The fans of “Grey’s Anatomy” have been through a lot. We’ve loved, we’ve lost, we’ve loved again and then we’ve lost again. But after seeing so many things that once made this show great get cancer, shot, hit by busses, crushed by planes, electrocuted, hit by trucks or just get boring (that’d be you Jackson), many of us are still tuning in to see if there’s any steam left in this ferry boat. I say ‘things’ and not people, because as hard as I try, I can’t help but feel that as much as Grey’s wants us to keep smiling at the new interns and new cases, my heart to care isn’t as full as it used to be – and it’s simply because the pieces we’re left with just don’t fit. It’s become obvious that the pillars of this series aren’t the freak-of-the-week cases or the interchangeable acts of sex in an on-call room, but the core cast of characters that built the show: Characters that are now all but gone.

None of this is a surprise: excitement for the show has steadily declined as the death tolls have gone up. But at least the show is aware of the up hill battle it’s facing to try and recapture it’s spark. At the close of this week’s premiere,  Meredith tells us to “forget everything we know about Anatomy” as she takes a sledgehammer to her childhood home. But with so much riding on this season after the loss of Derek you just know that this isn’t really Mer talking about a dead cadaver, but Shonda Rhimes talking about the stagnant linchpin of TGIT.

A lot of effort was made this week to help us forget how dreary the show became last season: Arizona is bubbly again; Maggie is bursting out of her shell; Callie is laying down the law basically showing us that she’s got her “oh no you didn’t” groove back; Bailey made a speech that didn’t end with me being depressed (!); Jo and Alex are being sexy and sweet living in their loft… which is cool… I guess? And Meredith is pissed at her new living situation (girls apparently don’t just want to have fun).

But ultimately is a few goofy meltdowns, some impromptu violence against a bigot (nice swing Mags) and a new focus on ‘roommate drama’ a la season one, enough to revive what’s been lost? With just this episode to go on, the answer is no. It’s no secret that Grey’s has strayed in the last decade from what made it excellent to begin with, but it hasn’t strayed in a vacuum. I can’t imagine anyone watching is as happy to move on as quickly as the show wants us to, and unfortunately this weeks hammerhead approach to shoving what it thinks is good-old-fashioned fun down our throats is borderline offensive.

This premiere and the places are Grey/Sloan Docs are in now, owes everything to what has come before. And in it’s attempt to reboot so hastily, the show is now in danger of feeling like “Grey’s Anatomy” lite: Fat free and soul free. No one mentioned Derek and aside from a ferry boat scrub cap and an obligatory family photo on the fridge, it’s almost as if McDreamy could’ve been a McDream all along. Arizona’s re-discovered pixie-esque buzziness is nice but are any of us fooled  by a bit of hot banter with a hot intern to forget how loathsome she’s become in recent years? Umm… No. Jackson and April are (not surprisingly) headed for a season of McBrooding which only bodes well for viewers who enjoy watching attractive people avoid eye contact with each other. But we should just let this one ride out seeing as it’s  pretty much the only thing the writers have yet to check off on their list of “how do we make this relationship interesting?”.

But it’s still Grey’s: Meredith has been through everything we have and she’s still chugging along, so I’m not ready to let her go on by herself just yet. I like to think we’re heading in a better direction by trying to establish super-good-fun-times as a new starting point, but moving forward I’d like it to be a little less heavy-handed and ‘excited’ to forget where we’ve come from.

That’ll do Grey’s, that’ll do.