In which we learn the truth about Addison and Derek.
Never mind previously, it’s LAST SEASON on Grey’s Anatomy: (So we’re going to skip a lot and get to the relevant parts.) Meredith and Derek! Derek is married! Christina and Burke! Christina’s pregnant and Burke doesn’t know! Webber had a brain tumour removed and knows about Meredith and Derek! Burke and Derek were both promised Chief when Webber retires! Meredith’s mum has Alzheimer’s and she’s only told Derek! Alex gave (nurse) Olivia syphilis who in turn gave it to George, leading to George punching Alex!
But sometimes you’re faced with a cut that won’t heal. A cut that rips its stitches wide open.
We open on Meredith drowning her sorrows in a bar, and confiding in the barkeep. She’s been there once before – presumably when she met Derek for the first time. More importantly, she does such a good job of eliciting sympathy from the barman that he gives her her drink on the house. If it’s free drinks in exchange for misery I wager I could get a drink or two from this guy. Cut to the hospital, where we resume almost exactly where we left off. Derek is asking Addison what the hell she is doing there. She responds with some cutting remarks about how he’s with Meredith because she’s “sweet” and the “anti-Addison”.
Score: Addison 1 – 0 Derek. She also remarks about the fact that he left everything in New York – friends, practice, etc – for Seattle, so we get a bit more info about the past of the Mysterious Dr Shepherd. She enjoys stringing him along with a line about being there to get him back, via alcohol and incredible sex, before coming clean – the Chief has brought her in to work on a case. Welp.
Upstairs we have the aftermath of Alex’s encounter with George “Fists of Impotent Fury” O’Malley. Karev’s a bit cut and bruised, but fine. He insists he could’ve taken George if he needed to – he just didn’t want to injure his hands, as he wants to go into plastics. Sure, Alex. Sure. We all believe you, especially Izzie (reader, she does not). George, meanwhile, is walking into the same bar as Meredith. Has someone had a budget increase? I sense more money for sets. He’s greeted with a rousing cheer, because pretty much everybody dislikes Alex, and as we’ve established, nothing spreads faster than gossip at Seattle Grace. Except maybe syphilis.
Christina’s with him, and he’s being exhorted to brag, but one suspects given WHY he punched Alex out, he’s probably none too keen on the whole story. They join Meredith at the bar for a cheery game of “Whose Life Sucks the Most?” Meredith comes clean about Derek’s hot, hot wife (expect me to adore Kate Walsh this much for the show’s entire run, because I do). Naturally, George then sprays himself with his own drink, liberally. As he goes off to clean himself, Christina finally comes clean – she’s pregnant. She wins!
Or rather, loses. But only for a second! Turns out nobody’s life is going to suck today as much as the barman (whose name, we learn, is Joe). Joe holds his head for a second, and then full-on collapses. At least he’s in a bar full of doctors! A crowd forms and… yep, cue titles!
Joe’s awake, and pissed that they called an ambulance, while Meredith, Christina and George try to help him. All the while they’re discussing Christina’s revelation – she hasn’t revealed her relationship with Burke yet. Meredith’s still shocked she’s seeing someone, which Christina uses as an opportunity to point out that if George is getting some, it shouldn’t be surprising that she is (true). Joe refuses to take an ambulance because the hospital is across the street, so they hurry after him so he doesn’t collapse into traffic or some such. How responsible!
Over to the hospital then, and we’re back to Meredith and Christina discussing the pregnancy. Christina’s still clear on her actions, particularly in light of her view of the implications for her career – she feels like she’d have to switch out of the surgical program into something like gynaecology (“the vagina squad”, ha), or dermatology. Meredith keeps pushing her to find out who the father is, but Christina absolutely isn’t telling. They wander off in the direction of George and Izzie, who’s on shift, and catch her up on Derek’s not-so-secret wife.
They’re discussing Joe’s case when over walks his doctor – despite the fact that Derek was leaving the hospital with Meredith seemingly not 30 minutes ago, he’s Joe’s doctor. Continuity has given way to dramatic license. Joe has an aneurysm that’s impossible to clip, unless you’re either a magician or performing a “standstill” operation. What is that, you ask? We don’t yet know, but it’s apparently super cool. He tries offering the case to Meredith, who is a) sensible enough to say she can’t because she’s drunk and b) not into being bribed by surgical cases. I do enjoy all three interns blocking his path to Meredith to give her time to get away from him, though.
