Valentines Day Winners and Losers: George O'Malley, Grey's Anatomy

"Hi. I... I know I'm not a world-renowned surgeon, and... I know I'm not a lot of things you've gone for in the past. I know that. But... I would never leave you. I would never hurt you. And I will never stop loving you."

I'm not afraid to admit that I watched and still do watch Grey's Anatomy though I will be the first to admit that at this point I'm watching it more out of habit than anything else. What did bring me to watching was the character of George because from top to bottom, he is just George. There is no drama in his life that drives him, he just wants to be a surgeon and that made him ultimately feel the most real as he went through the ups and downs of life as an intern and beyond. When it came to romance, George was just as awkward and nervous as anyone can be as every romance he has starts with him being the awkward one and it is usually because of him that the relationships fail but George doesn't seem to really let it bother him.

George and Meredith

George's feelings were Meredith were easily the worst kept secret on the show though it seems Meredith and Shepherd were the only ones who didn't know which somehow felt very real. George is instantly taken with not only how beautiful he finds her, but how smart and kind she is. He tries to impress her in his own way, but it never seems that she seems as anything more than a friend but it goes a bit further than that.  Meredith doesn't seem to hear George when he's talking about his feelings for her though it may just be that whenever he does, Meredith is going through something. George feels even more upset when he finds out that Meredith's mother seems to mistake her for her ex-husband whom she doesn't respect and Meredith feels abandoned her. He's competed for Meredith's attention, even once demanding not to be considered second place to a dog she picked up at the pound a year after they met. The biggest moment of this torrid love story would be in the episode Yesterday where George sleeps with Meredith after he pours his heart out to her and it ends in disaster as Meredith cries during sex. Feeling hurt and insulted, George moves for a time and cannot even look at or talk to her. Everyone else and Meredith thinks he's mad at her but he reveals he's mad and ashamed of himself because he always knew she didn't want him, even that night he knew and thought that maybe that night would have been better than nothing. George blames himself for that night because as he puts it "I knew better". They become friends again easy enough after that, and when George repeated his Intern year, he was on of hers and Meredith trusted him to do whatever he wanted. There is something a bit fitting that it is Meredith who finds out that the John Doe that got hit with the bus is George, the one who George thought never saw him, was the only one that did that day, eventually.

Meredith I think always liked George but never "liked" him though I think an argument could be made if the idea was that Meredith wanted to be better than her mother which would mean in one way making lasting relationship and what better way to do that than by making it work with a man who reminds your mother of the man she drove away? When Meredith's father is looking for her at the hospital and she's hiding from him, she overhears George speaking about her to him. Despite not being on speaking terms, George has nothing but good things to say, about how smart she is, how kind she is, and especially her smile, and that "cold" is the exact opposite of what she is. If there was a time where I thought the two of them would have worked, it was then or any time the two of them worked together, which honestly none of the other characters did.

George and Olivia

George's romance with Olivia is short lived as he breaks up with her after he finds out he caught Syphilis from her when she slept with Alex Karev though it did seem he may have gotten serious with her had it not been for that. Olivia was the first one to tell him that he and Meredith were not going to happen and did admit to really liking him but George honestly didn't listen to what she had to say or care. George later apologized to Olivia for making her feel so terrible after the events of Yesterday where he yelled out loud that Meredith told everyone that he had sex with her and when finding out Meredith didn't, he slipped and fell down a flight of stairs.

George and Callie

Callie Torres met and was introduced after the events of Yesterday. After George fell down the stairs he dislocated his shoulder and Callie patched him up and found him cute and heard about the "Heart in the Elevator" so she was smitten wit him. The two would eventually date, much to the chagrin of his best friend Izzie but there were other issues like George finding out Callie slept with Mark Sloan and his dad being in the hospital. After his father dies, the two of them get married in Vegas but the two of them seem uncertain or rather they both think they are and everyone else thinks it was a bad idea because well "George's dad died". Things came to a head when George and Callie had a fight about Izzie and Callie hiding the fact that she's pretty rich and George and Izzie get drunk and have sex. When George remembers, he tells Callie as soon as he can and the two get a divorce. George and Callie are on rocky terms for a while but George tells her that he hopes they can still be friends at some point to which she agrees. When George dies (yeah this is gonna come up a lot), she actually starts hyperventilating and later comforts his mother. When he's mentioned again in later seasons, Callie looks up and raises her glass to him with a smile.

