The latest season of Grey’s Anatomy takes relationships to a different playing field.

AT the heart of a show like Grey’s Anatomy are the relationships. Whether it is the relationship between doctors and patients, surgeons and other surgeons, or residents and interns, the connection that people have with each other usually takes precedence over the medical cases.

Sure, there are a number of intriguing cases that pop up on the show but seriously, the characters somehow find the time between learning new procedures and attending to patients to get distracted by all the good-looking, competitive medical professionals that walk the halls of Seattle Grace Hospital.

Sara Ramirez (right), who plays Dr Callie Torres on Grey’s Anatomy, says she received a lot of feedback, about her character’s tryst with Brooke Smith’s character.

By the end of last season, the show’s writers made a bold move by pairing up two of their women series regulars – Drs Callie Torres (played by Sara Ramirez) and Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith) – and having them share a kiss.

Grey’s Anatomy’s present fifth season, which currently airs on Saturdays at 10pm on Ntv7, subsequently explores what happens next with the characters. Are they lesbians? Maybe they are bisexuals? Or are they just plain experimenting?

One thing is for sure, Torres and Hahn are attracted to one another and as such, the relationship is handled like any other relationship on the show.

“I wanted to illuminate their relationship in the same way we do all relationships on the show – it will be funny, sweet, honest, and a little bit dirty,” series creator Shonda Rhimes told Entertainment Weekly magazine last year about how she wanted the couple to be portrayed.

Rhimes and her writing team were not sure how to go about playing it out as realistically as possible at the start so they consulted with GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) on the matter.

“We had a meeting with GLAAD, and the Erica Hahn storyline was based on two women’s experience,” Ramirez, 33, divulged during the Disney-ABC-ESPN press tour for international journalists in Los Angeles last month.

“I think one of them has been in a relationship with a man previously and the other one sort of yes, sort of no. So we researched the hell out of it in order to make it true to what’s out there. And now we’re entering a whole new phase of something else. So I think we always try to keep relationships that we’re actually representing out there in mind because it is a sensitive subject for some people.”

During the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy, (from left) Dr Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez), Dr Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith) and Dr Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) work to free a boy from a hardening block of cement.

Smith, 41, too found the face time with GLAAD fruitful. “It was very helpful as they talked about their own personal lives,” she said in an interview with entertainment channel E!

“If you’re an open person and life has changed, then anything can happen. It could really rock your world if you, all of a sudden, thought maybe you were in love with a woman and maybe you weren’t before, it’s interesting.”

Torres and Hahn became the show’s first prominent gay relationship. And like any good controversial storyline, this act was met with mixed reactions from American viewers.

“I’ve gotten positive feedback and I’ve gotten negative feedback,” Ramirez says to the press on the set of Grey’s Anatomy. “I’ve a letter from a fan who just hates it and says she’s going to stop watching the show because of it. Everybody has got an opinion, and it’s a very controversial, unfortunately, still a controversial subject for some people. But controversy is good, sometimes, on a show.”

As the story goes, Erica’s tryst with Callie leads her to discover that she is gay in her 30s. She feels happy and liberated by this revelation but Callie’s response is not what she was expecting.

Afraid and confused, Callie bolts and immediately questions her own sexual preferences by using her friend, plastic surgeon Dr Mark “McSteamy” Sloan (Eric Dane), as a sounding board.

Smith, who is married to cinematographer Stephen Lubensky and has two children, had played gay characters before on other projects. After that episode was shot, she received news that she was being dropped from the show.

“The ending of that relationship was very abrupt for everyone involved, particularly Brooke,” Ramirez asserts. “(But) things happen and she’ll keep working because she’s a great actress.”

Although the cast on the whole was shocked by the sudden departure of Smith, Ramirez did take comfort in the fact that her character, Callie, was given the chance to explore alternative lifestyles in a candid manner.

“I like that it’s not cookie-cutter,” Ramirez says of her character’s development. “I like that Callie is entering this middle ground where she’s not straight. She’s not necessarily gay. She’s sort of open to considering a relationship with someone simply because of the essence of the person, the personality, the spirit of the person as opposed to his or her gender. And I think that’s interesting.”

Smith’s departure does not translate to the end of lesbian relationships on the show or the end of Callie’s exploration. Jessica Capshaw, 32, whose recent credits include The Practice and Bones, has been brought on to the show as Callie’s new romantic interest, paediatric surgeon Dr Arizona Robbins.

Grey’s Anatomy airs on Ntv7 on Saturdays at 10pm and the repeat is on Thursdays at midnight.

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