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‘Why Are We Here?’: Parachronism as Multimodal Rhetorical Strategy in Grey’s Anatomy

Shannon Howard | Auburn University at Montgomery

In its twelfth season, ’s the viewer took her/his first tour of a long-running television drama Grey’s similar examining room when the original Anatomy opened its new year without the cast gathered as a group of interns under traditional cast. Main characters Derek the tutelage of Chief of Richard () and Christina (Sandra Webber (played by James Pickens Jr.). Oh), the two people most connected to Webber’s voice echoes lines from that the protagonist (played by original pilot as we survey the empty ), had exited the show in room, in the present: “Each of you comes seasons eleven and ten, leaving most fans here today hopeful….” Crossfading over to wonder what would happen to the this statement, we hear former resident remaining cast in terms of storytelling. and now attending physician Miranda reported that over Bailey (played by ) say, “I 100,000 fans signed a petition to bring have five rules. Memorize them.” Other Dempsey’s Derek back to the show, with voices, more muffled, fade out. The many of these fans threatening to boycott camera then lands on the multiple future seasons. The season twelve projections of Meredith’s face on large premiere “Sledgehammer” (2016), written screens, overlooking the classroom, and by Stacy McKee and directed by Kevin she says, “You might be thinking…. I’ve McKidd (who also plays Dr. ), been here before. This is familiar. This is addressed this concern explicitly in the old hat. Maybe you’re wondering…why opening scene. are we here? But I promise…you’re about At the start Meredith’s voice over to find out that everything has changed.” accompanies multiple images of her face In this moment Meredith becomes our on flat screen televisions in an empty teacher rather than just our narrator: her exam room, looking directly at the camera direct address to the camera impels us to (us) and explaining why this year is change perspective despite lingering different. Before she speaks, however, doubts about the forthcoming events. voices from the show’s inaugural season However, while Meredith stresses that echo quietly through this space: in 2004, change is the motif of the new season, this

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episode’s content suggests a different the “flipping” of a channel on our approach based on celebrating and television. In other words, as Shannon merging the past with the present. The says, a parachronism is “more of an oddity writers of Grey’s often engage in a than an error.” Furthermore, the winding seamless overlap of past and present and flipping suggest that parachronism is events, sometimes placing moments from most effective when stressing its use of the past directly inside the present material objects, some of which seem narrative. Unlike a flashback, the past and displaced in the present. In other words, present act as layers to each other rather parachronism often occurs as a thing or as than separate linear units in the history of a reference to a thing rather than as an the narrative. I argue that this abstract phenomenon. phenomenon prompts the resurrection of The examples of parachronism that an outdated word to describe how the follow serve not as evidence of a close writers manipulate time in rhetorical reading (read literary reading) of Grey’s as ways. much as they are a rhetorical study of how Rarely used today, the term Rhimes effectively managed viewer parachronism, originally defined as an expectations. Webber’s line, “Each of you “error in chronology,” is similar to the comes here today, hopeful,” has now been anachronism but works retroactively repurposed to speak to the present instead of forwardly. This is all to say that audience. In this sense the past and the if an anachronism is a clock of present become partners in making the standardized time in a Shakespeare play, a narrative engine run smoothly for a thing too futuristic to belong in a narrative skeptical group of fans. set in medieval Scotland (see Macbeth), parachronism works in the opposite direction, by using a dated reference to Conceptions of Narrative and amplify the present situation. Science Rhetorical Time fiction author Samantha Shannon (2013) No scholarship at this time exists on explains, “The key difference is possibility. parachronism, which creates a quandary in It is impossible for Marilyn Monroe to terms of situating this argument. The realistically turn up in 1984 - she died in closest relative to parachronism as a 1962. But it is possible for a man to be scholarly topic is the language associated wearing a ruff or using a quill in 2005 - with the rhetoric of narratives, both print just not very likely, given how silly he’d and on screen. Meredith’s voice over look.” echoes Wayne Booth’s commentary in The A parachronism occurs with the Rhetoric of Fiction when he analyzes the “dialing” of a cell phone (language that “manipulation of mood” and how an invokes the use of an earlier landline author might be “commenting directly on model or rotary device), the “winding” of the work itself” in order to influence an a clock that now uses a digital interface, or audience (1983, pp. 201-09). While