It's hard to tell exactly how George felt about Callie other than he liked her but it was clear that he did like and admire her but their relationship was rushed. This is even better explained by Callie's then girlfriend Arizona points out emotional Callie is when it comes to love. She's in it for the long haul, When she talks about him to Meredith and Izzie, she talks about how he is brilliant, and kind, and how he makes her world.

George and Izzie

George and Izzie were best friends before the two of them got together, the two would often eat and joke together whenever they had time as interns and honestly, they were both rocks for each other. When George and Izzie sleep together after his fight with Callie, Izzie tells him that while she was drunk, she really did love him and next season George confesses he loves her too. Despite their best efforts the two of them don't work out so they agree to just be friends saying that the time wasn't right for them to be together. Honestly, I always felt that this relationship was wasted because the two of them do fit really well together but it was written to fail when you realize they were focusing on having perfect sex. When Izzie starts having hallucinations and hides it, George is the only one who thinks something is wrong as she hides it and feels hurt when she finally tells them she has cancer as he asked her time and again if something was wrong. Izzie says that George is the kind of doctor she wants to be because he always tries to be better and he doesn't step on others to do it. When George dies, it is Izzie who tells them he'd donate his organs and tells the girl he saved to stop wasting her life sitting at the hospital. George and Izzie's relationship failing is one of the saddest to me because there was more focus on the sex than the relationship. That isn't who the two of them are, they are more emotional and intimate people, "perfect sex" would have come after the two of them had done something. They aren't like Meredith and Christina, who live for surgery, they are more in line with Burke; someone who liked going out and doing things other than surgery.

George and Lexie

George and Lexie honestly never happened but a lot of people thought it would. Lexie, Meredith's younger half-sister didn't fell for George a while after the two of them met though she had been dating Alex Karev for a short bit. George meanwhile was in a lot of ways wallowing in his own muck for while, having to repeat his intern year, though Lexie helped by telling everyone in her class that George wasn't repeating his Intern year. Lexie in a lot of ways becomes infatuated with him, enjoying his smell and finding him "awesome" as she puts it but never works up the courage to tell him so in a lot of ways, she is the George to his Meredith. It becomes even weirder when you realize that her father is Meredith's, the same man Meredith's mother mistook him for. George and Lexie eventually move in together but again, she says nothing about how she feels and George doesn't pick up on it until one of his Interns tells him. Whatever could have come from him knowing will never be known as Lexie moves in with Meredith, and refuses to talk to or about George until his death where Lexie rightfully admits she was a bad friend.

Final Thoughts

George is an interesting character when it comes to romance as it never works. His love life is full of failed romances and girls who got away for one reason or another. There is never really a set reason for this like some flaw in his or their personality or he has bad taste, he isn't Frasier Crane who often picked bad women over good women so he'd have a reason to leave them. Meredith was never going to happen, he married Callie too early, Izzie had her drama, and Lexie was too into herself. While George does play a role in these relationships, the viewers knew for one reason or another that his romances were going to fail just on how they were set up. George's life could be summed up in failure in a way similar to Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown's romantic life is full of nothing good as he can't work up the courage to talk to the girl he likes, and doesn't notice the ones that do and that is a very real thing in life. However, George was more than just failed romances to his fans, he was someone who you honestly couldn't break, he kept going and didn't need to have a brilliant mother, dead dad, crazy mom, or pregnant turned model to be there. George was Arthur in the Sword in the Stone, he always wanted to be better and strove for it until the very end.