This week on Grey’s Anatomy (5.6 “Life During Wartime”), Callie and Erica had great sex, prompting Erica to have a revelation, and Callie to run away and sleep with Sloane — twice — and ultimately conclude that she liked sex with both of them, but wants to date Erica exclusively.
Here are pics from their opening scene:
Best scene? Easy: Erica’s tearful coming-out speech (“I am so, so gay!”) comparing sex with Callie to the first time she got glasses as a child, and could finally see leaves for the first time (“you are the glasses!”). Terrific acting and writing.
Worst scene(s)? Most of the ones between Sloane and Callie, and not because Callie was questioning her sexual orientation — that kind of introspection and doubt is a natural part of coming-out for most women — but because the sex scenes with Mark were gratuitous and played into stereotypes about promiscuous bisexuals.
Before you all give your take on the episode in the comments, here’s mine, for what’s it worth: as insensitively as Callie’s coming-out process has been handled, I think this is simply the writers clumsy way of differentiating between Erica and Callie — of trying to communicate that Erica is gay, but Callie is bisexual.
Here’s what Grey‘s writer Mark Wilding wrote about the develoments between the two on this episode:
Callie and Erica have yet to…calibrate. If that’s the word. They’re moving at different speeds into their relationship. Callie’s more hesitant, maybe not sure she wants to throw herself one hundred percent into this thing. While Erica sees the leaves on the trees for God’s sake!
Could they have communicated that they’re moving at different speeds in a way that was equally interesting, but didn’t involve Callie having sex with Mark multiple times? Yes, but it’s easier and more compelling to the show’s broader (read: heterosexual) audience just to show her bed hopping. Sex is used frequently on this show to communicate things that would be better dealt with through conversation, but that’s Seattle Grace for you.
Although we don’t yet know how this relationship will play out, it seems clear that the two will be romantically involved for awhile, in part because of statements like this one made a few months ago by series creator Shonda Rhimes:
We’re going to watch [Erica’s side of the story] play out and then we’re going to watch the larger world of what happens when the two of them come out in the hospital, and what happens when Callie’s dad finds out and that sort of thing, which I think is going to be really, really interesting.
Now discuss away!
