When I was a kid, I watched Grey's Anatomy with my mom. I didn't follow it closely enough to actually care who was dating who and who died when, but I would watch it at dinner and blow my mom's mind by being able to handle all of the blood and injuries, and eat at the same time. Eventually, my mom went back to school to get her masters degree and had zero time to watch much television at all. So, she stopped watching Grey's regularly and so did I. I went almost six years without watching a single episode.

When I started watching Grey's Anatomy againfrom the beginning on Netflix, I was a senior in high school. The show was in it's 10th season and I wanted to catch up before season 11 was set to air on ABC, so I got to work. It was a binge-watch for the record books. I caught up before season 11 aired and all was well.

I remember watching the first episode. Not in the lame "I-remember-where-I-was-and-what-I-was-wearing" way, but I remember which single moments gave me the most chill bumps and how impressed I was with the writing -- shoutout to when Shonda did most of it herself. The early days of the series were smooth and heartfelt, gripping and creative. It was understated -- simple, but complex; funny, but not cheesy; smart, but not arrogant. It was a near-perfect blend of humor, drama, science, and romance and it almost made me want to ditch film and go to medical school. Almost.

Like I said, my binge-watch of the first ten seasons of the show was impressive. I watched it all in about six months, maybe a little longer, and I'm unashamed to say it was six months filled with tears, stress over fake patients, and sleepless nights worrying about Meredith and Derek's tumultuous, yet absolutely perfect, relationship. It was also filled with bombs in chest cavities, LVAD wires, McDreamy, McSteamy, 007, hospital shootings, plane crashes, dancing it out, brain cancer, and a really strange and beautiful episode with Cristina, Derek, and a fish.

The show was raw, real, and painfully heartbreaking -- but it made you laugh just after it made you cry.

That was then.

Now, Grey's has become this overproduced, overwhelming, convoluted product of what happens when television becomes less about the art of filmmaking and more about milking a show for a profit.

I love Grey's as much as the next person, and sometimes more, but I honestly can't watch the new seasons. Every episode is full of the same, stale material; the writing is lazy and carelessly thought out; the on-screen chemistry feels forced and uncomfortable.

And this isn't a problem that lies only with Grey's. Unpopular opinion, but its a problem with shows like Law and Order: SVU, Criminal Minds,CSI, and NCIS. I still watch SVU sometimes and I still watch Criminal Minds sometimes. But I'm never on the edge of my seat. I'm never completely wrapped up in what's happening on screen. That problem doesn't come from my own personal disengagement from the stories in front of me, but from the fact that there are truly no new stories left for these shows to tell.

The first six seasons of Grey's, in my personal opinion, were some of the best ABC has ever put on television. Seven and eight were wonderful, but they ended with a plane crash that killed my favorite couple. I don't say that to be petty over a fake romance. I say that to point out that there are much better, more creative ways to write someone out of a show than to kill them off. Cristina? Perfect write-out. Izzie? Not perfect, but not dead. In some instances, killing someone off is legitimately the only choice you have. Derek's death didn't break my heart like it did everyone else's. Did it make me angry? Absolutely, but it was a fitting end to the MerDer story.

Still, the problem with Grey's isn't that it has killed off more of my favorite television characters than any other show combined. The problem is that it has nowhere else to go and there are far too many continuing storylines and characters for the show to have any sort of closure that won't feel rushed, choppy, and cheap. The original characters that we still have, with the exception of Meredith, have become cardboard. The adults on this show act like children. Residents and attendings behave like interns, making all of the same mistakes they would have made in season one. Yes, there has been major character development (Alex Karev, hello.), but there have been so many new characters introduced over the course of this show that all of their young, green, un-development clouds the maturing and growing of characters like Karev, Torres, and Grey.

Production-wise, if I see one more obvious green-screen background, I might just pull my hair out. A big problem I have with Grey's is that the production value -- unlike the budget, I'm sure -- has decreased. Almost none of the work is done on-location; the sound engineering is a mess and the background music drowns out the dialogue; in a ton of shots, there is a strange, ever-so-slight vingetting of the screen; and there are so many storylines that forty-five minutes per episode has become too little time to tell them in.

Some shows can last 10+ years and not become stale. It is possible. ER. Cheers. Frasier. Friends. These are all prime examples of shows that didn't overstay their welcome. They went as long as they could and said goodbye when they knew their time was up. Personally, six to eight seasons is enough for me, for any show. Ten would have been a great place for Grey's to call it quits because, at least that way, Thursday nights would actually feel like they were missing something the first time it didn't air. Now, I think most people simply watch to watch, to have something to keep them busy. And that isn't what television should be. I'm tired of television being considered second to film, but it won't ever be considered equal if we don't stop pumping out season after season of shows that lack value, creativity, and ingenuity for the sole purpose copping a profit off consumers who don't know any better.

I know that I will eventually catch up with the series and finish it out only because I mildly want to know what happens, but I hate that my mild curiosity is the only thing holding my attention. I hate that a show that was once nearly impossible to turn off, even at one and two in the morning, is now a show that I don't even bother to watch when it airs. Shonda Rhimes revolutionized television with Grey's and Scandal. She really did. She made television inclusive, accepting, representative, and smart. She gave a voice to groups of people that had no voice in mainstream entertainment. She gave television so much feminism and girl power that no one knew how to handle it any other way than getting on board. And she's badass for that. Shonda is a brilliant mind and a genius creator, but I honestly would rather see her put everything she has into the beast that is How to Get Away With Murder, than see her keep Grey's alive until its nothing more than a vegetable attached to television life support.

P.S. - Shonda, don't hate me. I'd love to work with you someday. For real.