Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 85

10 Santa Cruz Sentinel ABC puts plenty of heart into its new 'Grey's Anatomy ON TV You aren't good enough, and you shouldn't even entertain (lie Pompeo explains. "So initially, Meredith probably wanted to ealTJ her mother's approval, and tuon probably to prove her wrong. "Once she gets into the hospital, however, she does fall in love with medicine and does say, 'Maybe now I do understand why my mother was so absent in my life, because this is such a fascinating But Meredith is constantly re-evaluating her motives, asking herself whether she is in medicine for the right reasons and even whether she should be there at all." Pompeo is a real find, and her chemistry with the veiy likable Dempsey fairly jumps off the screen. Among the colorful and sharply differentiated other interns, Oh dares to let Cristina be testy and selfish and sarcastic without worrying about being cuddly, and she nearly steals every one of her scenes. Conversely, newcomer Knight is hilarious as a Smurf in surgical scrubs who attracts disaster like lint.

Derek has just been a fun character to play. "There is just a great sense of heart and empowerment that you get while playing a doctor. It's tangible, and you feel it when you put on your scrubs. You are pretending that you are responsible for another human being's life, and that's quite heady. I love playing a healer, as opposed to a cop or someone like that.

I just think that's a much better energy to be putting out into the universe." Yet if the possibilities of her chosen field and an appreciation of its wonders manifest themselves to Meredith only after she begins her residency, how has she made it this far through the grueling demands of medical school? The complicated answer to that unspools gradually over the course of the show, Pompeo says, since it originates with the thorny relationship Meredith has with her gifted but remote mother, now stricken with Alzheimer's. "Initially, Meredith's mother had told her, 'You would never make a doctor, let alone a surgeon. in the first pages Meredith gets to have fun, this little interaction with a guy that lets her be sexy and flirty, then be the boss and throw him out. Then she gets to go be smart and save other people's lives. From a female perspective, you just don't get that many opportunities to play that wide a range in one show.

"Frankly, the medical aspect isn't even what grabbed me about it. I just knew this was a very rich female character. There just aren't many of those at all." There's a transcendent moment in the premiere episode when Derek invites Meredith to assist him on a piece of delicate surgery. As Meredith watches his confident work, Pompeo lets us see this young woman falling head over heels in love with medicine. That same passion feels very real to Dempsey, who says this new role has been a revelation to him.

"I hate hospitals, but I've grown to love playing a doctor," he says, laughing. "I'm more into medical terminology than I ever have been. This season, ABC has managed to reinvent or at least reinvigo-rate the nighttime soap opera via "Desperate Housewives" and the edgy adventure drama in "Lost." The network may just accomplish the same tiling for medical dramas with "Grey's Anatomy," a touching and funny new series that begins a test run on Sunday, March 27, as "Boston Legal" takes a four-week hiatus. Series newcomer Ellen Pompeo stars as Meredith Grey, a first-year intern at Seattle Grace Hospital, reputed to be the most demanding surgical residency program west of Harvard. Her first day gets off to a rocky start, as she awakens following a drunken one-night stand with Derek Shepherd (Patrick Denipsey), a handsome local hunk she barely bundles out the door before scrambling to the hospital -where, to her everlasting mortification, she discovers he is a prominent member of the surgical staff.

Meredith, we soon learn, is the daughter of world-renowned surgeon Dr. Ellis Grey (Kate Burton), 4 BBSHSSSSli By John Crook Zap2it which instills a grudging awe in her fellow interns: Cristina Yang (the incomparable Sandra Oh from a cranky and hyper-competitive young doctor; George O'Malley (theater veteran T.R. Knight), a lovable bumbler who barely made the cut for admission; Isobel "Izzie" Stevens (Katherine Heigl, a former model who finds it hard to get respect in her new field; and cocky Alex Karev (Justin Chambers of "Cold Case," a last-minute cast addition). For Pompeo, a beauty with a Re-nee Zellweger-like pout and a smart-as-a-whip aura, signing on to play the title role was a no-brainer, especially compared to some of the other scripts she was seeing. "I sat down to read it not knowing anything about the kind of show this was," Pompeo says, "and over plaid UP CLOSE By John Crook Zap2it are really cool and have been exposed to a lot of different lifestyles," Kressley says.

"A lot of these kids had never met anyone who was gay, at least in their minds. It was really interesting for us to get to know them and them to get to know us, and it turned out to be very heartwarming and fun -with time for a huge food fight in between." It's hard to imagine anyone needs an introduction to Kressley, a study in perpetual motion who has been pretty ubiquitous at awards shows (he worked the red carpet at Bravo's recent coverage of the Independent Spirit Awards) and public speaking appearances (he's due to appear at Atlanta's Emory University on Saturday, April 2). The 35-year-old native Pennsyl-vanian also has a best-selling book in "Off the Cuff," a breezy and decidedly nonthreatening guide to men's fashion. "I didn't want the book to be stuffy," Kressley says. "While I was doing research, I was reading all these older books on 'dressing the man and everything was 'Here's.

the history of glen Glen and his plaiflr THE REVO Gives You solid Performance and sleek style at a great low price while providing you with unique convenience features that make it easy to use and even easier to enjoy. values pride It's easy enough being a flam boyant fashion savant in New York, but Carson Kressley of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" says he also had a great time during the show's recent road trip to George W. Bush's home turf to film three episodes, the first of which premieres Tuesday, March 29, on Bravo. "We had wanted to take the show on the road for a while, because a lot of viewers have said they would love to see us traveling the country, in places other than New York City," Kressley explains. "We actually did a London" trip, and Texas seemed a little more foreign to us than London.

"It turned out that we loved it. We made over a whole fraternity house, we helped out a cowboy and we made over a guy who hadn't seen his father in over 20 years. We had expected the big hair and the glamorous shopping it's the home of Neiman Marcus, after all -and that all panned out, but when they say everything's bigger in Texas, that goes for people's hearts, too. Everyone was just so kind and generous, and we had such a fun time." The Fab Five as Kressley and castmates Kyan Douglas, Ted Allen, Jai Rodriguez and Thorn Filicia are known to fans work on turning the Sigma Chi quarters at the University of North Texas into' "the best' little frathouse.in "Most kids' of college age today (fifi i. BENEFITS Disassembles into 5 pieces for easy transport Compact size and tight turning radius for superb indoor handling Weight capacity of 300 lbs.

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