We’re just days away from the Grey’s Anatomy Season 19, and we’re already dreading the forced Station 19 crossover stories.
Grey’s Anatomy has been one of the longest-running American primetime medical drama series. It has had multiple crossover events during this long period with its spinoff show, Station 19.
Characters have jumped across both the shows, and storylines have intermingled many times.
Not all of these crossover events have added value to either of the shows. Often, these crossovers are done to make the audience watch both the shows and boost viewership, making these events pure bait.
Grey’s Anatomy is a much more popular show, so some of these events get created to make the audience start watching Station 19 as well.
Fans dislike being forced into watching another show they do not organically watch. And sometimes, they want to focus on one show at a time.
Some of these crossovers feature major plot points in one show and the aftermath in the other.
Essentially the shows try to bait the audience into watching an entire episode of another show just for a few minutes of information instead of letting the audience gravitate towards both shows organically.
A lot of these crossover events are not very meaningful.
You won’t miss much if you only watch one of the two shows, but sometimes these episodes are written in a way that you will miss a lot of information if you don’t watch both shows.
This gets more frustrating if you’re in a country where both these shows are on different channels/platforms.
Crossovers also make little sense in this day and age of streaming, where people would rather binge-watch season after season of a show rather than jump back and forth between two shows to understand plot points.
Here are four times ABC baited us into watching Station 19:
Andrew DeLuca’s Death
Andrew DeLuca had gradually become a significant character on Grey’s Anatomy and a fan favorite. His death was a shocker for all viewers and even more so because it happened on another show!
Grey’s Anatomy fans were not given the closure of watching how this character died, and we were baited into watching Station 19 to do so.
The storyline of how he died was built up on Grey’s Anatomy, the story itself took place on Station 19, and the aftermath was in Grey’s Anatomy. Andrew Deluca died on Grey’s Anatomy Season 17 Episode 7, but we needed more information on how.
This forced Grey’s Anatomy fans to watch Station 19 Season 4 Episode 6 if they wanted to know what happened to this beloved character.
The execution of both the episodes leaves glaring plot holes if you only watched one of them.
Phoenix Fair
Grey’s Anatomy Season 18 Episode 1 was promoted as a crossover event with Station 19. The advertising made it seem like a massive crossover event when it was pretty underwhelming in reality.
What was shown on Station 19 barely made an impact on Grey’s Anatomy viewers, and it felt as if the advertising was baiting people into watching both shows.
In a fictional post-pandemic world, Grey’s Anatomy showed us Phoenix Fair in Seattle, where things get out of hand due to a fireworks accident. Some patients featured in the episodes of the two shows, while none of the actual cast crossed over this time.
Cliffside Cliffhanger
This was yet another instance when something major happened to a significant Grey’s Anatomy character, most of which occurred on Station 19.
The setup of this event happened on Grey’s Anatomy Season 18 Episode 8, when Owen Hunt, Teddy Altman, and Cormac Hayes had a car accident. Teddy and Hayes managed to escape the vehicle, but Owen was still in the car.
After this setup was seen on Grey’s Anatomy, we were shown on Station 19 Season 5 Episode 9 that the firefighters helped rescue Owen, who was badly injured.
Jackson and Vic
The romance between Jackson Avery and Vic Hughes happened in Grey’s Anatomy Season 16 and Station 19 Season 2.
Since two of the most notable characters from both shows were involved, it compelled fans to want to watch both. But Grey’s Anatomy viewers who do not watch Station 19 were not very familiar with Vic, so the romantic scenes between the two felt flat.
While small crossovers between the two shows happen all the time, splitting a significant relationship between two shows was not the best idea. The audience needed to watch both shows parallelly to understand what was happening.
The writers probably thought making two characters from the two shows date each other would give them more opportunities to crossover, baiting more and more people into watching both shows.
It’s apparent that decisions like these crossovers are made purely for business and less for creativity. It would be much more organic and fun to watch if the two shows were interwoven only when required and as a treat for the audience, not as regular occurrences that soon become annoyances.
The crossovers would feel more natural if characters from the two shows made appearances in the other without affecting the storyline.
Grey’s Anatomy was recently renewed for a record nineteenth season and Station 19 for a sixth season, so the crossovers are likely to continue, hopefully in a better, more creative way.
Neha Kapoor is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.