Grey’s Anatomy season 16 spotlight: The future for Alex Karev
Alex Karev is a man of many facets. He’s a hard-working doctor, he’s a guy who’s dealt with a lot of hard times in his past, he’s a husband, and he’s now a mentor to some of the younger people on staff at the Grey Sloan.
Yet, he’s not exactly starting off season 16 in a great place. Professionally, he’s having to take on the idea of not having a job anymore. Bailey seemed to fire him at the end of season 15 for his role in the insurance fraud scandal. Meredith may be the one at the brunt of everything, but his role still puts him in a pretty precarious position. Meanwhile, there are some other dramatic situations potentially coming for him when it comes to his personal life. He needs to figure out exactly how to be there for Jo, but doing that is so much easier said than done.
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Now, let’s break down some of the individual things that Alex could be doing to try to get into a better place in season 16.
First and foremost, the man has to focus on trying to figure out how to get his job back. We don’t think that Bailey wanted to fire him, of course, but it was really a matter of necessity at that moment. She realizes that there could be legal nightmares that come from having someone on staff who she willingly knows is involved in a scandal. Removing him from the equation may actually be the best thing for him in the short-term, at least while either he, Richard, or Meredith find the right legal representation and make a great argument as to why it is that they did what they did. If they can do all that and successfully overcome some of the roadblocks that are ahead of them (it won’t be super-easy), it’s pretty easy to figure that Alex will be able to get his job back again. He just needs to be patient, and not take things out on Bailey since she’s just trying to do her job.
As for the relationship with Jo, patience ironically is the priority once more for Alex. He’s someone who’s experienced plenty of heartache and pain and because of that, he should understand that Jo needs to take things at her own pace. She was never willingly excluding him from what happened, but the revelations that she learned about her biological mother were not easy to process. She’s going through therapy, and we hope that at some point, there will be an opportunity for two of them to talk things out together and learn some tools that can help them in the relationship. There are obviously going to be setbacks, as there would and almost any situation, but we want to see them get on the up-and-up after everything they went through in the second half of season 16. (Also, it’d just be nice to see a rare Grey’s Anatomy relationship last.)
Beyond just these two stories, it would be nice to get even more backstory on Alex, whether that be more opportunities to see his mother around or opportunities to see maybe more of his earlier days as a young adult. Also, it would just be nice to see him working with some different characters that are somewhat out of the loop for a typical Karev storyline. Maybe there could be an episode where he ends up going somewhere away from the hospital and works with the likes of Tom Koracick, Link, Levi, are some of the other newer characters into the world of the show.
Overall, just give Justin Chambers some chance to flex some of his acting muscles. This guy has been with Grey’s Anatomy from the beginning, and because of that, he deserves every opportunity possible to make him shine — maybe it’s through something lighthearted, or maybe it is deathly serious. It’s almost as a reward for all of that tremendous loyalty.
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What do you want to see for Alex on Grey’s Anatomy season 16? Be sure to share in the comments below. (Photo: ABC.)