On upcoming Grey's Anatomy episodes more patients will be surviving.

Elsewhere in Hollywood, movie directors say they want to make positive thinking the newest trend. And a group of academics, sensing a pattern, has launched a study asking Americans how hopeful they've felt since the presidential election.

Some say that it's all part of a Barack Obama-fueled boom in optimism. And it's a trend that many think could continue in movies and television.

"I think optimism is going to be the new cool," said Rick Cleveland, a veteran television writer who has worked on The West Wing, Six Feet Under and Mad Men. Barack Obama, he said, "can be the torchbearer" for the new positivity.

Feeling good about the future? You're not alone. A New York Times poll conducted last week found that 79 percent of Americans are optimistic about the next four years under Obama. Could "The Audacity of Hope" become a new national motto?

Hollywood seems to think so.

Shonda Rhimes, executive producer of ABC's Grey's Anatomy and its spinoff, Private Practice, says she and the writers - all Obama supporters - are feeling so encouraged by the new president's victory that they're creating more hopeful story lines in which doctors are accomplishing more surgical victories and "more patients are living."

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Steve Marsi is the Managing Editor of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Google+ or email him here.