Despite their mutual hatred for Derek at this moment, Christina snaps. The surgery is just too cool. Guess she’s back on shift, then. Meredith almost makes it out of the hospital before Derek catches up to try to explain. She’s not interested. He should’ve come clean about this when they met, or at any point in the last few months. Him insisting that he knows how she feels only fuels the rage, to the point of mentioning how much she’d like to run him over. Go Meredith! George rushes out with an umbrella to walk off with her, and Derek stands there, sadly, in the rain. Ah, Grey’s Anatomy, at one with the world of cliches – sad, handsome man watching woman he loves walk off with another man in the pouring rain.
Filled with his own fury, Derek storms into Webber’s hospital room, except Addison’s already in there, joking with the Chief. She exits, leaving Derek to have a go at the man who is recovering from brain surgery. Hmm. Webber insists that it’s all about the medicine, because Addison is the best in her field, and when Derek pushes it, gets very firm – Derek’s private life doesn’t factor into his decision-making process. In an additional blow, Burke is being handed Chief while Webber is recovering. Do you remember when I said in a former episode that the consequences should largely fall on Derek as the one in a position of authority? Lo, the consequences of his actions! It’s because he’s sleeping with Meredith. Fair.
It’s the next morning now (after some footage of Meredith in bed, alone), and Christina is going through all the instruments on an instrument tray. Burke, interrupting, is there to ask her out on an Actual Date – they have the night off, and he’s made reservations at his favourite restaurant. Christina is thinking about it, and lets him know. He’s not stupid, so he knows she really means she’s thinking about whether to continue the relationship, and leaves her be, but she still hasn’t told him about the pregnancy.
After some locker-room talk about pacifism and sloppy work (it might be time for another round of No One is Good at their Job!), we catch up with Burke trying to deal with the Chief’s workload, much to the amusement of Patricia. Shepherd congratulates Burke through his teeth, followed by a brief pissing contest, nothing new there. The topic moves on to Derek’s wife, at which as if by magic she appears. And in what is absolutely an abuse of power, she’s requested Meredith for her case. But we’ll allow it for the sake of drama. Derek looks at Burke as if to ask why he has ruined his life. Burke merely stalks off, smiling. Ah, revenge.
The case in question is a super complicated twin thing – basically they’re sharing blood vessels and one twin is getting too much blood flow, the other too little. It turns out Addison is one of a literal handful of surgeons who can fix it, so the surgery is scheduled for tomorrow, and she gets to spend today torturing Meredith, including mentioning her sleeping with her husband where the patient can hear. Oh dear. George also has a special assignment: the Chief wants him to spy on the rest of the hospital and be his eyes and ears. George is a surprisingly good spy because everyone ignores him, so he gets his first bit of info pretty easily – Derek telling Burke off for giving Meredith to Addison.
But he also wants Burke’s help with the standstill surgery, and Joe is where we head next. A standstill surgery involves literally killing you! They’re going to stop his heart, drain his blood and replace it with saline, repair the aneurysm, and then bring him back in under 45 minutes. Folks this is a real thing. Science is awesome. Joe trusts them to do the operation, but is concerned about the cost – he’s uninsured, and doesn’t think he can afford it. It’s a couple hundred grand. I have never been more grateful to live in a country with socialised medical care. To anyone reading from a country where they don’t have it, you have my deepest sympathies.
Izzie and Alex are dealing with the consequences of their sloppy charting from the night before. Izzie appears to remember literally everything about their patients; Alex remembers nothing except for “hernia chick” or “colon dude”. In this scenario I am an Alex. His attitude to the patients is that they’re slabs of meat, surgeone are butchers, which is… grim. Izzie, being Izzie, sees them as people. He’s also trying half-heartedly to get in her pants, in a manner guaranteed to turn anyone in a three mile radius off. People just NEAR Seattle Grace suddenly lost all sexual desire. He’s been dosed with the opposite of whatever aphrodisiac they put in the elevators.
In the stairwell, Christina and Burke come across each other, and he appears to now be angry about the fact that she needs time to think. He can’t figure out what she wants, so he’s decided to yell at her about it. She just doesn’t know yet, except for “stop yelling at me”. So naturally he kisses her, tells her to figure it out, and stalks off like a beanstalk full of wounded pride. Is it time for me to talk about how LITTLE chemistry these two have? Seriously. No chemistry. Nothing. That’s probably the fact that’s so startling to George, who’s watching them from the stairs above. The spy strikes again!
The Chief has a plate of Jello, which I can’t imagine him eating, and absolutely zero information from George, who is keeping quiet and pretending nothing is happening. Elsewhere, Joe gets a visit from Karev, and doesn’t hesitate to wind him up about the shiner he’s sporting. The docs and nurses on the floor give Joe a gift basket, so we can presume the whole hospital drinks across the road on the reg. He wants Karev to transfer him to another (presumably cheaper) hospital, but he won’t, because the medical care there is “bad”. Joe reckons he’ll lose the bar if he has to pay for his bills. The hospital’s own 007 is watching this unfold, of course, because George is everywhere now, which means he also knows Alex’s bar tab is close to $1k. Blimey.
