Showrunner on season 20 premiere reboot and more

In his trailer for Deadline season 20, new Grey’s Anatomy Showrunner Meg Marinis called it “back to basics,” and the season premiere, which she wrote, offered just that. on a return to grey In the early years, the episode ended with Bailey returning to take charge of the surgery interns.

The first match began with the inmates facing the music after getting into trouble with questionable medical decisions in the season 19 finale and Nick asking them a question: “Which one of you am I firing?”

Banned from exercising medical functions, the group finds itself in the middle of the action anyway. Simone and Lucas end up in the back of an ambulance trying to stabilize a patient under Bailey and Meredith’s instructions while their parked vehicle is hit by a self-driving car every two minutes. (It is unclear why the ambulance did not move away from the crashed car.) Kwan also got in on the action, saving the day by making the car stop when he slashed its tires.

Trying to save Teddy’s life, Owen makes the difficult decision to accept a risky surgery and then holds his ex-wife Amelia’s hand while he waits for the result. After complications, Teddy is out of danger and faces a long recovery.

While promising Catherine that she would return to the conventional approach to Alzheimer’s research to maintain her funding, Meredith secretly recruits Amelia to help her continue the controversial new path she had been exploring.

Jo and Link feel guilty about the death of their patient Sam as they prepare to go public with their relationship, while Meredith and Nick’s relationship remains on track after their reconciliation in the finale. Meanwhile, Richard asks Bailey to take a step back until he can trust himself again as he rejoins AA after his near-relapse in the finale.

In an interview with Deadline, Marinis discusses the events of the premiere and how they will shape the character arcs in the upcoming episodes. For more on season 20, including Ellen Pompeo’s status as Meredith continues to appear occasionally, the returns of Jessica Capshaw and Alex Landi, the new character played by Natalie Morales, and why Scott Speedman’s hair looks so different from last season’s finale, read Deadline’s preview.

DEADLINE: Let’s start with Meredith. After her conversation in the elevator in which Catherine says “I always win”, it appears that she returns to Boston. Is she and how will she juggle the official and secret investigation?

MARINIS: Meredith, although still in Seattle at the end of the episode, will continue to work in Boston because that’s where her daughter goes to school, and her daughter was the main reason she moved to Boston. She is still trying to manage her work and family life. But the secret investigation is fun, and being able to do it with her sister Amelia and keep that relationship alive too, when we can’t see Meredith but we can see Amelia. And so we keep Meredith’s character alive, being able to know what she is doing even when we don’t see her. And anything where Debbie Allen (who plays Catherine) plays the villain is fantastic.

DEADLINE: Scott Speedman’s Nick started the episode firmly in charge of the internship program, but ended up resigning. What is the future of Speedman, who appears as a guest star? Will we see him again this season?

MARINIS: Yes, he was listed as a guest star. We’re so excited for Meredith and Nick to be together that we might see him again. We will continue that relationship.

DEADLINE: In another twist, Nick was replaced by Bailey. This is your first season as showrunner, and one of the first major creative decisions you made was to reboot and almost go back to Season 1 with a ragtag group of interns and Bailey in charge. What was the impetus for that decision?

MARINIS: That decision came about when I was initially thinking about Bailey, where Bailey will go in her career after winning the Catherine Fox; In our world, that is the prize of all prizes. We’ve seen Meredith win it and go through a career transition after winning it.

And although the work she did was in reproductive care, the award was for teaching reproductive care. And Bailey is the teacher of all teachers. She has created surgeons such as Meredith Gray, Cristina Yang, Alex Karev, Izzie and George. She doesn’t get the credit that she deserves for all the teaching and mentoring that she has provided, that she has sent all these surgeons to do incredible things.

And I was also thinking that where we left the interns at the end of last season, they’re in the messiest of pickles. So I thought, who’s going to bring them back from that? And I thought, oh, there’s only one person who can bring them back from that and that’s Bailey.

DEADLINE: In the premiere, all the interns are struggling with the consequences of the ending. At the end of last season, romantic relationships between them were forming very quickly, but everyone seems to be putting a pause on that in the premiere. Are you restarting that too, trying to withdraw those relationships?

MARINIS: I think when you go through something like what happened at the end of last season, it’s hard to come back from that. I think these five interns, Gray Sloan, was the only program that accepted them, and none of them want to ruin this last chance to become a surgical intern. And I think when that’s put in jeopardy, you start to look around and think, how did I get here and who put me here? Is it my fault or is it his fault? I think there are a lot of questions about who is to blame for what happened at the end of the finale.

