Plot flows from character, not the other way around. Remember this maxim, and you create fantastic television, like season two of Grey’s Anatomy. Forget, and you create mediocre television. Like season three of Grey’s Anatomy.

GA bought a whole lot of credibility in my eyes last season with their Super Bowl stunt. What happened? ABC aired the first episode of a powerful two-parter of GA right after the big game. Amazingly, GA held onto a portion of the Bowl audience somewhere in the upper 30 millions. Even more amazingly, a lot of these new viewers came back for more the following week. The cliffhanger episode achieved everything a network executive could hope for from “event” programming. Christina Ricci earned an Emmy nomination, and GA gained a major ratings spike, their average viewership jumping from 17-ish million to mid 20s.

Sure, GA pulled a cheap trick to do attain the win: the first minutes of the post-Super Bowl show involved George’s sexual fantasy about his three hot co-workers showering together. (You know that scene had to have come from a brainstorming session about how to get the football crowd’s attention.) However, they paid it off with a beautiful bookend involving the same women in the shower, this time with two doctors tending to their devastated friend. Following this move of simultaneous artistic and business prowess, the show delivered an amazing finale (albeit staged before a contrived and corny prom.)

So it is all the more disappointing that the creative team seems to have lost its bearings in season three.

The reason television can be better than movies, when it’s good, is that we, the audience, get to experience characters week-in and week-out. We can see patterns of how a protagonist handles many challenges, instead of the one or two main ones s/he might tackle in a movie. In the hands of a skilled showrunner, we watch characters evolve over the course of a series in satisfying ways. In short, the characters become our friends. Who among us wouldn’t swear loyalty, promising to do whatever is necessary to help Buffy and company slay the latest demon? Which of us doesn’t love to pull up a seat at the bar to hear Norm and Carla bet over whether Sam will bed Rebecca? Part of the reason we come back for more is the delight we feel in watching how our “friends” on these shows will react to situations. But for that to work, their characters must be consistent to themselves.

I offer the following observations and advice–as humbly as anyone pretentious enough to make a web page offering his observations and advice can–on how GA can turn its team of doctors back into my friends.

George
problem: George was a perfect butt monkey. He has a huge heart, and an enormous capacity to plod forward when life and friends dump on him. For this reason we love him, and for this reason we cheer in the moments when he stands up for himself, or fixes a heart in a stuck elevator. But we can only love those moments from him if he is otherwise a nice guy. He’s not allowed to be mean to Izzy just because he’s had a bad day. He’s not allowed to yell at Callie for asking him how his dad is doing. By the way, did anyone else think it was weird how he noticed Burke’s hand, then insisted Burke do the operation on his dad, then went back to suspecting problems with Burke’s hand? Plus, a couple of weeks ago he swore to Callie that he was ready to commit to her, that he was the pig, then he flip-flopped. Is this because she slept with Sloan? When she and George were broken up? Cuz that’s not very pig of him.
solution: Kill off Callie. (Sorry!) Let George’s loss regain our sympathy. Allow him to evolve into a quiet source of wisdom.

Izzy
problem: Izzy went nuts. She did something that would make a doctor unhirable. It’s TV, so they let her back. Still wounded by her experience, she’s on probation. She had a whole lot of doubts about coming back, and then those just sorta instantly went away. Now she jokes around with patients and has even started sniping at her superiors for not letting her practice medicine as actively as before, though she’s been back on the job less than a month. And now she comes unglued with George. She once insisted that she is his best friend (that declaration being the first real evidence of such a relationship) and yet she feels betrayed by him because he brought up her story to his parents. That’s how she reacts to her best friend’s moment of need?
solution: Contrition, and plenty of it. Her turmoil has been about loss, but if I’m to like her again, it needs to be at least a little bit about being sorry for what she did. Meanwhile, she exploded into a big ball of crazy last year. Her pain is an infinite well, and other than a check on her fridge, she’s back to chuckling with George’s mom. How about we put Izzy on the case of a patient with the same condition as Denny?

