mark (Eric Dane), Lexie (Chyler Leigh) and more.
But the show hasn’t been the same for a long, long time. Why is that?
“Grey’s” put itself into a proverbial coma when it lost some of the beloved characters that were keeping fans engaged week after week.
In the span of three seasons, Mark and Lexie died, Christina (Sandra Oh) left, and then Derek died.
Flash forward to today and only three original cast members (Pomeo, Chandra Wilson and James Pickens Jr.) are starring in Season 21.
The rest of the cast features either later additions like Jo Wilson (Camilla Luddington) and Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd), who are still “Grey’s” staples, or fresh faces that the audience hasn’t cared enough about to love, since they miss the old guard.
Even Lynette Rice, a “Deadline” editor and reporter who wrote the book “How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy,” an unauthorized oral history of the show, knows “Grey’s” is not the same.
“Grey’s Anatomy isn’t the powerhouse it used to be,” Rice exclusively told The Post, adding, “but that doesn’t make it any less valuable to ABC.”
Rice pointed out that the show streams on Netflix, which has brought in a whole new generation of viewers. Still, there’s a lack of love for the current era of the show. And we can’t live in the past forever.
“It makes me a little sad that ABC is squeezing every last whipple out of this aging franchise, but the alternative is seeing the death of broadcast TV,” Rice also said. “And that’s not good for any of us. Save the Big Four!
Like many, Rice “lost interest” in the show after Derek was killed. (“What can I say? I was always Team McDreamy”).
It’s been alleged (including in Rice’s book) that there were behind-the-scenes reasons for Dempsey’s exit from the show. Regardless, “Grey’s” never recovered after losing its McDreamy.
And try as it may, the show hasn’t been able to replicate the magic of Meredith and Derek since.
So the question remains: is it time to pull the plug on “Grey’s Anatomy?”
Creator Shonda Rhimes told Entertainment Tonight last year she doesn’t even know how the show will end. Not a great sign.
“I knew how that story will end when we were in Season 6, in Season 7 and maybe Season 10, and after that I just gave up because I would write those endings and the show just kept going,” said Rhimes, who is no longer the showrunner on “Grey’s” (Meg Marinis has that job now).
“I’ll have a feeling the same way I knew ‘Scandal’ [was going to end]. I’ll have a feeling of like, ‘We’ve done what we needed to do here,’” she added.
Season 21 of “Grey’s” won’t be like the glory days. Luckily, fans can follow Rice’s lead and always go back to when the show was at its very best.
“I just started rewatching Season 1 last week on Netflix,” she told The Post.
“Gosh, that ensemble was magic.”
“Grey’s Anatomy” returns for Season 21 on Thursday, Sept. 26 at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.