Okay - it's nobody's fault, but that was stupid. I guess if Patrick Dempsey needed to leave the show, that's all they could have done... and actually, within the scope of the terrible setup, this episode was really great. Let's just go over what happened.
Derek is on his way to the airport to go to DC. He talks on the phone with his sister in the OR, but he enters an area with patchy reception, and he gets cut off. A car races in front of him and collides with another car. Derek screeches to a halt and jumps out to help the people in both cars. He can't get his phone to work. In one car, the one that got hit, is a mother and her little girl. In the other are two high school students, one of whom was driving his dad's car. Derek helps them all. One of the cars explodes, which ends up being a very good thing, since the smoke alerts somebody to their location, and a firetruck arrives. The four people involved in the crash get packed up and sent off to the hospital.
Derek gets back in his car and continues on his way, when all of a sudden - BAM! A semi-truck comes out of nowhere and hits him. Derek is taken to the same hospital as the other four, but the hospital is not a trauma center, and they really don't have the adequate resources and training to take care of him.
Derek is unable to talk, but he is conscious as he sees the doctors around him scramble to save his life. He knows they should get a head CT, but they don't, and by the time they realize that his head injury is what's going to kill him, it's too late. They call the neuro-surgeon on call, but it takes him over an hour to get there. They operate on Derek, but no luck. Derek is brain dead.
Meredith is fetched from her house and brought to the hospital with her kids. She signs the papers to allow Derek to be taken off life support. Just before the nurse removes his breathing tube, Meredith stops her and says Derek's name. She tells him it's okay, that she and the kids will be alright, and he can go. Then, the nurse takes out the breathing tube.
That's a pretty truncated summary. There were other little details in this episode that I'll get to in a minute. First, let's complain.
The buildup to the big reveal that Derek is dead did not work. All the sappy moments of Meredith and Derek, and Derek saying "don't move," "I'll be right back..." please. It was so completely obvious that Derek was going to die the minute they started showing those moments over again. Too sappy. Too lovey-dovey. Too exploitative.
It's not anybody's fault that it doesn't quite work, but I must say - a semi-truck? Really? What on earth are the odds that a guy could witness a car wreck right in front of him and then get T-boned later that same day? This is a guy who has already been shot, been in a plane crash, witnessed his father getting shot to death when he was a kid, almost lost his wife to drowning, to a dangerous childbirth... I mean, it's frankly ridiculous, the amount of crap Derek has been through. For that reason, when he died it was like - oh, here we go again. It was very hard to feel fully invested.
There was also a nitpick moment that I want to mention. When the little girl sees Derek at the hospital, she gives him a whole speech about how he's not dead, which echoed the speech Derek had given her before. Grey's Anatomy gets away with a lot of speechifying because the actors always deliver the lines with this really wonderful dry realism. But coming from the mouth of a little girl, the speech felt awkward and long-winded.
But hey. Let's talk about the good stuff, because I know this episode made a lot of people cry. And I can certainly see why.
Derek was at his very best in this episode, what with his amazing life-saving abilities and his calm demeanor with the victims. I loved the relationships he cultivated with each of the people in the crash. He kept them calm when that felt like an impossible task. If we can take one good thing out of this episode, it's that none of them died. They're all going to be okay, and it's thanks to Derek. I loved his relationship with the little girl (played by the girl from Parenthood, who did a lovely job).
We got to see Derek on a Ferry, one of his favorite things about Seattle. We also got to hear him say that it's a beautiful day to save lives, which was a nice way to wrap things up with him.
I admire the show's guts in terms of the way they killed him off. A random car crash is a bit silly and unlikely, but after that? It's actually pretty heavy stuff. Imagine being trapped in your own body, conscious and lucid but unable to open your mouth and say the words that will save your life. Yikes. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.
I liked the woman at the hospital who tried to save Derek. She had a nice little arc in this episode. Meredith tells her that she has to learn from Derek's death and get better for next time. She'll always see Derek's face in her mind when she works on patients, and it will drive her to be better. Without going over the top, we got the idea that Derek's final acts involved saving a bunch of lives, and also transforming a doctor to do better.
Honestly, the real winner of this episode was Meredith Grey. Ellen Pompeo did a fantastic job portraying Meredith in such a horrific situation. Meredith is a person who has lost pretty much everybody. She lost her sister, her mother, her best friend moved away... she has been through some really intense stuff in her life. And here comes another blow. Derek is gone. Meredith didn't break down and sob and scream and throw things. She hears the news, announces that she can't just leave and go to Derek, because she has kids. She sits in the hallway. She signs the papers. She lectures the crying doctor. She throws up in the bushes. And then she sits by her husband and gives him permission to go. It was... ouch. I was feeling myself getting really exasperated by the silliness of the scenario, but when Meredith entered the story, I started to get a little misty-eyed.
Ultimately, one of the smartest moves this episode made was to isolate Derek and Meredith for these final moments. Derek is in an unfamiliar place surrounded by unfamiliar faces. Meredith enters the story only at the end, and she too is isolated from everybody else. She doesn't have her friends with her, she doesn't have anybody she can talk to. Their final moment together was so... bleak. Derek wasn't there anymore. Derek was just gone. He's gone. It's surreal. He's never been my favorite character on the show, or anything, but eleven seasons is a long time to spend with a character. I'm going to miss him!
As we go forward into next week, I'll be curious to see how the rest of the hospital copes with the news. Will we get to see the little girl and the rest of the people from the crash? I'd love for them to come back. Realistically, Cristina would totally drop everything and come back to be with Meredith if Derek died. I'm not sure if they can get Sandra Oh to guest star... I'm pretty sure I would have seen it if they were going to do that. Again, if the actor can't be in the show anymore, there's really not much else you can do.
I think I'll stop there. The intent of this episode, in part, was to shock the viewer. It certainly succeeded on that count. I'm pissed off that they had to kill him off, but I can see why they didn't have any other choice.
7.5/10
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