Most critics lean warm, and the praise gathers around the cast. The ensemble is picked out again and again, with Sandra Oh’s deadpan intern Cristina Yang the name that recurs most, admired for caring more about the surgery than the patient. Shonda Rhimes’ dialogue draws credit too, along with the show’s interest in women’s lives and its multi-ethnic casting, which several reviews treat as its real subject rather than the medicine.
The reservations split by era. The 2005 notices find the set-up familiar, a hospital variant of The Paper Chase, and The Hollywood Reporter goes furthest, calling the characters too soft and the plotting too neat. The later pieces argue over longevity instead: The Telegraph finds the show in good health after twenty seasons, while The i Paper, fond of the early years, is worn out by its decline. The spread is wide, and the two 2024 reviews sit at opposite ends of it.