Ajax call not reaching success or done or whatever MVC3
===

I am an idiot.  Let me just say that off the bat so we both know and acknowledge what we are dealing with.  I can't manage to get a simple Ajax to work and return JSON without the browser asking me to save the file... As it stands now however, I can't even get the ajax call to work...  Let me give you a 1000 foot view of what I am trying to accomplish.  I am trying to have 3 tabs... 2 of them, represents two similar yet different ways to search data via a webservice call.  The third tab will display the results in a table when the JSON result returns.  Seems simple enough, and since I have successfully done each of those three components separately I thought the combination would be simple.  Not so.

What is vexing me now, is actually getting the JSON data back to the view and then switching to that tab...  What I am currently experiencing is that I get to the submit function and nothing happens.  It is very frustrating.  First things first, here is the way I set up my form...

    @using(Html.BeginForm("SearchByDemographic",
              "SearchPatients",
              FormMethod.Post, 
              new{
                  id = "searchByDemographics"
              }
          )
     )

The form is nothing special.  I want to have jq-validation there at some point, but I will cross that bridge when I get there...  Here is the jquery function that is supposed to call the controller in addition to the function that binds the data to the jqGrid... I have done similar things but not all together...

    $('#formSearchByMRN, #searchByDemographics').submit(function (event) {
        debugger;
        //event.preventDefault();
        $.ajax({
            url: this.action,
            type: this.method,
            data: $(this).serialize(),
            dataType: "json",
            success: function (result) {
                debugger;
                //$('#retTable').html(result);
                switchToResultTab(result);
            }
        });
        return false;
    });
    
    function switchToResultTab(data) {
        debugger;
        $("#list").setGridParam({
            datatype: 'jsonstring',
            datastr: data,
            caption: 'Patient Search Result'
        }).trigger("reloadGrid");
        $('a[href="#retTable"]').click();
    };

Currently, when I step through the code, I never get past the debugger function call... That is where it stops!!!!
I am like what on Earth is going on?  How on Earth did I screw up such a simple function call?!  I never get to the  .ajax call???
Lets assume I am being an idiot somewhere, and that I can get the freaking ajax call to work.  Once I do get it there, whenever I get to the success function, my result is always empty.  If I switch to done, the browser asks me to open or save a JSON file...  Does anybody have any general advice,  I know this is kindof specialised, so specific answers may be hard to come by, but could anyone suggest any principles that I may be overlooking here?  How would you go about achieving a similar result?

Thanks