Spring 2017 (1:1) 16 novels may use written language, The X-Files as examples of shows that particularly the manipulation of verb “require attentive and sophisticated tenses, to suggest time’s fluidity or rhetorical work to interpret” (2002, p. disjoints, visual narrative continues to 58). David Lavery uses different terms experiment with this same concept than complex narrative to describe the through careful editing, spoken dialogue, cultural scene of television in the past two and the use of dissolves to indicate flashing decades; his article on “ and Long- back or forward. Seymour Chatman Term Television Narrative” includes explains that in film the “temporal norm” words like flexi-narrative, neo-baroque, is “scenic” because both story and and hybrid and Dickensian narrative to discourse operate jointly. However, he characterize today’s shows and their stresses that “the more a narrative deviates manipulation of time and structure (2009, from this norm, the more it highlights pp. 313-14). His focus on the show Lost time manipulation as a process or artifice, illustrates his belief in complex television and the more loudly a narrator’s voice being most common in the 2000s. Indeed, sounds in our ears” (1980, p. 223). In this Lost featured a rare form of time travel in sense, Meredith is both overtly the famous season six “flash sideways,” commenting on the show’s past, present, which suggested an alternate reality was at and future while also calling directly work even as the main plot advanced. attention to time’s progression and its Narrative acts as a frame for experience effect on the audience. and helps identify cause and effect Such overt manipulation of narrative in relationships in both fiction and in our favor of increasing dramatic effect has own lives; therefore, the frame become the norm more than the communicates a particular view of how exception. Television has been lauded in reality is shaped. In an older collection of recent years as entering a “golden age” of essays linking argument to narrative, content, one in which directors and Douglas Hesse (1989) helpfully explains, writers experiment with more “The reader’s perception of causal sophisticated structures of narrative, sequences is crucial to persuasion through editing, and point of view. Jason Mittell emplotment. To say ‘this’ happened as a (2012-13), in his study of what he calls result of ‘that’ is to supply a relationship “complex television,” dates the beginning between the two, to make a judgement. of experimentation in the 1970s, while We perceive a state of affairs and wish to Steven Johnson hails , explain how it has come to exist, which aired first in 1981, as the prime searching backwards, asking in ‘digressive’ ancestor of complexity (2005, p. 65). In essays, for example, ‘How did the writer his work uniting the fields of Rhetoric and get here?’” (p. 114). Such processes, he Composition and television studies, says, are not different from argumentative Bronwyn T. Williams mentions shows and rhetorical work. Still, the “why are we from the 1990s like ER, NYPD Blue, and here” question, which Meredith states in

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explicit terms during the introduction to before the time of their natural death. “Sledgehammer,” requires an expanded Therefore, the new season works toward vocabulary with which to analyze time, something that heals such matters, one that calls attention to how time may something beyond kairos that heals operate in unconventional ways as it ruptures rather than calling attention to frames narrative. them. As Rhimes told Hollywood Reporter, In terms of rhetoric, one way to she wanted season twelve to be “lighter” approach the use of time is to invoke the but also to “recapture the early season frequently cited term kairos, which banter and bring the fun back to the show” Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee (Goldberg, 2015). The idea of recapturing characterize as “a situational kind of time,” the past had to be done in ways that both one that acts as “a ‘window’ of time reinforced what was successful at the during which action is most advantageous” beginning and also helped fans feel (2009, p. 45). While kairos may explain comfortable with the present. The use of how Webber’s words are reinvented to parachronism makes that possible. speak to the disgruntled audience of the Bakhtin, in his study of the novel, twelfth season specifically, the term does offers one possible precursor to not tell the full story of how parachronism when he explains that time “Sledgehammer” works to envelop the (during stories of the agricultural age in past. If lack of attention to kairos leads to particular) acts as a perpetual unfolding missed opportunities (Sutton, 2001, p. genesis, where humans and earth move in 413-15) or occasions (De Certeau, 1988, tandem through specific patterns of p. 85), parachronism is less damning, for growth and regression. In terms of “how it allows us to recreate missed did we get here,” his explanation of opportunities as if they never passed. folkloric time reads as follows: “The Indeed, the first use of kairos was a passage of time does not destroy or negative one: the term likely first diminish but rather multiplies and appeared in The Iliad and originally increases the quantity of valuable things; referred to “a vital or lethal part of the where there is but one seed sown, many body, one that is particularly susceptible stalks of grain appear. . . . (207). Here the to injury” (Sipiora, 2002, p. 2). With study of time does not pave the way for Homer kairos was associated with matters the parachronism strictly speaking, but it of loss, mortality, or failed completion (p. gestures toward a cumulative effect. On 5), and such ideas certainly characterize the other hand, Paul Ricoeur, in his work ’s death in season eleven, on narrative, stresses that metatemporal the event that angered most fans. moments in the hero’s quest exist, where We might say that emphasizing missed time has neither been eliminated or opportunities and occasions is part of what adhered to in linear fashion; rather, the it means to suffer from losing a loved one hero descends into a primordial space, or

