With 17 seasons and over 317 episodes, Grey's Anatomy has managed to become the longest-running scripted primetime show on ABC as well as the longest-running American primetime medical drama series. So, it’s not that surprising that the program has had its fair share of mistakes throughout the past 15 years.
But just because we’re cutting the show some slack doesn’t mean we’re completely letting it off the hook (sorry, Shonda Rhimes). Here are a few of our fave faux pas.
Allow us to begin with one major continuity mistake from season two—the pole. Remember that crazy episode "Into You Like a Train" where a train accident causes two victims to be impaled by the same pole and therefore stuck together? Well, as Screen Rant points out, each time the stuck-together duo is on screen, the pole somehow shifts and the two actors are either closer together or further apart than in the previous scene. Which simply doesn’t seem possible.
The following season (episode 20, to be exact) included one of the biggest medical mistakes of the show to date. In the episode, a woman comes in with a fork sticking out of her neck—we’re serious—and Dr. Meredith Grey orders an MRI. This raised a major red flag to viewers, according to Cheat Sheet, because an MRI machine is pretty much a giant magnet and someone with metal sticking out of their body would never be ordered to get one.
Season nine also featured quite a blunder picked up on by fans, during the episode where Dr. April Kepner gets proposed to by her love interest, Matthew. In the scene, she says yes and they hug to celebrate. In the initial shot, she wraps her arms around Matthew and is wearing medical gloves. However, in the next shot, her gloves are nowhere to be found and she’s somehow magically sporting a ring.
Later on, in season 10, Dr. Arizona Robbins is dealing with a case of a child who has pains in her stomach due to liver failure. While describing the illness, she refers to it as psoriasis. However, as those with medical backgrounds would have easily noticed, psoriasis is a skin disease that usually occurs on the legs, arms or scalp. It seems Dr. Robbins was likely talking about Cirrhosis and somehow no one managed to catch it.
You can bet we’re giving our undivided attention to every detail in this current season.
Want Netflix's top shows sent right to your inbox? Click here.