recess guides you through this fall's hottest shows

It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment when it became apparent that Grey's Anatomy's downward spiral was permanent. Perhaps it was the episode when the main character, Meredith, died-only to awake from the dead after having spent an entire episode catching up with dead patients from previous seasons, all in a purgatory-like setting straight out of a bad sci-fi show. Or maybe it was that time when an episode of Grey's turned into a two-hour promotion for the network's new Grey's spin-off, Private Practice, resulting in a disappointing waste of a Thursday night. Either way, the Season 4 premiere did little to save the show from seemingly imminent self-destruction. The Season 3 finale left the show so demolished that it seemed like it couldn't go anywhere but up-Cristina didn't get married, Burke left, Meredith and Dr. McDreamy broke up and George failed his intern exam. Yet what should have been an episode that rebuilt the show to its former glory merely furthered the deterioration. True, there were a couple of mildly clever scenes, but not enough to make up for the rest of the show's content-Izzy resuscitates a dying deer, we meet Meredith's socially awkward half-sister, Alex extracts a bag of change from his patient's stomach and then uses it as a prop in a disastrously unintelligent metaphor about how life is ever-changing. On top of that, Meredith is yet again forced to decide between two people who are both calling her name from opposite sides of the room. The result is that the premiere promises a season where the main entertainment will be to watch how the show attempts to cure itself of what appears to be a terminal illness.