15 Grey’s Anatomy couples ranked on their relationship functionality

10. Alex and Izzie

Years ago around when the show first began, if you had asked a Grey’s Anatomy fan who their favorite character was, Alex Karev likely would not have made the list. In the beginning, he was arrogant, reckless, and an all around terrible human being. He was supposed to be. It gave him plenty of room to become someone better.

He has since grown up and become one of the fandom’s favorites. But somewhere in the middle came his relationship with Izzie. And it wasn’t good. It didn’t start well and it certainly didn’t end on a high note, either.

At this point in time, Alex was not ready for a serious, long-term relationship, especially not with someone like Izzie. 

While going through cancer and its many traumas and treatments may have possibly helped her to see life from a new angle, he still had not dealt with many of the things he would later come to accept and even embrace.

Now, he has reconciled his relationship with his mother and has formed a healthy, fully functional relationship with Jo. But back then, he was still the kind of person who would sleep with multiple women in an attempt to get over Izzie leaving him. Which is, it turns out, exactly what happened.

And Izzie was very much the kind of person who would walk away from such a meaningful relationship and never look back. She was always reactive, always springing into action before she thought about what she was doing. Romantically, in the end, this did not work out in her favor.