As a Grey’s Anatomy cast member, Katherine Heigl was essentially paid to stare into the middle distance and weep.

It was a good gig. Standing around whining about relationships with a variety of people who should probably be somewhere else performing emergency surgery on a child is about as easy as it gets, acting-wise. And yet, thanks to her stupid mouth, Katherine Heigl apparently upset the Grey’s Anatomy producers so much that they planned to kill her off.

Except now Katherine Heigl wants to stay on Grey’s Anatomy. That’s good news for Katherine Heigl and, um… oh, just Katherine Heigl.

If you’re a member of the Grey’s Anatomy cast, you basically only have two rules to live your live by. The first rule is that you must regularly examine exactly where your life went so very wrong, and the second one is that you must never upset the Grey’s Anatomy producers.

That last one’s key. Upset the producers by screaming homophobic slurs or having the temerity to read your lines exactly as they are on the script and they won’t think twice about sacking you. So with this in mind it’s a small miracle that Katherine Heigl has stayed on Grey’s Anatomy for so long, given that last summer she decided not to nominate herself for an award because she thought the writing on the show was so cack.

Which, you know, it is. But still, shame on you, Katherine Heigl.

So how did the Grey’s Anatomy producers respond to this slight? Easy – they gave her a massive load of brain cancer. A terminal one, too, if rumours were to be believed. And then they screamed “There! Now, do you want to complain about the broken chair in your dressing room again? DO YOU?” to a sobbing Ellen Pompeo. Possibly.

However, despite the giant load of cancer that’s ravaged her brain, it now seems like Katherine Heigl’s character might remain a part of Grey’s Anatomy – and it’s all thanks to Heigl’s perfectly-calibrated ability to grovel endlessly, as the LA Times reports:

I don’t know if that’s a yes or a no. No one will tell me and I don’t know how this is going to go. I don’t know if I live or die. I don’t know how Izzie fares…. I’m there” if Izzie remains part of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Heigl said. She called the set “one of my favorite places to be” and said her colleagues are also friends.

Personally we hope that Katherine Heigl’s Grey’s Anatomy character isn’t killed off by brain cancer, because that would give her the satisfaction of performing a touchingly elegant final death scene. No, it’d be much better for her to beat the cancer and then get hit by a bus. Or fall down an abandoned lift shaft. Or have her head knocked off by a robotic aeroplane with a bowling ball tied underneath it. Or be swallowed whole by giant sewer crocodile. Or be shot in half by lasers. Or get her hair caught in an industrial shredder.

We’ve got a million of these. Grey’s Anatomy people, call us.

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