Grey’s Anatomy has already stood the test of time, as its 22nd season will resume on the 2026 TV calendar on January 8, with no indication that the end is near. However, if the medical drama had gone by a different name, would it still be this successful? I'm asking because it turns out that was almost the case. ABC tried out several different titles for the medical drama, including one creator Shonda Rhimes allegedly hated.
As a longtime Grey’s fan, I personally love that the title of the series is a play on both its main character’s name — Ellen Pompeo’s Meredith Grey — and the revered textbook Gray’s Anatomy. However, in the book How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey’s Anatomy, one of the higher-ups at ABC hated that name, and the show was changed to Complications, the title of another nonfiction book. According to former show writer Eric Buchman:
That was a book out there called Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science. So Shonda said, ‘Eric, you need to go read this whole book just to make sure that this writer can’t accuse us of basically stealing his book.’ It was written by Atul Gawande. It was a good book, and there were similarities, because they’re both about what’s it like to be a young doctor working for a hospital for the first time. There were things that would overlap.
The writer said ABC went so far as to option Complications just to be able to use its title.
Kate Burton, who continues to guest star sporadically on Grey’s Anatomy as Meredith’s mother Ellis, despite the character’s death in Season 3, said in How to Save a Life the show had a different name when she was told about it. Burton recalls:
When my manager called me, he said, ‘They’re doing this show called Surgeons.’ That was the working title.
Both Complications and Surgeons are pretty generic names, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing — just look at ER, which was the longest-running primetime medical drama with 15 seasons before being surpassed by Grey’s Anatomy. However, it wasn’t just those two titles that were (mercifully) nixed.
Those Involved In The Show Had Some Strong Feelings About The Unused Titles
Kate Walsh — aka Addison Montgomery, who will return to Grey Sloan Memorial on January 29 (hopefully for a sisterly reunion) — threw in yet another potential title and didn’t hold back her feelings on which one she preferred when she spoke with Buzzfeed in 2017, saying:
I came in at Episode 8, at that time the morale was really low. They kept changing the name of the show. It was Doctors and then Surgeons and then Complications and I was like, ‘What a bullshit show title!’ Grey’s Anatomy is the perfect title.
When it comes to the titles that never were, there’s one more that admittedly isn’t as basic as the three listed above, but it may have been the most offensive to Shonda Rhimes. Eric Buchman admits he might have been responsible for coming up with this one, saying How to Save a Life:
I also remember someone in the room pitching — and it might have been me, I hope it wasn’t me — somebody pitching the name Miss Diagnosis. I’m pretty sure it was a joke. Shonda just outright hated that.
Yeah, Miss Diagnosis is not great. I hope that really was a joke. Thankfully, things came full circle, and ABC agreed to go with the original title of Grey’s Anatomy, and 20 years in (and counting), I have no doubt the network would agree that the right call was made.
If you need a refresher on Season 22 or any of Grey’s Anatomy’s best eras, every episode is available to stream with a Hulu subscription. Tune in at 10 p.m. ET Thursday, January 8, on ABC to see what will happen to Jo Wilson (Camilla Luddington) after that harrowing midseason finale.
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