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The Character Shonda Rhimes Regrets Killing Off On "Grey's Anatomy"

Luckily, his career exploded right after...

Like most influential moments in your life, you probably remember exactly where you were when you watched the Grey's Anatomy Season 2 bomb episode.

To my delight, Entertainment Weekly just posted an oral history of the episode and it took me right back to 2006.

If you remember correctly, Coach Taylor (aka Kyle Chandler) played Dylan the Bomb Squad Guy. DTBSG coached (ha!) Meredith through an extremely tense removal of a bomb from inside a human being and the only thing that got anyone through it was "Breathe (2 AM)" by Anna Nalick.

At the time, Kyle was a relatively unknown actor (unless you watched the underrated CBS gem Early Edition) but even Ellen Pompeo could tell he'd be a huge star:

I remember thinking Kyle Chandler was amazing. I wasn’t surprised his career really took off after that because he was so natural.

Apparently, Kyle really, really, really didn't want to be killed off, which would have been problematic given the episode's, well, explosive ending. Here's what Shonda Rhimes remembers about the whole thing:

He would pitch me ideas on how Dylan, his character, could maybe not explode, and I would show him the line in the script that said, “Dylan explodes.” That’s literally all it said. He was written to explode. But I did not expect to have Kyle Chandler. I didn’t want to explode him.

Of course, on Slays Anatomy, people die and we just have to deal and take solace in the fact that this led to clearer eyes and fuller hearts for Kyle.

But let's all live in an alternate universe for a second where The Fray plays music all day long and Dylan the Bomb Squad Guy lived to extract many more bombs until he retired from *the squad* at 65 to move to Florida with his cute Bomb Squad Wife and three Bomb Squad Children. Beautiful, ain't it?

RIP, Dylan. You deserved better.