After 470 Episodes, ABC’s Best Show Is a Surprising Streaming Hit on Apple TV

Published Nov 12, 2026, 8:14 PM EST

Lloyd 'Happy Trails' Farley: the man, the myth, the legend. What can be said about this amazing - and humble - man that hasn't been said before? Or, more accurately, what can be said in public? Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Lloyd is a master of puns and a humorist, who has authored one pun book to date - Pun and Grimeish Mint - and is working on a second. His time with Collider has allowed Lloyd's passion for writing to explode, with nearly 1,000 articles to his name that have been published on the site, with his favorite articles being the ones that allow for his sense of humor to shine. Lloyd also holds fast to the belief that all of life's problems can be answered by The Simpsons, Star Wars, and/or The Lion King. You can read more about Lloyd on his website, or follow his Facebook page and join the Llama Llegion. Happy trails!

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By rights, Grey's Anatomy should be on death's door, flatlining on one of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital's beds. Since its debut in 2005, there have been 39 main cast members, only three of which — Chandra Wilson (Miranda Bailey), James Pickens Jr. (Richard Webber) and, albeit intermittently now, Ellen Pompeo (Meredith Grey) — have remained with the show since its first episode; 20 characters that have left, either of their own volition or in a body bag; multiple instances of ambulance crashes, hospital shootings, hospital explosions, and plane crashes. If doctors aren't at a bedside operating, they're in a backroom "operating" (wink wink). Yet year after year, Grey's Anatomy keeps coming back strong, including on Apple TV, where it's a surprising hit. Only it isn't as surprising as you might think.

'Grey's Anatomy' Brought Something New to the Medical Drama

The fight to just get Grey's Anatomy on the air was hard enough: network president Steve McPherson repeatedly challenged show creator Shonda Rhimes on every aspect of the show. It perhaps should have been expected, given Rhimes was proposing a dramatic shift in the medical drama genre. The ensemble was racially diverse, with Rhimes insistent on using a color-blind casting technique, creating diversity based on talent and chemistry as opposed to an all-white cast with minor roles for other ethnicities. The main characters weren't just doctors, but rather a group of interns, low-ranking personnel learning what it takes to be a doctor, and making mistakes along the way. Perhaps the worst was the utterly game-changing take on female sexuality, with showrunner Krista Vernoff citing, "He [McPherson] just didn't get it; he didn't like it... I don't think he liked the [idea of] ambitious women having sex unapologetically."

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Five wards on call

TV/Medical Drama/Shift Assignment

Collider · TV Medicine Which Fictional Hospital
Would You Work Best In? Eight questions · five wards · one assignment

Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television: brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for, and eight questions will work out exactly where you belong. Wards accepting

PTMCThe Pitt

CGHER

GSMGrey's Anatomy

PPTHHouse

SHHScrubs

Find your hospital

Rhythm strip01 / 08

Question 01 of 08APPROACH

01 A critical patient comes through the door. What is your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you really are.

AStay completely present. Block everything else out and work it step by step, right now. BTriage fast and delegate. Get the right people on the right problems immediately. CTrust my gut and move. I work best when I stop overthinking and just act. DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring. What is the thing that does not fit? ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, then get to work. Panic helps nobody.

← Back Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance

Next

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Question 02 of 08MOTIVATION

02 Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you would give in an interview.

ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most, right at the edge, when a life is on the line. BBecause I wanted to help people, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard. CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it: the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive. DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is, and I needed a problem worth solving. EBecause I wanted to make a difference, and also, honestly, I did not know what else to do.

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Next

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Question 03 of 08COLLEAGUES

03 What do you want most from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.

ACompetence and calm. I need people who do not fall apart when things get bad. BTrust and reliability. When I pass something off I want to know it is handled. CConnection. I want colleagues who become family, even when that gets complicated. DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged. People who just agree with me are useless. EFriendship. People I like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are happening anyway.

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Next

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Question 04 of 08LOSS

04 You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who has worked a long shift has had to answer this one.

AI carry it. All of it. I do not look for ways to put it down, because that weight is part of doing this honestly. BI process it and move. You have to, or the next patient pays for the one you just lost. CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me. Nobody is supposed to handle that alone. DI go back over every decision, not to punish myself, but because I need to know what I missed. EI grieve it, find something unrelated to laugh about, and try to be kind to myself. Imperfectly.

