Grey’s Anatomy has been discussing social movements in its recent episodes, and the trend continued when the #MeToo movement was explored in Thursday’s episode.
When news broke that Harper Avery, the doctor who founded the hospital foundation Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital is part of, sexually harassed at least 13 women, Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams) and his mom Catherine (Debbie Allen) had to deal with the turmoil. The number rose to 37 women by the end of the episode, and Catherine wanted to settle in court with the women.
“There is no way a powerful black woman is going to take responsibility of an old white guy,” Jackson said.
But there was a lot of controversy surrounding Jackson too. Everyone in the hospital found out that he was the anonymous donor for the hospital’s competition and thought he did it so he would win. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) was also genuinely upset because she gave back her Harper Avery Award because she didn’t want something with his name on it. Jackson started to compare the difficult people he was raised by to Meredith’s mom.
“My mother had to fight tooth and nail for every inch she gained,” Meredith said. “Harper Avery had everything except decency.”
While working on a difficulty case together, Meredith and Jackson came up with a way to keep Catherine’s reputation in tact.
“I’ll be damned if I let my grandfather do to you what he has done to all of those women,” Jackson said.
The solution was to disband the Harper Avery Foundation and make it the Catherine Fox Foundation. Fox is Catherine’s maiden name. They also planned to rehire and repay every person who was sexually harassed by Harper Avery.
Meredith jokingly just wanted her award changed.
“Can we please get this re-engraved because I worked way too hard to get this,” Meredith said pointing to her award.
It’s great to see Grey’s Anatomy taking on national issues. Not many TV shows go out of their way to get into the national conversation, and people often forget that TV is a prime place for those types of discussions.
Here’s how the fans reacted on Twitter:
Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on ABC.