Spring 2017 (1:1) 18 world of dreams that remains intact until importance of rhetorical invention when it is ruptured and the world of action (and interacting with a text on screen because possible death) is restored (185). Neither “invention becomes something neither of these concepts tells the full story of unconscious nor conscious. It becomes what happens in Grey’s Anatomy. attentive - a way of being-in-the-world, a Instead of focusing on “mutability,” as way of becoming - and in a world of Crowley and Hawhee do in their hypermedia, it becomes hyper-attentive” discussion of kairos (p. 47), parachronism (2003, p. 88). As Hesse says, “The would have us consider the “always”-ness rhetorical value of stories, then, is of scenes, people, and events. While participatory, not logical” because the kairos appeals to particularity and writer makes the audience “complicit” in specialization, parachronism suggests a the meaning making process (p. 114). In holism or suspension of epochal divisions. Hawk’s analysis, elements of the past as Because para as prefix denotes going discovered through memory become “the “around,” “beside,” or “beyond,” the place of invention” (p. 88). The work of memory also holds message is that time is capable of veering significance for the Grey’s characters in the away from linear notions of past, present, previous year - Meredith actually and future and instead working around comments in voice over, “Funny, isn’t it? constraints of these traditional divisions. How memory works?” when her husband Likewise, parachronism works differently Derek walks out the door for the last time than the strategy of repetition, too, and later suffers fatal injuries (“How to although it may begin there. H. Porter Save a Life”). Likewise, De Certeau Abbot explains that the “temporal characterizes memory as a condition that structure” of a narrative often returns and “mediates spatial transformations” and revisits certain important moments in the then produces a “rupture” or “break” in story (2008, p. 242). Parachronism works current action (p. 85). This is significant differently than repetition because its because while the season eleven “How to rhetorical power is not based in a desire to Save a Life” episode deals in such ruptures hammer home any one image or moment and traumatic moments, with the death of throughout different moments in time. Derek echoing and calling to mind Those differences in time do not exist as previous deaths the protagonist has separate for parachronism: nothing that suffered through, the parachronism in “always is” engages in repetition but exists “Sledgehammer” offers healing as it continually. continues to sync past and present in a However, understanding rhetorical way that prevents any disturbance of devices like parachronism requires a time’s progression. This strategy, as seen certain kind of work on the viewer’s part. particularly through the use of objects like Byron Hawk explains that in today’s sledgehammers, paper notes, and a Star world the audience must consider the Wars spacecraft, actively repairs the

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damage done by the previous year of darkness and death.

Evidence of Parachronism in ‘Sledgehammer’ Certain tools (or actor props) in Grey’s suggest a seamless blend of past and present and repeatedly echo the work of Figure 1: Sledgehammer (Wikimedia Commons) parachronism as a multimodal rhetorical strategy. To start, we learn that never suggested that she wanted to change protagonist Meredith Grey has now the structure of her house, while Amelia returned to her childhood home after asserts that Meredith (although inebriated losing her husband. When she wakes in at the time) had stated definitively that she her mother’s house, she seems uncertain wanted to tear the wall down. The use of this tool sets the tone for the show’s new of the future, just as she was twelve season (It is also important to note that seasons prior. We do not see her move Grey’s Anatomy features song titles for its from her former home with Derek; episodes - this one features the 1980s pop instead, the season begins and it is as if she song “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel). has never left her bedroom. Suddenly, she The presence of Amelia in Meredith’s hears a loud crash and realizes that her house reminds us that while Derek may be sister-in-law, Amelia, has punched a hole gone, his sister remains behind, anchoring in one of the living room walls with a the past to the present day. Like the sledgehammer. This sound provides a jolt sledgehammer itself, Amelia disrupts that reminds the viewer of the changes tranquility at the Grey home in ways that happening in what we would consider a frustrate Meredith, who is adjusting to life familiar and comfortable setting. as a widow. The choice of sledgehammer, a tool However, unlike memory, which, as formerly used by blacksmiths in earlier De Certeau suggests, ruptures the present eras, could hypothetically serve as one of circumstance through emotional upheaval, the first instances of a parachronism since the sledgehammer becomes a tool through its use was more common in earlier which change is made manifest physically. centuries (Fig. 1). Since a sledgehammer De Certeau explains that memory causes a exerts force violently, the rupture of the “coup,” a modification of the local order, wall and the hole that results frames the but in this season, the coup comes in the conflict between the two characters. comedic form of a blunt instrument. Most Throughout the episode Amelia and viewers relate to the idea of a roommate Meredith clash over the use of the or sibling encroaching upon their space, sledgehammer: Meredith claims that she and Amelia’s literal rupture of the space,

