After working for more than two years in England and having experienced the bad influence of a hostile climate I am positive that the weather can act like a giant thermometer on our mood.
I'm not saying anything new, of course ... so that two rather famous TV series do nothing but agree with this common sense: "Scrubs" and "Grey's Anatomy" are day and night, black and white, the sun and the rain.
Let's compare the two main characters: Elliott Reid, "Scrubs", and Meredith Grey, "Grey's Anatomy." Both start out as interns in American teaching hospitals, both beautiful women (the latter had a discreet lipjob), both living on the West Coast but - and here's the catch - the first in the sunny California, unspecified losangelian site, the second in the rainy Seattle (although the show tries to hide it with takes of a constant clear sky).
Elliott Reid is super unlucky. Yet, since she lives in the sunny valleys of California, she does not mind, ever. She doesn't mind when as a child she discovers she was given a boy's name; she doesn't mind if her friend and colleague and partner spring in and out of her life confusing her to the point she gives up whom she thought was the right man for her (dolphin trainer, try to find another one with the same job once you let go of the first...). This slightly awkward blonde sportively puts up with her state of second best doctor in the hospital she works for and she is fine when the only person she tries to build a friendship with lasts only half season and is soon thrown out of the script. She does not let go even when she is repeatedly forced to deal with the excellence of her family (all doctors) in the futile attempt to prove his ability to a egocentric father. Elliott, like an eel dressed in a blue scrub, lets everything drip off her.
On the other hand her colleague in Seattle, from Grey'sanatomyville, falls into acute depression for a bad hair dye and since the very first season she has promised never to smile (and if it happens the camera usually fades off as not to frighten the viewer with emotions that are not covered by Seattle's gray climate). Even Dr. Grey comes from a family of doctors - the mother in this case - whom however, in perfect style with the depressing mood of the series, dies after years of Alzheimer's. Meredith gets engaged and then marries the handsome Doctor Shepherd but the marriage can hardly bring good spirits. Indeed, the engagement between the two makes the hours of labor of a pregnant woman a pleasant pastime. Depressed Meredith, who actually gets to be dead for several hours during the third season (which better medium if not someone who already seems to be dead inside?) drags into sever mood swings all the other doctors in the series who end up attending the same therapist (which, by the way, is not very professional). Meredith could have a thousand reasons not to be depressed but we know by now that she could also win the lottery and maintain the veneer of despair. Because the doctor's only bad luck is that she lives in Seattle where it rains all the time.
This is why when I wake up in the morning I look out to see what color the sky of Milan is. And in those rare days when my eyes see blue I feel a bit like Elliott Reid.
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