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Next

Rhythm strip05 / 08

Question 05 of 08STYLE

05 How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.

AIntense and completely present. No small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there. BSteady and dependable. Not the flashiest in the room, but never the one who drops something. CPassionate and occasionally chaotic. Brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else. DBrilliant and difficult. Right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me. EWarm and self-deprecating. Not the most intimidating presence, but good at this and easy to like.

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Next

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Question 06 of 08RULES

06 How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.

AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling. I follow it until the patient needs something it cannot give. BI respect it. The system is broken in places, but the structure exists for a reason and I work inside it. CI follow it until my instincts say otherwise, and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause trouble. DRules are for people who have not thought hard enough about when to break them. EI try to follow it and mostly do, with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings.

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Rhythm strip07 / 08

Question 07 of 08TOLL

07 What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What is yours?

AEverything outside these walls. I gave this job my full attention and the rest of my life went around it. BMy idealism, mostly. I came in believing the system could be fixed and I made a complicated peace with that. CStability. My personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that is not entirely a coincidence. DMy relationships. I am not easy to know, and the people who tried would probably agree. EMy sense of gravity. I use humor as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital.

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Next

Rhythm strip08 / 08

Question 08 of 08PURPOSE

08 At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this one is the most honest thing about you.

AThe fact that it is real. Nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today. BThe patients. Individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there. CThe people I work with. I have walked through impossible things with them and I would do it again. DThe next unsolved case. There is always another puzzle, and I am not done yet. EBecause despite the exhaustion, the loss and the absurdity of it, I love this job.

← Back Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance

Reveal my hospital

Assignment madeYou belong in

PTMC · Admitted The Pitt Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center This ward asks whether you can stay in the room for the whole shift, and come back tomorrow.

You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has shown, the one that puts you inside a single long shift and does not let you look away. You need your work to be real rather than romanticized, and you find your purpose inside the work itself rather than in the chaos around it. You have made peace with a job that takes from you constantly and gives back in ways that are harder to name. What this ward asks of you

• Meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
• The discipline to stay present when the department is at its worst.
• A tolerance for weight that does not get put down at the end of the day.

From the Collider file

• Each episode covers roughly one hour of the same emergency-department shift, in order.
• Noah Wyle has now won the lead drama actor Emmy for it twice, in 2025 and again in 2026.
• It reunites the ER team of Wyle, John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill, thirty years on.

Fully present No romance Built to endure

CGH · Admitted ER County General Hospital, Chicago This ward asks whether you can hold the line long enough for the next person to take it.

You are the one who keeps the whole floor moving. Not the most brilliant in the room, possibly the most essential. You show up, do the work, absorb the losses and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is. You care about patients as individual people rather than as cases to solve or dramas to live inside, and you believe in the system even on the days it fails you. What this ward asks of you

• Reliability above brilliance, every single shift.
• Faith in a structure that is visibly imperfect.
• The stamina to treat the hundredth patient like the first.

From the Collider file

• Fifteen seasons and 331 episodes, from 1994 to 2009, created by Michael Crichton.
• It holds the record for the most Emmy nominations of any drama series, with 124.
• George Clooney, Julianna Margulies and Noah Wyle all broke out of County General.

Shows up Endurance Patient first

GSM · Admitted Grey's Anatomy Grey Sloan Memorial, Seattle This ward asks whether you can do the work with your whole self in the room.

You came to medicine with everything you have, your ambition, your feelings, your relationships and your history, and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door. You form deep attachments to the people you work with, and your personal and professional lives stay permanently, chaotically tangled. That tangle drives both your worst disasters and your most remarkable saves, because you understand that extraordinary medicine often happens where clinical skill meets human connection. What this ward asks of you

• A willingness to feel all of it rather than seal any of it off.
• Colleagues who become family, with everything that costs.
• Comfort with mess, in the OR and everywhere else.

From the Collider file

• Shonda Rhimes' series passed ER to become the longest-running primetime medical drama on US television.
• It is on season 22, with ABC having already renewed it for a twenty-third.
• Ellen Pompeo has played Meredith Grey across three decades of television.

Feels everything Found family Beautifully messy

PPTH · Admitted House Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital This ward asks whether you can be right when everyone in the room needs you to be wrong.

