Grey’s Anatomy season 14 and a celebration of all things Amelia Shepherd
Ever since Scorsone was first on Private Practice as Amelia Shepherd, there was a lot to like about this character. She was heartfelt and genuine to those close to her, but she also was driven and steadfast. She had demons and watching her battle those was at times heartbreaking; yet, seeing her conquer those has been one of the most inspirational parts of the entire Shonda Rhimes franchise. She has brought a realistic portrayal of battling addiction and allowed us to have an inspirational character on TV who tackles any problem while also being relatable and real. There are lows, but there are also highs and Amelia finds her way to (constantly) keep pushing forward.
In speaking about some of Amelia’s most-heroic qualities, so many of them of course began with her job — they have to! After all, we are talking about someone who operates on one of the most difficult parts of the human body in brain, and the bravery that this takes is more than admirable. She is brilliant in her field and will do just about everything for her patients, even at times at the expense of her own personal life or her health. The doctors that go the extra mile are the heroes and you get a sense that she is in that elite group time and time again.
Once you look outside the job, some of her heroism only extends tenfold given what we saw from her during the brain-tumor storyline over the course of this past fall. Can you imagine learning that your mind had not been functioning properly for an extended period of time? That’s a catastrophic sort of event that could rock right about anyone to their core. It would be understandable if Amelia was shaken up about it to the point where she was unable to properly function in her job. Yet, she’s continued to move forward and reconfigure the relationships that were around her in her life. She struggled, but she now succeeds. Amelia is one of Grey’s Anatomy’s greatest phoenixes, constantly finding a way to rise from the ashes when the world around her is reduced to rubble.
Much of the success of these stories emotionally comes via the writing to go along with Scorsone’s heartfelt performance. She knows when to make Amelia’s scenes light and funny, just as she also knows the right times in which to tap into her character’s inner darkness and show her struggles and visceral pain. You get a sense of this character’s soul in a way that you do so few other characters, and that sort of rawness is to be admired at the same measure of many of her most-obvious heroic traits.
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