When “Grey’s Anatomy” returns with its 17th season in November, Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and the rest of Grey Sloane Memorial will be experiencing the same pandemic as the rest of us.
While it may seem like kind of a no-brainer for TV’s longest-running medical drama to acknowledge the biggest medical crisis in generations, “Grey’s” showrunner Krista Vernoff tells Variety that her initial feeling was to proceed with stories set within a world where COVID-19 didn’t exist, offering viewers escapism. “I think that people have fatigue of COVID, and I think they turn to our show for relief,” she told the show’s writings in this season’s first meeting, held via Zoom.