Alex
problem: He had a bad boy thing going, now undercut too many times for us to believe. He has a thing for Izzy, but it only shows up when convenient to that day’s story. We don’t see it in his eyes. And does ANYONE believe he’s going to wind up in plastics, and not ob/gyn? We get it already.
solution: Hurt him. Let him specialize in babies or peds, and let his hinted-at knack flourish. Then work him to the breaking point with a patient who dies. He shuts down. He gives up. His automatic defense mechanism is his old brusque bad boy ways. But this time, his friends know better. We get great scenes as they try to guide him through his pain. Finally, one of them really connects with him. Izzy would be obvious, but wouldn’t it be interesting to watch George or Meredith be the one who reaches him?

Addison
problem: The strange tense moment between her and Alex was just gross and weird. Are we out of combinations of cast members? Addison was the third wheel. She left the east coast only to see if she could patch things up with her husband, which she did not. She has a brownstone in New York, and a vacation spot in the Hamptons. She has ZERO motivation to be in Seattle.
solution: Drop her from the show.

Callie
problem: Similarly, Callie was a character added to complicate a story line. While she was masterfully used as Meredith’s confidant at one point, she otherwise has no role so far beyond her relationship with George. If George and Callie are not an item, she’s vestigial.
solution: See solution for Addison, above.

Sloan
problem: Using this character as a fourth player to the Meredith-Addison-Derek love triangle was inspired. But then why did he come back? To sleep with Addison some more? To sleep with Callie? Maybe, but those cards are played now, too. He exists for no reason other than to torment Alex, growing every more ridiculously roguish and shallow. He has become a cartoon.
solution: See solution for Addison above, and expedite. Although I DO want to grow my beard like his.

Christina & Burke
problem: Sure, the drama surrounding Burke’s hand tremors was some of the more interesting story of this season. Upping the stakes to George’s dad was really smart. But what started as guilt and stress over keeping a secret that could hurt people turned into a story about Burke asserting his independence from Christina’s help, and her running to tattle because of it. Yet all of this happened against the removal of the threat; his hand had been fine for a while, and he performed two difficult surgeries successfully. And I was already having problems telling which of them was pushing the other towards what. Their motivations seemed to stem more from what would make that week’s story move. What I know about Christina is that she is cutthroat and unemotional. What I know about Burke is that he is cool and emotionally available. If you want to reverse that, cool. But only once, not weekly.
solution: End their relationship. Badly. Then, wouldn’t it be interesting if they DON’T get in trouble? After all, there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing. Just a record of successful surgeries at which Christina helped more than normal—successfully. But Christina, despite what it will do to her career, pushes for Burke’s suspension. Meanwhile, Burke starts actually convincing himself he didn’t do anything wrong. He becomes Chief of Surgery, and Christina has to work under her bitter ex-boyfriend.

Meredith & McDreamy
problem: I stopped caring about this supposedly central romance long ago, and my apathy grows with every hair-sniffing elevator ride. The Boy leaves his cheating wife and finds Girl, a soul mate, but then puts that on hold to attempt to save his marriage. OK. Girl turns to empty sex in an effort to get over Boy, the love of her life. Sure. Boy and Girl have sex at prom. Wow. But Boy stays with his wife. Um… So Girl swears off men and sex entirely. I guess. But then Girl finds a nice-guy veterinarian to provide us a love triangle for a while, and insists she wants to date them both, but no one ever really goes on a date. Wait a minute… So Girl picks Boy, and Boy finally divorces his wife. Together at last! Oh, wait, Boy needs his space. Oh, and now, Girl, whose lack of prudishness was somewhat central to the premise of this show doesn’t want to have sex with Boy, the love of her life. HUH?!? The eventuality of these two coming together has been put off so many time it’s not even McFunny. So now Girl likes to take bubble baths with Boy to show him just how much she doesn’t want to have sex. I’m sorry, but this is just tension for tension’s sake.
solution: Let them be together. There is no risk of Moonlighting Disease on a show where the characters hook up in minute four of your pilot. There are enough other things to keep us interested. Let us see WHY these to actually BELONG together, something the show has been short on up until now. Show us Meredith dealing with Derek and his guilt at not having repaired Burke’s hand. Show us Derek going to meet Meredith’s mother for the first time. Give us a year or two of their starts and stops as a couple. Allow us to care about their romance. Suddenly it will be interesting down the road if one of them is in peril, or if they have a big fight.