Spring 2017 (1:1) 20 however destructive, feels comfortable compared to the violence and memories associated with the past. However, parachronism does invoke emotional pain in the Grey’s hospital patient narrative, a common trope used in all seasons to reinforce the value of medical help and the development of characters as they progress from residents Figure 2: Parachronism - Shoebox of Folded Notes (author’s picture) to attending physicians. In such cases, trauma is difficult to avoid since the that you fold a million different ways. And characters are all surgeons, but most of I kept them. Every single one of them in a these patient narratives, unlike Derek’s box under my bed so I could reread them narrative in year eleven, end happily. In when I had bad days.” Jess then relates that “Sledgehammer” two fifteen-year-old her mother burned all of these notes in the girls, Jess and Aliyah, are admitted to fireplace when Jess was away. The Grey-Sloan Memorial after they suffer ephemeral quality of the notebook paper, extensive injuries when hit by a train. burning, amplifies this act of Jess’s Their motive was to “die together” due to their family’s inability to accept them as a mother’s betrayal—the contemporary same-sex couple. Jess is afraid of being deletion of texts on a cell phone would sent to a fundamentalist camp that hardly compete as a similar destructive attempts conversion of gay youth into gesture. The image of a mother burning straight members of society. such handwritten treasures fills the Yet, to amplify this kairotic moment, a doctors (and also the viewers) with moment shaped by activism surrounding sympathy for the girls, especially since gay rights and the dangers of such camps, Aliyah must undergo extensive surgery Jess mentions exchanging handwritten and may not survive. letters in secret. The kinds of notes that In this scenario, the idea of the the two girls describe were most handwritten notes hardly ruptures the commonly used as 1980s and 1990s fabric of time, yet, as science fiction communication tools, writings that writer Shannon notes in her explanation of students passed discreetly among parachronism, it does serve as an “oddity” themselves during classes (Fig. 2). The that might catch our attention differently folding as a creative way to “mail” or than a set of texts. The reliance on contain such messages calls attention to physical materials to maintain a romance the tool in a manner that would be hard to reminds the viewers that loving in itself is duplicate in current exchanges of digital a precarious act, subject to erasure. If messages. Jess says, “You know Aliyah and Derek’s death still hangs over the I, we like to pass notes at school. The kind narrative like a dark shroud, we see that

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shroud more in the telling of Jess and by asking the board to report to the Aliyah’s story since the injuries from the operating room, where she continues her train crash appear dramatic, just as general surgery while explaining her Derek’s injuries appear in “How to Save a qualifications to be chief. Her speech is Life.” Still, the notes remind us that the worth quoting at length: romance is a school-age one, not an adult tragedy, and that Jess and Aliyah still have I’m sure Dr. McConnell gave you an time to recover. Indeed, by the final excellent presentation. Scissor. [She scenes of the narrative, both of the girls’ continues to operate and take tools fathers recognize the value of being loved from her assistants as she speaks.] by another, even if such love is less Watch that tissue. She would be conventional than what they would have excellent for the job…. The point is initially imagined for their children, and McConnell and I offer different things. Aliyah’s surgery is a success. The ruptures She is new and shiny. And she likes a and traumas of the previous year are good challenge…. And that’s what this avoided. place is to her, her newest challenge. Although the parachronism touches on Until she finds her next one. And her dark themes with the two patients next. But that’s not me. involved in an accident, the use of it still acts as a positive force for the main cast. In Bailey looks up at the board members while closing the patient’s wound and this episode competes with continues with these words, which, as I a visiting surgeon, Tracy McConnell, for will argue, speak directly to the work of the position of Chief of Surgery. While parachronism: Webber has promised McConnell a hospital tour, Bailey seems put off by her See I don’t care if this place is the lack of similar treatment, but Webber shiniest or the fanciest or if it’s a beat quickly explains, “You know where up hunk of junk. As far as I’m everything is.” Even Catherine Avery, the concerned, it’ll always be the ship that chair of the hospital board, explains that made the Kessel run in less than this is the very reason she supports twelve parsecs…. I believe in this McConnell’s candidacy for chief: “Bailey hospital and what it can do. And I want knows you too well. You’ve been to push this bucket of bolts to do the together too long. She doesn’t push you, most impossible things you’ve ever Richard…. I’m saying that she’s too seen. And then I’ll do more—because comfortable here. We need someone who this is my challenge. Clamp. Use the will make us uncomfortable…. We need argon beam. Avoid CBD. [she speaks someone who will surprise us.” However, to her surgical team] Slowly. Let me. while McConnell gives a standard Good. There. This job was made for presentation to the board, Bailey counters me. Staples. This job belongs to me.

