When I first started watching Grey's Anatomy for the first time, there were "only" 12 seasons, and once I began, I could barely stop until I'd caught up. I've never had the time since to do a full rewatch -- in fact, I'm pretty sure to this day there are only a handful of episodes I have seen more than once. And my question to the masses is this: Is it now too late?
We're coming up on the back half of Season 21 at this point. The majority of the original cast is gone -- even Ellen Pompeo isn't there full-time anymore. Miraculously, the show has managed to maintain its highly successful framework while continuously adapting, shifting characters in and out, and almost -- almost -- becoming a new and improved version of itself after Meredith's departure.
Is it worth watching from the very beginning? I have absolutely no doubt. I don't agree with every opinion about the show's decline in quality, but I don't disagree that those early seasons were quite literally magical.
Would I be able to watch the latest season, though, without nostalgia clouding my judgment of each new episode? Would I start thinking things like, "They don't make Grey's quite like this anymore?" And even if that may be a little bit true to some degree, is it really the lens I want to wear as the rest of Season 21 and beyond plays out before our eyes?
What is the actual honest appeal of starting the show over with Season 1? Are we looking for the kind of safety and comfort that comes with watching a show we've seen before -- or is it a true love of Grey's and the universe in which it exists that prompts us to go back to the beginning and press play?
Perhaps it's a little bit of both. Nostalgia isn't always a dirty word. Grey's is simultaneously the show you watch with cheap pizza and a glass of wine on a Friday night and the thing you turn to when you know you need to watch something good. How those two things can exist at once, I'm still not sure. Maybe I'll have to start a rewatch for real to figure it out.