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The first decade of the 21st century was an interesting time for television. Networks and studios began to play with the boundaries of what people thought a TV show could be. Shows like Malcolm in the Middle, which premiered in 2000, proved that a television comedy didn’t have to be a three-camera sitcom with a laugh track. The Sopranos showed viewers that a television show could have the same prestige as a movie.

Television was changing, and a screenwriter named Shonda Rhimes was ready to take the medium to the next level. Today we know Rimes as the creator behind Scandal and Queen Charlotte: A Bridgeton Story, but in 2005 she was a showrunner trying to make her way in Hollywood.

In 2005 Rhimes created and developed Grey’s Anatomy, a medical drama that became appointment viewing. The show had elements of a soap opera, but the scripts were grounded and the acting was never over-the-top. The series is still running today, making it one of the longest-running scripted shows still on the air.

Rhimes credits Lost and Desperate Housewives for Grey’s success. Both shows premiered in 2004, and Rhimes says they changed the way people perceived primetime television dramas.  “Grey’s came out at the end of the season after Desperate Housewives and Lost came out, and those shows changed the trajectory of how people were watching television,” Shonda Rimes said during a 2025 Paley Museum event. 

Betsy Beers, one of Rhimes’s producing partners, says that before Grey’s Anatomy, there was a stigma around primetime television, as if it was a guilty pleasure. “We both loved television," Grey’s Anatomy executive producer Betsy Beers explained. “I had been in movies for years, but I had been secretly watching television when nobody was looking. And then I would tell my friends to go and actually watch movies and tell me what they were about so I knew that when I went into a meeting, I wouldn’t look like a liar. At that point TV was considered like pro-wrestling. You didn’t talk about it.”

Grey’s Anatomy is streaming on Hulu.

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