Battle Ensued Over Show That Left People 'Sobbing'

Shonda Rhimes had to fight ABC over this week's Grey's Anatomy—an episode inspired by Christine Blasey Ford's testimony against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, BuzzFeed reports. Seems standards and practices was worried about the story's focus on how rape kits are used in hospitals. "They give these standard notes: 'Don't be too gory,' 'Don’t be too explicit in your language,' 'No side boob.' But the ones we got on this script included, 'Please don’t show any fluid on the Q-tips' and 'Please don’t show any body fluids under the blue lights," showrunner Krista Vernoff tells the Hollywood Reporter. But show creator Rhimes took a stand on this one, saying, "Respectfully, I decline these notes."

Rhimes argued that networks "are willing to show actual violence but that what we were doing here was the medical process that happens in the wake of violence and they were trying to tell us we couldn’t show it," says Vernoff, who commended ABC for ultimately siding with Rhimes. The show includes a moving scene in which female staffers line the hospital halls for a trauma patient headed into surgery who said all men remind her of her rapist. The show's female employees, including the standards and practices executive, played the roles. The episode even comes with a trigger warning: "I had yet to watch this episode without someone sobbing and felt strongly that we should give viewers the heads up to watch with a friend," Vernoff tells E! Online. (More rape stories.)