Grey's Anatomy has an issue with bringing promising relationships too late

One thing Grey’s Anatomy has had an issue doing is bringing promising relationships way too late in the game. As in, these relationships happen to create exit storylines or at the same time are exit storylines.

Case in point in Grey’s Anatomy season 21 are the relationships of Mika and Jules and of Levi and James. We got to see some promise from both of them.

Mika and Jules finally get a chance to be open about how they feel. They are friends first, and we’re seeing that more and more. Mika was able to open up to Jules and share what she needed despite it hurting Jules a little. It’s still early days for them, but to have that and for Jules to still be there shows that there is a friendship there first.

Then there’s Levi and James, who started off disliking each other because of their different views. Yet, they’ve come to respect each other and see through it all. Again, though, it’s still early days.

These Grey’s Anatomy relationships are needed more

We know that both Midori Francis and Jake Borelli are leaving Grey’s Anatomy during this season. It looks like we have their exit storylines as well, with Levi heading to Texas and Mika potentially being killed off—I really hope she makes a recovery but has to just leave medicine because of injuries.

Just the fact that we got these two relationships at this point made it clear that Grey’s clearly has an issue. It’s easy to write promising relationships that then don’t have to go anywhere or that don’t have to be shown on screen. There’s no need to create drama within said relationship later on.

Grey’s doesn’t have many healthy couples on the show. The best relationship going is that of Ben and Bailey, who has shown that you can disagree and still love each other, that you can argue and make up. We need to see a lot more of this, but that doesn’t create fun drama, does it? Instead, viewers live for the will-they-won’t-they or the “who will they hook up with next?” trope.

It would be great to see someone like Helm get a chance at a storyline like Mika and Jules as she sticks with the show. Maybe the series could do it with Amelia and Beltran. Simone and Lucas are starting out, and it could be time to actually give them something a little more than just seemingly a hook-up. They’ve had one strong conversation about the L word, so what about other important conversations?

Stop giving the promising relationships to the exiting characters. Give them to the characters that are going to stick around so we can see how those relationships blossom—and stop tearing them down!

Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 10/9c on ABC. Catch up the following day on Hulu.