Robert Bianco

USA TODAY

While others fall out of favor, the doctors are still in.

In its 13th season, Grey’s Anatomy stands as ABC’s most-watched scripted series, which is a devastating comment on ABC's new-series development, but also an incredible testament to Grey’s ratings stability and artistic consistency. And this long-running doctor show is not just doing well compared to other ABC series: It has more viewers than every NBC drama except This is Us and every Fox scripted series besides Empire. And among those younger viewers prized by advertisers, Grey's ranks in the Top 10 of all scripted series, broadcast and cable.

So how is that Grey's thrives while its once red-hot Thursday companion Scandal, also from executive producer Shonda Rhimes, has fallen sharply behind? (Both were renewed for new seasons this month). In part, what Scandal has slammed into is the inherent danger of allowing "shocking" and "crazy" to become a show's watchwords, intentionally or not. Draw an audience in on crazy, and your only option is to become ever more crazy — which means by the time your gay vice-presidential candidate is imprisoned for conspiring with his former secret-service lover to kill the president-elect, you’ve hit the point of diminishing returns.

Grey's, of course, also has its share of “OMG Moments,” to use the childish promotional tag ABC attaches to a show that deserves better. But where Scandal hinges on these “go big or go home” swings, Grey’s uses them more sparingly. Surprising and sometimes outrageous medical twists are one of the show's hooks, but in essence, Grey’s remains a character drama once described as "high school in a hospital" — and those characters, and fans' affection for them, has always been the real key to the show's success.

Certainly, there are those who love Scandal's "gladiators," but they occupy a fantasy Washington, and fantasies tend to wear thin with time. Scandal's two principal female characters are Mellie (Bellamy Young), the First Lady who may become president, and (Kerry Washington), a presidential mistress/power broker with regal looks and bearing. Compare that to Grey's more relatable women: Meredith (Ellen Pompeo), whom we've watched grow from dark-and-twisty young intern to a stable, widowed surgeon; and Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), a great and well-loved stand-in for every working woman and mother who has had to fight for what she has.

Because Grey’s is not as committed to season-long story arcs as Scandal, it's also able to shift those characters and their plots around more easily. You don’t like Alex’s threat-of-jail suspension? In this week's episode (Thursday, 8 ET/PT), he returns to the hospital. You don’t like Marika Dominczyk's Eliza Minnick? That same episode makes her more sympathetic, while effectively using the battle over her hiring to focus on Meredith's conflicting loyalties. But if you hate Scandal's election story? Too bad; you're stuck with it all season.

And stuck in the world of politics, which is the other — and perhaps most important — difference between the two shows. Grey's hospital setting automatically gives it access to life-and-death stakes in an arena where new discoveries and procedures constantly provide new twists on older stories. Scandal often plays like a crime show set in the political arena, one that substitutes melodrama for real-world stakes — and one that is now asking a weary nation to re-fight a presidential election.

If you need a final reason why people are opting out, that one will do.