Meredith is back with the complicated twin surgery woman (see, I told you I’m an Alex), who is quite openly hostile to Meredith about her sleeping with Addison’s husband, because her husband left her for his secretary three weeks into her pregnancy. Grey holds herself together remarkably well under the circumstances, and exits the situation when the patient starts to go too far. Again, at any display of professionalism, I am stunned.
Christina is headed in to see Joe… and also vomit in the toilet attached to his room. Somewhat less professional. Even worse than the puking is that he knows it’s morning sickness! She reads him the riot act about keeping all of their secrets when they’re interrupted by Burke, and she struggles to recap the patient details while not vomiting (or spilling her own secrets). Also not spilling secrets is George, who is still telling the Chief precisely zero, so much so that he’s practising telling the Chief nothing while looking at adorable babies. At least he knows he’s a bad liar.
Meredith joins him and they commiserate about their lives. Meredith knows just how beautiful Addison is, and feels inferior, but George tries to cheer her up. She blames herself for trying to outdo Addison when she’s actually the victim, and Meredith is the evil mistress. Hmm. The thing that really cheers her up, of course, is George finally revealing that he saw mommy kissing Santa Claus Burke and Christina kissing. Meredith’s hypocrisy meter goes DING (in time with the elevator ding, that’s why you didn’t hear it), and she is off to confront her bestie.
There are lots of spurious claims here, because I for one remember Christina telling Meredith NOT to break it off with Derek, and defending them, on multiple occasions. But Meredith accuses her of being against their relationship and counselling her to break up with him, while doing the opposite herself. Christina explains that her and Burke aren’t exactly in a relationship (“[we’re in] Switzerland, it’s very neutral there”). She doesn’t want to talk about the pregnancy and whether she’s told Burke, or Burke at all. This is her private life and she doesn’t want to discuss it, to which Meredith (reasonably) asks why she was told about the pregnancy at all, and storms off.
Lots of storming this episode. Of course, from one enraging scenario to another, as Meredith finds herself back with Inappropriately Hostile Patient, who is sharing what she did when she found out her husband was cheating on her. Meredith is ignoring the hostility, though, because she’s Actually Doing Her Job (should be a parade, frankly), and has noticed something wrong on the patient’s ultrasound. Not doing his job? Burke, who takes the time (having overheard the tail end in Joe’s room, I presume) to ask Bailey who McDreamy is. I am, she deadpans, before walking out in disgust to go actually do her job. Go Bailey!
Derek and Addison are arguing over Meredith and oh boy, Addison gets super catty at this point (“so you recommend her […] but not for her surgical skills”, ouch), but Meredith Interruptus – there IS something wrong on the ultrasound and lab work also indicates a problem, she needs Addison to come confirm. And she’s still not talking to Derek. George has seen everything, once again, but heads back to the Chief to try and lie to him about that, and largely succeeds – except for something about Joe, TBC.
Fully confirmed is that our pregnant patient’s babies need their surgeries now – they’re starting to go into heart failure. It’s quickfire to the OR, and not just for her, Joe is on his way in too (barking instructions to be given to his staff). Turns out the thing about Joe with the Chief was George trying to get Webber to help Joe afford his surgery (pro bono, I assume). The Chief says no, and again, private healthcare systems are deeply unequal and unfair. They perform as much of Joe’s surgery as they can, and then they start cooling him down so they can kill him for a bit.
Up in the gallery, George is hard at work on a solution to help him out, talking with Bailey (really, everyone at this hospital must drink at Joe’s). She had a rough time through her intern year, and got to know Joe well, which just leads George to assume she slept with him, because he’s become too acclimatised to the soapy dramatic universe of Grey’s Anatomy and its sexy, sexy elevators. However, Izzie and Karev’s banter about them killing Joe gives George some sort of brainwave, and he runs off shouting “dead”, which is always comforting in a hospital, I’m sure.
It all gets a bit montage-y now, skipping around between locations. Joe is now officially dead, and they’re hard at work and on a timer, while Burke and Shepherd continue their pissing contest. No peeing in the operating room, lads. George is on the phone discussing paperwork submission, which needs to be done before midnight on the day of the surgery – presumably he found that loophole? Meredith is watching Addison operate, intently. Alex is trying to endear himself to Izzie, and it feels like he’s sort of succeeding. But the surgery is going too slowly. Still, they have to succeed, and Karev is willing them on, because everybody loves Joe.