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Suction. I’ve earned first chair. Suture. And every single one of you already knows it. Ready to close.

This speech encapsulates the best of what parachronism may do as an element of rhetoric: it reminds the audience that the past and the present together are what fuel innovation and future progress. Bailey effectively sets herself up in contrast with Figure 3: Millennium Falcon with action figures the new candidate who tempts the rest of (author’s picture) the cast with her “newness” and promises of future success. this sense, she proves Catherine Avery Most notably, Bailey quotes lines from wrong: her ability to invest in the hospital Star Wars by referencing “this hunk of does not make her “too comfortable” but junk” and its ability to make “the Kessel provides her the knowledge to succeed in run in twelve parsecs”: in short, she the position. compares the hospital itself to the Later that night, as Bailey stands on the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo’s iconic hospital bridge that overlooks the Seattle spaceship known for saving the heroes of landscape, her husband Ben congratulates Star Wars (Fig. 3) Here Bailey puts the her for being chosen and then embraces Falcon front and center rather than her, gesturing toward the mountains, regulating it to an outdated pop culture “Behold - everything the light touches….is reference. The hospital is the Falcon, now yours.” This line, from 1994’s animated and always, and she is the only one to care film The Lion King, along with the multiple for it even when its residents see it only as references to Star Wars and the reference “a bucket of bolts.” to Peter Gabriel’s music with Those familiar with the Star Wars films “Sledgehammer,” again suggests the power may also recognize that the Falcon serves of past narratives to illumine and color the as a parachronism linking the old Star Wars present action. This appeal also comforts trilogy of the 70s and 80s to J. J. Abrams’s those who felt the Grey’s narrative had newest installment in the franchise, The focused on trauma too often in the Force Awakens, which aired the same year previous year. In both narratives, The Lion that season twelve began in 2015. In this King and Star Wars, heroes manage to sense, Bailey speaks to a legacy that is, like reclaim their legacy despite the presence parachronism itself, anchored in the of darkness and corrupt leadership. The merging of past and present narratives. endings to both films are both She also asserts that she is worthy of Chief overwhelmingly positive for the of Surgery now and always has been. In characters.

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Conclusion lives. As the hammer finally clears a large “Sledgehammer” concludes with the enough hole in the wall, Meredith and protagonist succumbing to the perverse Amelia peer through the opening and desire to knock down the wall that Amelia smile into the camera. At the same time, a ruined. As the characters hack their way new group of students picks up their through the plaster and wood, the voice scalpels and begins practicing in the lab. over returns to the topic of change. The Most long-running television programs camera then cuts between the characters continually reinvent themselves in order using the sledgehammer and the set of the to impress audience members. Never- now filled hospital exam room, the same theless, McKee and other writers of Grey’s one that was empty in the opening scene. take a different position by infusing In the room are new students standing contemporary stories with past allusions before cadavers. When Meredith walks in, and objects. This use of parachronism, a her voice over merges with her physical term rarely used today, allows the viewer position, and the message she gives both solace in the old while exploring the the new students and the viewers speaks, present narrative, and such work acts once again, directly to concerns about rhetorically to assuage audience fears season twelve: about a cast existing without its leading man. Parachronism depends on a model of So, why are you here? What’s so time in which past and present continually different? What’s changed? My answer envelop each other rather than call is…you. The thing that has changed is attention to their differences. Since Grey’s you. I want you to throw everything seeks to recalibrate its tone through you think you know about anatomy capturing the humor of early years, it out the window…. And look at this makes sense that certain objects and ideas cadaver like you’ve never seen a from the past would be featured human body before. Now pick up your prominently in the season twelve scalpels. Place them below the xiphoid premiere. process. Press firmly. No regrets. And Still, these objects are not fetishized as let’s begin. vintage tools from past decades but instead seamlessly integrated into 2016 culture. In In Meredith’s monologue, she asserts that an age where narratives on screen are the world of her hospital is not what continually referred to as remixes, changes from season to season; it is the reboots, or remakes, the work of viewer instead who does the growing. parachronism remains rhetorical because it This comment has special meaning for appeals to a particular cultural occasion those who have spent twelve years with (kairos) while also suspending a strictly the program, since most people who linear conception of time. Such rhetorical watch a show for that length have likely work, undoubtedly, will remain essential gone through different phases in their own to linking multiple generations of viewers

