Stuck on a desert island or confined to a one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, I will take the 15-year-old medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” as distraction over any of its newer, shinier, more critically acclaimed, more endlessly dissected and meme-fueling competition.

I’ve been onboard since 2007. The show’s creator, Shonda Rhimes, or its current showrunner, Krista Vernoff, could replace the lead character, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), with an android: I have no desire to ever stop watching. The longevity of my emotional investment is partly the point. Nothing replaces the feeling — unique to television — of watching a show age in real time. And this one has remarkably held up.

Besides the occasional tremor when a cast member leaves or acts out — or a pandemic prompts a season to end prematurely, as happened last week — series like “Grey’s” are often taken for granted. Yet the pleasures they dispense are both rare and very real. Here’s why I’m a fan.

How I Discovered It

I embarked on my “Grey’s” journey around the middle of Season 4. “ER,” to which I was devoted, was in its penultimate season and running on fumes, and I must have been looking, consciously or not, for another prime-time drama focusing on adults rather than children or families. (The medical genre wasn’t a draw in itself: I never got into, say, “House,” and I didn’t even bother with the “Grey’s” spinoff “Private Practice.”)