This review contains SPOILERS for Grey's Anatomy season 21, episode 16.
Grey's Anatomy, much like its fans, is no stranger to tragedy. It's called a medical "drama" for a reason. While it often over-exaggerates plenty of aspects of surgical medicine and what it's like to work in a renowned teaching hospital, at its heart it thrives on its ability to weave its themes equally between the lives of its surgeons both inside and outside Grey Sloan Memorial's walls.
Amelia Shepherd is more familiar with heartbreak than most on the show (rivaling Meredith Grey in many cases, but somehow still not coming quite close enough). There's the honest fact that she's a neurosurgeon known for performing risky procedures, perhaps facing a higher volume of patient loss than many of her colleagues. But even outside of her career, she's arguably been through too much. Almost to the point of becoming uncomfortable.
Where should I begin? The traumatic loss of her father at a young age? The equally traumatic loss of the father of her child -- then losing that child tragically and spiraling into despair thereafter (because who wouldn't?). Losing colleagues and friends, then her brother (whom, mind you, she didn't get to say goodbye to despite there technically having been an opportunity to do so? Surviving a brain tumor? These writers really just keep dragging her through it for seemingly no reason other than the drama.
Does it make for good television? Of course it does. It's good viewing no matter how insufferable it starts to feel after a while. Most recently she's been put through a completely unnecessary breakup, because why let her be happy for even a second? This season she finally started to seem like she really was thriving. And now she's almost been forced to perform this extremely risky surgery on a child, and at the end of this most recent episode something has gone terribly wrong and it might be all her fault -- in the way you can blame a surgeon for not succeeding even when they, technically, did everything right.
Why put her through this? What is the point? She's been weaving in and out of the show's main storylines for a while, and this was the first episode in a while that put her back in the spotlight -- only for her to, maybe, fail? We don't know the rest of the story yet, but our girl was stressed going into this surgery. Maybe this will bring Amelia and Monica closer. Maybe it will resolve something she hasn't dealt with yet from the past. Or maybe this is setting up a good end-of-season cliffhanger -- there are only two episodes left before the season ends. I wouldn't put it past them.
Amelia doesn't deserve to suffer any more than she already has. Look at Meredith, who finally seems to be getting a break from the never-ending doom parade. We can get Amelia there. Focus the drama on everyone else and, for once, just let her operate on people's brains in peace.