The redemption of Meredith Grey
Meredith Grey is one of the weirdest characters I've ever watched on television.

For one, fans of Grey's Anatomy always seem to react in two opposite extremes when it comes to her character: it's either they love her to bits or they hate her with a fiery vengeance. I am one of those fans who fluctuate between those two extremes.

I personally like her sometimes because I relate with her dark family issues, especially the ones concerning her mother (Dude, her own mother called her "nothing more than ordinary"). I'm also a fan of her long and empowered speeches. Who can forget the "You don't get to call me a whore" speech she gave Derek on the stairs back in season 2, or the "You happened to me" rant she gave her mother in season 3? 

On the other hand, the reason why people hate her so much can usually be found among the following reasons:

1) She started out as a "Mary Sue" character.  
-> By this I mean that her character was too sought after by everybody else. Did you notice in season 1 that everybody wanted to be with her, or at least sleep with her? There's Derek Sheperd, the supposedly perfect neurosurgeon who couldn't get enough of her since episode 1. Then there's George O'Malley who fell in love with her since the day they had that pre-internship party at the hospital. Even Alex Karev called Meredith "hot" when he was asking George if she was seeing anyone. Everybody in the show liked her, which gave way to everybody else in the show's fanbase hating her.

2) She whines a lot. Seriously.
-> She is such a self-centered character. She complains about everything, from people showing each other too much affection to her dysfunctional family and friends, to her hot boyfriend, to the chief of surgery, to the patients...everything! There was even an episode in season 4 where two ambulances hit each other and she had to give the bad news to the loved one of the ambulance driver. Instead of being concerned for the patient, she told the chief of surgery, "That woman will always remember ME as the one who gave her bad news." She was more concerned over the effect of the accident on her image than the welfare of the victims of the accident!

    The episode in season 1 where she was looking for roommates also demonstrated this major flaw. As she was interviewing prospects, she was judging them on the basis of the bands that they liked. Was it an interesting character quirk or was she just being plainly stuck-up, or in Filipino terms, maarte?

3) She is too ordinary.
-> It is sometimes hard to determine why she is the main character of Grey's Anatomy, or why everybody in the show likes her to begin with. As Sam Medenilla, my colleague from the Varsitarian, said, "She easily gets overshadowed by the other characters of the show." 

     She's not that goodlooking. Izzie Stevens trumps her when it comes to the hot babe scale.
     She's not that good in medicine. Cristina Yang, her best friend in the show, is the perfect medical student who memorizes everything to the last detail and who really knows what she wants when she finally finishes her residency.
     She's not that kind or compassionate. George O'Malley had to recover from the time Meredith slept with him out of self-pity. She started crying while they were doing it and even told him, "You're almost done, right?"

    In fact, there are a lot of reviewers and bloggers who say that her character is too flawed. An article in the website "The Hathor Legacy: the search for good female characters" states that the audience is forced to like someone who is childish and bratty because her personality is wrongly portrayed as "a goddess" in the show. Although main characters often make mistakes, Meredith almost never apologizes for any of her own. The other characters are constantly the ones who adjust to her.

Too close to the maker

Now, I have my own thoughts on why Meredith's character, especially in the earlier seasons of the show, is so messy and unrelatable. It's mostly because Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Grey's Anatomy, based Meredith's character on her own personality.

In fact, Shonda admitted that among the core characters of Grey's, Meredith is the one who is most like her. (http://www.wga.org/writtenby/writtenbysub.aspx?id=883). This includes the supposedly "cool" aversion to emotional expression and intimacy (other writers of the show said Rhimes could barely stand the candle-light trailer scene in the season 4 finale and the proposal scene in season 5). 

So in reality, we are actually watching a real person's personality and are being forced to relate to her. But the thing about characterization is that even though fictional characters are based on real persons, most of them are still anchored on a certain ideal that makes them relatable to the audience. It's a different case in Grey's. In my opinion, Shonda is somehow forcing her own personality on the audience through Meredith. She even picked an actress who was the same age as her: Ellen Pompeo is 39 years old, Rhimes is 39 years old.

In other words, she is too in love with Meredith's character, who is based on her own quirks in life, to let the latter evolve on her own.

Some of you may ask, "But isn't that the writer's job? Wouldn't Meredith cease to exist if the writer isn't there to create and manipulate her?"

The answer to that is both "yes" and one big "NO." Although there is some truth in the thought that it is because of the writer that a character exists, there comes a point in the story that characters come to their own and establish their fictional personalities. At that point, writers write according to the character's established psyche, not their thoughts on how the character should be.

I know that sounds confusing but that's the way believable characters are made.
 

The new Meredith
However, something happened in the latter seasons of Grey's that had me believing and actually liking Meredith again: she got well. In her own words, she got "all whole and healed."

Even though Rhimes was not a fan of the concept of therapy, she decided to have  Meredith undergo therapy sessions during the second half of season 4. Finally, we saw Meredith resolve her personal issues about her mom, dad, and her inability to commit.

She faced her mom's suicide attempt and its connection with her mom's infidelity. She also realized that her mom, who constantly told her how "ordinary" she was, actually wanted her to be extraordinary when it came to love. Her mom was not the greatest communicator but she also got over that...finally!

At the end of season 4, she realized that her purpose was to become extraordinary. So she ran towards Derek, admitted her feelings, and started her life as the whole and healed Meredith of season five.

 

Since then, there have been lots of improvements in her character. 

1) She no longer whines that much. She even asserted to her European friend Sadie in season 5, episode 16, that she wanted to be where she was at that moment, working as a resident at Seattle Grace and with the love of her life. She told Sadie that she wasn't "25, sleeping around Europe anymore." She wanted "to be here." 

2) She's been quite the supportive girlfriend, especially when Derek botched a major surgery in episode 16 and had to face a lot of trials after that. She endured being mistreated by Derek (the guy even threw her engagement ring to the woods!) and has been the key towards his return to the hospital. Although she held out on her "yes" to Derek's proposal until after Izzie's brain surgery, it was only appropriate to do so because the moment had to be perfect. She shouldn't say yes to a proposal for the sake of Derek's ego. She had to say "yes" to the man she loved, who should be as whole and healed as she was. Five seasons of Grey's owed us at least that much!

3) She actually has been the most stable and focused character for the second half of season 5. Izzie was all around the place because of her cancer, George was not around that much this season, Cristina fell for and couldn't let go of  Owen Hunt (an army doctor guy who was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder), and Alex just broke down and was lashing out at everyone when he found out Izzie was sick.

    Through it all, Meredith has been the one comforting, stabilizing, and helping everybody else. When Alex was lashing out because of Izzie's sickness, she just sat there and listened to him, reassuring him through the breakdown. She was also the one who gave Izzie's scans to Derek, the one man who could save Izzie's life.

   When Owen choked Cristina when they were sleeping, she stood in front of Owen, protecting Cristina from possible harm.

4) Personally, I liked the finale of season 5 when she told Cristina that she wanted to get married with Derek because she wanted the people that she loved to know that she loved them. 

    "I love you Cristina Yang," she said to Cristina.

   During the early seasons of Grey's, she had been the one with all the problems and whom everybody else compensated for. Now, the tables have turned. Meredith Grey has been redeemed!

But being redeemed does not equate to being deserving of exaltation. She still suffers from some serious character flaws---possibly remnants of her earlier self.

For example, when she says things like "I'm afraid of getting my happy ending," I just want to slap her silly and say, "What the heck is wrong with you, woman?"

But those quirks have become forgivable, at least for now. Hopefully, Meredith continues to improve next season so that she can finally prove why she's the star of the show to begin with.

Seriously.