You are drawn to the problem above everything: the symptom that does not fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one. The patient as a person is not your first motivation, though you are capable of caring more than you would admit. You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong. Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary and impossible mind, and everyone near it is there because they can keep up. What this ward asks of you

• Thinking harder than anyone else in the room, then defending it.
• A high tolerance for being disliked while you are right.
• Interest in the puzzle that outlasts your interest in being comfortable.

From the Collider file

• Eight seasons built on Sherlock Holmes: House and Holmes, Wilson and Watson, and an apartment at 221B.
• Hugh Laurie taped his audition in a hotel bathroom in Namibia while shooting another film.
• By 2008 it was the most-watched television show on earth, with an audience around 82 million.

Chases the puzzle Difficult on purpose Usually right

SHH · Admitted Scrubs Sacred Heart Hospital, California This ward asks whether you can hold the tragedy and the absurdity at the same time.

You understand that medicine is devastating and ridiculous in roughly equal measure, and that the only sane response is to carry both at once. You are warm, self-aware and funnier than most people in your field. You use humor to get through terrible moments, which at Sacred Heart is a survival strategy rather than a flaw. You lean on the people around you and let them lean back, because here the laughter and the grief are inseparable. What this ward asks of you

• Humor that never curdles into cruelty.
• The honesty to admit you are still learning how to do this.
• People you can lean on, and the willingness to be leaned on.

From the Collider file

• Nine seasons from Bill Lawrence, filmed largely inside a real decommissioned hospital in North Hollywood.
• Working doctors have repeatedly named it the most accurate medical show on television.
• Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke returned for an ABC revival that premiered in February 2026.

Laughs to cope Still learning Leans on people

Shift report · your top three

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But the creative team behind Grey's Anatomy had an ally in ABC's then-head of drama, Suzanne Patmore Gibbs, and a first season, consisting of only 9 episodes, would begin airing on March 27th, 2005, following Desperate Housewives. Still, there was little to no faith in the show, with the writers asked to clear out their offices when the season was finished (per Variety). To say they misjudged the series is an understatement, with the premiere netting massive ratings, numbers that Pompeo said were, "so huge the first time we aired it was a big f**k you to McPherson!"

Initially, the appeal was in the show's soap-like aspects of sex; relatable, fast dialogue; the eschewing of traditional scoring in lieu of indie-pop and alternative music; and, of course, Patrick Dempsey's "McDreamy." What kept viewers around, however, was the series' unconventional take on the character's themselves. These weren't seasoned doctors and eager-beaver interns, but flawed, real people, with real and relatable relationships. They weren't even always particularly likable, but they were always interesting, and they all had their time in the spotlight. And all this without ignoring the wildly inaccurate but also wildly entertaining medical cases, "every kind of crazy accident that had ever caused terrible harm to any human ever."

It's Not All That Surprising 'Grey's Anatomy' Is a Hit on Streaming

Grey's Anatomy has never strayed from its core focus on the people. This would be in spite of the times that arguably would have ended any other show. Fan favorite Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) left for Switzerland to run a research institute, a job offer from ex-fiancé Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington) in the Season 10 finale, while Derek Shepherd is tragically killed in Season 11 by a semi-truck. Yet the series largely doesn't shy away from the effects these losses take on those that remain, and while they may upset the fan base for a time, they come back because the characters hurt just as much as they do.

The show is very much a "next man up," with the constant turnover allowing new faces to come in to fill the void, and because they are given screen time to develop, viewers have a chance to get to know them intimately. Storylines, which maintain cultural relevance, range from heartbreaking losses to against-all-odds successful surgeries to the outright hilarious, like the man who swallowed 10 doll heads, creating a severe bowel obstruction ("Because eleven would have been too much"), a genuinely well-balanced formula that has consistently worked for 21 years.

And it's that consistency that makes the streaming success of Grey's Anatomy unsurprising. At 470 episodes, it's easy to throw on for a binge session ranging from a few hours to an entire week. You don't have to know what's going on with the characters wherever you decide to start, with the series bearing a familiarity across episodes (but it's more enjoyable if you do). And as with most series of its age, later generations, wooed by social media clips and the like, experience it anew, while those who started watching in 2005 get to relive the best, the most nerve-wracking, and the saddest moments. Grey's Anatomy is also buoyed by the fact that it has remained a constant presence on streaming, allowing new and old fans the avenue and time to watch all 23 seasons without fear that the series will be pulled. That's what being a "surprise streaming hit" gets you.