Miranda Bailey is a fan favorite on Grey’s Anatomy but she’s also been a series regular since day one. In sixteen seasons, there are bound to be moments when Dr. Bailey is overrated, and plenty where she’s underrated as well. Through hundreds of episodes and the ups and downs that come with each one, a handful of moments doesn’t begin to cover every time Dr. Bailey’s character in full.
In Season 1, she is the mother hen to all the interns but they don’t last with her through sixteen seasons. The many different characters that come into and out of Dr. Bailey’s life give her many opportunities to shine, and others where she’s relegated to the background. Here are five times Miranda Bailey was overrated and five she was underrated.
Overrated: Scary Dr. Bailey, The Intern Overlord
When Season 1 first begins, Meredith, Cristina, George, Izzy, and Alex, are assigned to Dr. Bailey and they’re terrified. She has five rules and she is not keen on anyone breaking them. The interns try to do their best but eventually they break one rule or another and they’re afraid that Dr. Bailey would come for them. Considering the crazy things they did during their intern year, the scary lady persona was extremely overrated. Instead, Dr. Bailey was often an attentive and empathetic teacher.
Underrated: Handling Intern Mistakes
Not only does she do it with the original interns in Season 1, but Dr. Bailey also helps them handle the mistakes of their own interns when they become the teachers. She continues to be a teacher after the interns leave her care and she teaches those who come in from Mercy West as well. Dr. Weber is named Residency Director but Dr. Bailey is also a teacher who becomes his equal, even if she’s also his protege until the moment she becomes Chief of Surgery herself.
Overrated: Her Initial Reaction To Derek And Meredith Together
Derek and Meredith become romantically involved before she ever knows that Derek is her superior at the hospital. But when Dr. Bailey finds them making out in a car in Meredith’s driveway, her reaction is big. Derek is also her superior as the head of the Neurosurgery department. She is thinking of her own life at the hospital as well a show any drama between Meredith and Derek will affect her. The drama that Dr. Bailey assumes hadn’t happened yet and she still let her reaction affect how she treated Meredith as her student.
Underrated: Her Marriage To Tucker
It is not revealed right away that Dr. Bailey was married and had been for nearly a decade when the show began. As the seasons move forward and she gets pregnant, more about her husband and her marriage comes to light. Tuck says things to Dr. Bailey that are clearly gaslighting. He blames their infant son’s issues and even a major injury on Dr. Bailey going to work.
She leaves subtle hints that her hectic work schedule was always an issue with him and she never let it out at work while everyone else got personal. She is living in that marriage and it’s completely underrated throughout the beginning of the show and after they divorce. He moves back east and their issues continue but Dr. Bailey rarely brings it up.
Overrated: The Human Genome Lab
This project is Dr. Bailey’s big research endeavor and it seems extremely promising at first. She maps Zola when Derek and Meredith adopt her but she doesn’t get any definitive results. Both Derek and Meredith get there genes mapped. Meredith finds out she has the specific markers for Alzheimer’s, which killed her mother, and Derek has the gene markers for baldness. The lab comes up again with one of Bailey’s patients who has tumors that regrow over and over. She wants to map the “genes” of his cancer to create a targeted medicine that puts an end to all the surgery. The genome lab is eventually closed due to budget cuts and it doesn’t yield any more groundbreaking results. All in all, it’s a seriously underwhelming project.
Underrated: Helping Callie Be Chief Resident
Dr. Bailey is not happy that Dr. Callie Torres is chosen as chief resident over her in their fifth year. She has spent her career teaching and managing and when it’s her time to let these skills shine, someone else gets the job. When she sees Dr. Torres completely overwhelmed, she doesn’t shower her with resentment, though. Instead, she takes on the job without any recognition or additional compensation. After a while, Dr. Weber recognizes that Dr. Bailey has been doing the work of chief resident in addition to her job but before that, she is severely underrated and she does the job anyway.
Overrated: Being A Surgeon (vs. Being An Administrator)
Of course, Dr. Bailey is a great surgeon. Her ideas have merit and she’s an amazing teacher. When it comes to general surgery, she’s done most procedures so many times that she makes it appear effortless. But she’s not known for her innovative developments or her groundbreaking clinical trails, because she doesn’t have any.
She has done some things but her most notable accomplishments are as an administrator and a manager. She teaches and she inspires and she’s good at those things. But as a surgeon in general, she’s a bit overrated.
Underrated: Her Heart Attack
First off, she didn’t tell her husband that she was in the hospital with a heart attack int he first place. Then, after it was over, she wanted to jump right back in to everything she did before the heart attack like it never happened. She ended up slowing down but when she got pregnant, the fact that she’d had a heart attack not too long before was barely mentioned.
Overrated: Being Chief Of Surgery
When she first takes over the job, Dr. Bailey pushes the surgeons to do great things. She takes on difficult cases and clashes with department heads on a regular basis. She beats herself up with every failure and then pushes her surgeons even more. Catherine Fox appears to undercut her with the appointment of Tom Koracik as essentially her boss. This makes her feel like she’s been cut off from her power and she lets it get to her. Throughout the show she is fierce but as chief of surgery she is overrated.
Underrated: Her Emotional Endurance
Dr. Bailey endures a rocky marriage, a tough pregnancy and birth while her husband is getting brain surgery, the death of several interns and other doctors she teaches like George and Lexi, Izzy’s cancer, Meredith almost dying more than once, a bomb in a patient’s chest, a mass shooting event, and all of that is in the first half of the series. Then there’s Richard being electrocuted, Derek getting killed, Cristina leaving, and more natural disasters, breakups, and marriages than any one person should have to count. After all that, she has a heart attack, loses her baby, and right after that, she is the birthing partner for Amelia, sitting behind her while she pushes just as George did for her. Through it all, she is a steadfast friend and confidant. Her emotional endurance is grossly underrated by everyone around her.
