Meredith Grey can't seem to catch a break on Grey's Anatomy. Photo / ABC
When: Tuesday, 8.30pm
Where: TV2
Phew. It's been another lovelorn, action-packed, and often traumatic sixth season at Seattle Grace.
For starters, key characters Izzie and George left the show, the former disappearing after being fired and then returning again, only to leave for good when Alex Karev ended their relationship. Meanwhile, poor George exited the
show in gruesome circumstances after being hit by a bus.
Then there's been the staff's fight to survive the budget cuts, the story about Richard's battle with the bottle has revealed the former chief of surgery as a far more interesting character, and the merging of Seattle Grace with Mercy West has brought new characters into the fold, including the annoying Dr April Kepner and the cool Dr Jackson Avery.
Then there's the lesbian affair between Callie and Arizona that ended badly when one wanted a baby and the other didn't, and the bizarre love triangle of Cristina, Owen and Teddy. Sort it out would ya, Owen.
And now for the finale. The first part of this two-hour episode screened last week with the hospital under siege from gunman Gary Clark who is dead set on revenge for his wife, who died when her life support was turned off, for which Clark holds Derek responsible.
As Clark scoured the hospital looking for Derek the body count mounted with the killing of young surgical resident Reed Adamson, and the shooting of Charles Percy and Alex Karev. Cristina and Meredith, who is pregnant, set off to find Derek, but Clark got to him first and the show ended with Derek being shot.
The saga continues this week with Alex and Derek in the operating theatre with their lives hanging in the balance - and Clark is still on the loose.
Grey's creator and writer Shonda Rhimes had been planning the finale from the start of this season and says the events that unfold have a major impact on the future development of the characters.
"When you face a situation like this - when everyone you know has faced life or death - it's an incredibly traumatic event," she says. "Everything you knew, felt, and required of the characters in terms of what their stories have been, or what you believed about them, no longer exists."
Because of the way the sixth season ends it leaves the show open to start fresh next season. "Almost anything can happen because we just came out of this. The characters all fundamentally change."
