Unless that's what you want. Katherine Heigl may have finally done it. Someone on the inside at her popular show Grey's Anatomy is whispering that Heigl's character, Izzie, will get a brain tumor and possibly die in the upcoming season. "It's their way of screwing with her," the insider says. "She won't know whether she's going to live or die." Hah! ABC has only confirmed that her former costar Jeffrey Dean Morgan-who played a patient that she loved but sorta killed (right?)-will be back in the saddle for some episodes. The inside source says that he'll be appearing in Izzie's tumor-induced dreams/hallucinations. So yeah, she may have finally pissed off the showrunners enough to get once-and-for-all written off the show, which she seems, foolishly, to be gunning for. I mean what other reason could she possibly have to publicly trash the writers (saying that their writing for her character made her unworthy of Emmy consideration)? You know, other than rampant unchecked ego. Now, I'm sure that if the character passes on, the decision will be chalked up to gentle creative differences. But we'll know the truth: it was revenge.

As was suggested earlier, the writers may have been trying to sabotage Heigl's role on the show for some time now, making Izzie as shrill and whiny as Heigl herself. She's seemed pissy and ungrateful since she made big in Knocked Up, a movie that owes most of its success to Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen (and the rest of their pals). After that she jumped way up into a new pay grade, starred in the semi-hit 27 Dresses, and has become a tabloid fixture. It even helped her win an Emmy for Grey's Anatomy. (All this after starring in one of the lowest-grossing movies of all time only a few years prior). If she then felt totally cool about criticizing the movie (perhaps fairly, if not tactfully or professionally) in Vanity Fair, that can't have made the Grey's writers feel terribly secure about what she'd say about them.

And then, through utter speculation and nothing else, we can imagine that she breezed her way onto the Grey's set after all of this hoopla and felt so totally beyond this little show. But instead of buckling down and doing her work (for which she is paid an obscene amount of money) and hoping they'd kindly give her an early release, Heigl chose to try to bitch her way out of her seven year contract. And it seems like the producers may finally be acquiescing. Which, actually, is a bit disappointing (and not just because there are so many more interesting ways to kill off the Izzie character). As a commenter on IMDB suggests, wouldn't it be even better, even crueler to just bury her for the next three years? Don't let her off for movies, demand she be there every day, etc. Basically a prison sentence versus the death penalty.

I mean, I've always been against the death penalty. Though maybe it's death no matter what. Is anyone really going to want to hire her after all of this? For Ms. Heigl, this may prove to be something of a Pyrrhic victory.

Update: An ABC exec says Heigl will be on for the full season. Doesn't mean she won't die in the end, though.