Spring 2017 (1:1) 24 as they consider the cast of a long-running De Certeau, M. (1988). of television program to be part of their own everyday life. Berkeley, CA: University history. By giving viewers tangible objects of California Press. to which they may cling, props such as Goldberg, L. (2015, August 19). 12 ways handwritten notes, spaceships, and Grey’s Anatomy will be different in sledgehammers anchor the audience in a season 12. . comforting present while also honoring Retrieved from the tokens of our material past. www.hollywoodreporter.com/live- feed/greys-anatomy-season-12- spoilers-816358 References Hawk, B. (2003). Hyperrhetoric and the Abbott, H. P. (2008). The Cambridge inventive spectator: Remotivating The nd introduction to narrative (2 ed.). fifth element. In D. Blakesley (Ed.), The Cambridge, UK: Cambridge terministic screen: Rhetorical perspectives University Press. on film (pp. 70-91). Carbondale, IL: Abrams, N. (2016, May 20). Grey’s Southern Illinois University Press. anatomy: Ellen Pompeo “disappointed” Hesse, D. (1989). Persuading as storying: over fan response to McDreamy’s Essays, narrative rhetoric and the death. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved college writing course. In R. Andrews from (Ed.). Narrative & argument (pp. 106- http://ew.com/article/2016/05/20/ 117). London, UK: Open University greys-anatomy-ellen-pompeo-season- Press. 12-interview/ Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic Johnson, S. (2005). Everything bad is good imagination: Four essays. (C. Emerson & for you: How today’s popular culture is M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: actually making us smarter. New York, University of Texas Press. (Original NY: Riverhead Books. work published in 1975) Lavery, D. (2009). Lost and long-term Booth, W. (1983). The rhetoric of fiction television narrative. In P. Harrigan & (2nd ed.). , IL: University of N. Waldrip-Fruin (Eds.), Third person: Chicago Press. Authoring and exploring vast narratives Chatman, S. (1980). Story and discourse: (pp. 313-322). Cambridge, MA: MIT Narrative structure in fiction and film. Press. USA: Cornell University Press. McKee, S. (Writer), & McKidd, K. Crowley, S., & Hawhee, D. (2009). (Director). (2016). Sledgehammer Ancient rhetorics for contemporary students [Television series episode]. In S. (4th ed.). New York, NY: Rhimes (Producer), Grey’s anatomy. Pearson/Longman. Retrieved from www.Netflix.com

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Mittell, J. (2012-2013). Complex TV: The poetics of contemporary television storytelling (pre-publication ed.). Retrieved from http://mcpress.media- commons.org/complextelevision Rhimes, S. (Writer), & Hardy, R. (Director). (2016). How to save a life. [Television series episode]. In S. Rhimes (Producer), Grey’s anatomy. Retrieved from www.Netflix.com Ricoeur, P. (1980). Narrative time. Critical Inquiry, 7(1), 169-90. Shannon, S. (2013, August 15). Parachronism, possibility, and penny- farthing futurism. Tor.com. Retrieved from www.tor.com/author/samantha- shannon/ Sipiora, P. (2002). Introduction: The ancient concept of kairos. In P. Sipiora & J. S. Baumlin (Eds.), Rhetoric and kairos: Essays in history, theory, and praxis (pp. 1-22). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Sutton, J. (2001). Kairos. In T. O. Sloane (Ed.), Encyclopedia of rhetoric (pp. 413- 417). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, B. T. (2002). Tuned in: Television and the teaching of writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.