"Help. I've become addicted to the one TV show I swore I would never, ever watch."

A few weeks ago I found myself in a bit of a television pickle.

Game of Thrones was ending, I’d devoured every available episode of Younger and my days watching The Handmaid’s Tale already felt like a distant memory.

So there I was, with Netflix open on my laptop and absolutely nothing to watch.

It’s not that there was a lack of options. I could have very well started true crime doco series The Confession Tapes. I could have satisfied my cravings for drama and love by trying out Outlander.

But instead, in what I now consider my darkest TV hour, I turned to the one show I’d been slamming for years. The one show I promised myself I would never, ever watch.

Grey’s Anatomy.

I hit 'play' in a moment of weakness. And 166 episodes (that's more than five days straight worth of watching) in, I am absolutely hooked.

I can't pinpoint just one reason why I've resisted the TV juggernaut for so long. It's arguably one of the most successful and well-known dramas in current existence (yes, this is a friendly reminder that the show's 14th season is just about to premiere), but I've never really been interested.

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Perhaps it's because the show's most memorable moments are so highly publicised that I already knew the fate of almost every character before I even started the very first episode. (Spoilers below...)

Derek 'McDreamy' Shepherd dies, Izzie Stevens gets cancer and runs away, and George O'Malley is so horribly disfigured after being hit by a bus that it's too late by the time his former colleagues figure out who he is.

There only one guarantee when it comes to Grey's Anatomy: there will never, ever be a happy ending.

The more I watch, the more dramatic the deaths - and the scenarios the characters face - get.

The other day I watched an episode where a lion - a LITERAL LION - wrecked havoc on Seattle and put a number of patients in the E.R..

Then there were the episodes where Izzie had very loud, very passionate sex with the ghost of her dead, heart transplant patient fiancé. Really.

I even battled against every single urge I had to hit 'skip' when the eighteenth episode of the show's seventh season decided to become an all-singing, all-dancing musical event.

(It was tough and I may have needed more than one glass of wine to get through it, I'll admit.)

But somehow, I keep battling through. I keep watching, telling myself every night at 1am that 'this is the last episode' I'll watch tonight, only to find myself three hours later looking like a living, breathing version of this meme:

(This coming from a person who once sat through all seven seasons of Dance Moms. I very clearly have a problem.)

Perhaps it's because the thing I hate the most about Grey's Anatomy is the fact that I don't really hate it at at all.

If you're looking for a show that's damn entertaining, and requires little to no brain energy to figure out what's going on, it's the show for you.

And that's exactly what I was looking for when I ran out of other, more intelligent, more 'trendy' things to watch.

It's also a show that has been praised for itss racially diverse cast, portrayal of same-sex relationships and discussion of topics that are too often ignored on mainstream television: abortion, mental health and domestic violence.

The show is also female-led and female-focussed, with many characters weighing up the question many women face: do I choose work, or do I choose family? And what happens if I try to choose both?

So as far as late night, desperately-seeking-something-to-watch choices, I could do a lot worse than Grey's Anatomy.

Like The Big Bang Theory perhaps...

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