George is pitching his idea to Webber – he wants to donate Joe’s body to science for the next 17 minutes. It’s a privately-funded grant and they’re a teaching hospital, so no need for Webber to put his hand in his pocket. The Chief isn’t giving an answer, which just seems silly – this is an everybody wins scenario, Dr Webber! He dismisses George to think about it. Pressure on in the OR, as Shepherd is having trouble, but he nails it, the pissing contest is over, and it’s time to bring Joe to life (required listening at this juncture – Bring Me To Life by Evanescence).
After the surgery, Richard is waxing lyrical to Burke about the power kick, loneliness and such of being Chief. Burke is trying to tell him… something (maybe about him and Christina?), but the Chief won’t shut up. He’s praising Burke for putting the job first. Burke is suddenly less desperate to tell him something. He’s packing up his stuff from an on-call room when Christina encounters him, buzzing following the whole standstill thing, and wondering if he still has those reservations. But Burke has reservations of a different kind now – he’s seen how their relationship could hurt his career, so he’s ending it, “before it gets messy”. Just as she was about to come clean to him about her pregnancy. She’s… fine. Like a dog in a hat in a burning room.
George is hovering, waiting for the Chief’s response, because as it turns out he’s a terrible spy when actually trying to spy on anyone. He finally breaks, grows some backbone, and reveals that there’s a lot going on in the hospital, personal stuff, that he won’t be revealing – he only cares about helping Joe out. Thankfully, Webber agrees. Yay! Over to someone else with serious backbone, as we revisit our pregnant patient whose babies are doing just fine now. The patient asks for someone other than Meredith to do her follow-up care, due to the whole husband-sleeping thing. Addison is and will ever be a queen, so reveals the truth – she cheated on Derek, Meredith has done nothing wrong, and the patient owes her an apology.
This finally convinces Meredith to hear Derek’s side of the story, so she drives out to his trailer. This story is just sad – Derek came home one night, and found out that his wife was not just cheating on him, but sleeping with his best friend, Mark. He was hurt, and he left her, and came out to Seattle, and met Meredith. He tries to reassure her that she wasn’t just a rebound, although the analogy is so crap that I’m not even going to quote it. It’s not enough, anyway. She’s done.
The better you get at remaining neutral, clinical, cut, suture, close, and the harder it becomes to turn it off. To stop thinking like a surgeon, and remember what it is to think like a human being.
As our voiceover rolls, Karev heads in to see Joe. Joe’s heard the good news about the funding, which is nice. As George walks past, Alex calls him over, and mother of all that is holy, gives him an awkward hug, thanks him for what he did, and calls him champ. Izzie sees all this and gets a glimpse into Alex being an actual human. I sense a thawing of that relationship. Christina heads to Joe’s bar to see Meredith, and explains that she told Meredith because the clinic won’t let her make an appointment without someone to pick her up. Meredith is Christina’s person. She also reveals that Burke dumped her. They hug, sort of, although not without Christina making a snarky comment about it. It’s a sweet moment between the two of them, and the moment a thousand very gay fanfic ships launched (no, really).
Sum it up
Whoosh. Grey’s kicks it up a notch this season. I may have to re-evaluate some earlier episodes! This episode has laughs, people actually being competent, a super-cool surgery, and also felt a lot less disjointed than many season one episodes. The theme – surgery, humanity, and wounds that won’t heal – is absolutely all over the place, but from a story perspective this is a tight, well put-together episode that brings the story along, resolves a lot of dangling threads and sets us up for later developments, all without feeling rushed. Plus any episode with Kate Walsh gets an extra point from me, just because. This is a long season, so I’m not going overboard, but it’s a high-scorer. Overall rating: 8/10 cats
Hero of the Episode: Well, it has to be Meredith, doesn’t it? Professional, there for her friend (mostly), and is actively good at her job this episode.
Zero of the Episode: It was always going to be Derek “oops forgot to mention I’m married” Shepherd, although Addison, Webber and Burke were all close runners-up. Abuse of power (and bitchiness), not helping a well-loved community figure, and breaking up with someone out of the blue for sheer ambition (plus pissing contest), all bad looks.
Literally Incredible: Alex behaving like a human being to George. I don’t buy it. Just kidding! The idea that George is an intern in a hospital tasked with literally spying on his colleagues and no one – including Bailey – saw him idling about and tasked him with 5 million things to do is ludicrous, even if he is somehow The Invisible Man when amongst his colleagues.
Did you like this episode? Hate it? Just want to tell me how much my writing sucks? Leave a comment below with your rating and what you thought overall! Alternatively, you can let me know on Twitter!