DEADLINE: There was also a strange similarity to what happened to Levi, who also lost a patient in a similar situation, which plunged him into a deep depression. With Lucas, he seems to have come out of this a little easier. Is the worst over for him? Would Levi help him and Simone get over the loss of a patient?

MARINIS: You’ll still see a lot of Levi with these interns this season, using, what you said, his past experiences to help guide them. I think there was also a difference with what happened with Levi. These interns have only been interns for about five or six months, we’re still halfway through his internship year, and he was a senior resident and blatantly didn’t listen to anything. So I think there are differences, but that story doesn’t end with the premiere.

DEADLINE: There was this moment between Owen and Amelia while Teddy was in the operating room where they were holding hands. Owen has been completely committed to his wife, but this is Grey’s Anatomy, and they are exes, so you never know. Are they firmly in the friend zone or could there be something else going on?

MARINIS: Yes, they are in the friend zone. But it’s a friendship that we found really interesting in the writers’ room, because they’ve been married. They’ve been through so much together that I think they’re comfortable being in that space together. I think they’ve also been through a lot with their relationship with Teddy.

DEADLINE: For Teddy, the worst is over, will we see her back and will her recovery be part of the season?

MARINIS: Yes, his recovery will surely be part of the arc of his season. She hasn’t returned perfectly immediately after the premiere.

DEADLINE: For me, the premiere had a lot to do with guilt. The interns were sorry for losing a patient, Jo was sorry for not being there to help, Richard was sorry for almost succumbing to temptation. Talk about it.

MARINIS: Absolutely. I think when things like this happen, you immediately go into this space of how could I have avoided it and could I have avoided it. It seems like we’re dealing with immediate guilt now, but as we move forward we’ll see many of our characters reset to start from the beginning to make sure what they just experienced isn’t forgotten or unlearned, if that makes sense.

It’s interesting because a lot of what happened at the end of last year continues throughout this season. We really don’t forget about it. It still weighs on everyone and how they can truly move forward and not make the same mistakes again.

DEADLINE: I mentioned Link and Jo are preparing to go public with their relationship. Will there be obstacles in the way for them? There are many entanglements for each of them with the doctors at the hospital.

MARINIS: Absolutely. I feel like their union took two seasons, so I feel like it’s very deserved to see them happy for a second. I think like any relationship where you live and co-parent, have a romantic relationship and work together, there will always be challenges. And we will have to be able to watch, wait and see. Can they leave those challenges at work or do they come home with them?

DEADLINE: Ultimately, Richard returned to Alcoholics Anonymous and told Bailey he was going back to the hospital. How much of his problems will we see this season and how much will Richard step away from his daily duties as he recovers?

MARINIS: I think the best way to say it is that it will simplify your tasks at work and make sure you focus and concentrate on your well-being at the same time. He will still be in the hospital, but at the end of the episode he tells Bailey that he wants to be able to trust himself again. And then he needs to come back, make sure he trusts himself, make sure his mind is clear so that he doesn’t falter in either his sobriety or his work.

DEADLINE: AI is a big topic these days. In the premiere you had a self-driving car that didn’t work properly. Why did you decide to tackle AI? Is this something you’re going to do more of? Grey?

MARINIS: For me, AI, I think a lot of people don’t understand it, and I think it’s moving very fast. So I was interested to see that and also, you’re reading about technology that’s not ready that’s been released, I’m always interested in that.

And I also think that being a doctor is a professional and you keep your own feelings when dealing with the patient, but you also have to handle the compassionate side of being a human being. I think there are a lot of interesting things for people in healthcare, where they have to care for other people all day long and then at home it’s like an avalanche of emotions.

Honoring doctors is a big part of why I love this job. I think they have the hardest job in the world and I think it’s gotten harder. So that part was interesting to me as well, when you use feelings to make decisions and what happens with the repercussions of that. Because obviously Simone and Lucas had that, Blue had that with Maxine. It’s also spreading throughout the episode.

DEADLINE: What is the general theme of season 20?

MARINIS: A theme for the season is getting back to basics. You see a lot of rebooted people in the premiere, and Bailey isn’t going to go easy on these interns. It will be so much fun to see her put them to the test.