Grey's Anatomy: Leave It Inside (13x22)

Ugh. Minnick is kind of the worst again. Which bums me out. But I liked a lot of the other stuff going on here!

Cons:

So, Minnick spends this episode being really sanctimonious and up in everybody's business. Which I guess is how she was at the start of the season, but this time around I feel like she doesn't have as much of a point, so she comes across really super obnoxious. A little boy named Liam shows up at the hospital asking for help. Turns out his parents won't allow him to have surgery or any other kind of intervention because of their faith. Alex and Stephanie really want to help the kid, but they can't. Minnick is snippy and uptight about the whole thing, refusing to consider Alex and Stephanie's point of view, and saying things like "who taught you to talk to a patient like that?" when Stephanie is a bit cold to the sick boy's mother. She just annoyed the heck out of me. We see in the end that Eliza and Arizona finally have sex, and while I was rooting for these crazy kids initially, now I feel sort of weird about it. Eliza seems like kind of a bad person, and I don't really get why Arizona is so into her.

Maggie didn't annoy me in this episode, and somehow that slightly annoyed me? Apparently she's decided to support Meredith and Nathan's relationship now, since she sees that it might be serious. But the thing is, where did this come from? If somebody were to watch this episode by itself, they wouldn't even really know that Maggie had a thing for Riggs. We were forced to sit through so much whining and drama with this whole thing, and now we're just done with it? I guess I'm glad... but I'm also confused.

DeLuca tries to confess his feelings to Jo in this episode, but she shuts him down pretty quickly. Mercifully, this didn't take too much time away from the episode, but my complaint still must be lodged. I just don't care about these two. They are about as bland as characters get on this show. And if something is going to happen between Jo and Alex, are we going to get that going? This is just a nothing of a plot development, and I'm sick of it. DeLuca could do better, even if he is boring as all hell.

Pros:

Before we get to the two main patient stories, one more little subplot thing:

During a resident review, Minnick says that Ben is very good and reliable, but he plays it too safe. Richard takes this to heart and begins questioning Ben about his work as a resident. It seems this talk galvanizes Ben to want to up his game, so hopefully we'll see how that plays out. I'll admit this plot thread wasn't super impacting, because we hadn't really seen Ben "playing it safe" and so therefore the stakes are pretty nonexistent. However, the resident review scene with Bailey, Minnick, and Richard was Minnick's only shining moment in the whole episode. I liked seeing this balance, where Webber was included and his input was valuable, but he also listened to what Eliza said and took it to heart. And I'd like to do some more stuff with Ben. He's almost always been a background character, except when he's making terrible mistakes and causing problems for Bailey.

As is often the case on Grey's Anatomy, each of our patient stories connects to stuff going on in the doctors' personal lives.

Liam is the sick kid who shows up at the hospital alone and scared. He lies and says he doesn't have parents, and wants help with his pain. He has a tumor, but his parents show up and demand that he be released, since their religion doesn't allow surgery. Alex is furious when the kid goes home, but when Liam shows up again unattended, Alex and Stephanie work together to make a lie, saying that Liam was seizing and they had to rush him in for emergency surgery. Minnick is suspicious of this, but Liam's life is saved. Stephanie confronts Liam's father, and ends up throwing her chart at the wall in anger. This leads Minnick to suspend her for her inappropriate behavior. Meanwhile, we learn through subtle coded conversation that Liam's mom actually helped him to get to the hospital, going against her purported faith and her husband's wishes, all to save her son. Alex ends the episode by making a mysterious phone call, saying he needs help finding someone.

Okay. Lots to unpack. I gathered that something strange was going on with Liam from the beginning, but I did like the twist that the mother was going against the husband the whole time. This is obviously a really sticky ethical issue, but for me the choice was clear from the moment the little boy lied about having parents because he was so desperate to be saved. He may be a child, but he doesn't want to die and he's not old enough to make an informed decision about letting his faith do the healing. The consent of a minor thing has to go both ways, doesn't it? If he can't consent to surgery on his own, how can he consent to dying because his parents won't help him?

Alex actually played a big-ish role in this episode, which is something we haven't seen in quite some time, so I was happy to see that. Obviously his attachment to kids makes him super endearing, and I liked the fact that he made sure to shield Stephanie as best as possible from the consequences of his illegal deception. There's this pretty intense moment when some of the other doctors figure out what he did, and Liam's dad is threatening to sue the hospital and all that, and someone says "you could go to jail," and Alex responds, angry, "I'd go to jail for this one." Damn!

Meanwhile, we see the continued splintering of Stephanie's confidence and competence. For a while now, since her boyfriend died, she's started to seem more and more nihilistic and negative about her job. In this episode, she is able to help save a child's life, and she even gets a grateful hug from the adorable little Liam. But by the rules of her profession, she's not supposed to save this kid's life. It's enough to shake anybody's faith in the system. There's been a really lovely and delicate examination of Stephanie's character throughout the last season or so. It's subtle, it sticks to the background, and then it comes out in this explosion of anger and makes so much sense. I've said before that I'm happy for this actress for going on to bigger and better things, but I'm really going to miss Stephanie next season. She became one of my favorites.

The other patient of the week is Holly, a woman with an inoperable heart tumor who is making the most of her last year of life by having a lot of casual sex and not worrying about leaving life behind. Maggie insists that she might be able to fix the tumor, but Holly has done this dance in the past, and she knows that they can't really help her, and she'll end up having to reassure her doctors that she's okay and they did the best they can. Despite this, Maggie convinces her to give it a shot and... well, they might have bought her a bit more time? But Maggie was wrong, and Holly was right. Meanwhile, Holly's one-night stand from the night before is sort of in puppy-love with her, and keeps hanging out at the hospital until Meredith has to let him down easy for Holly.

I said that Maggie wasn't annoying this week, and that's not entirely true, since I did think her insistence on the heart surgery was a bit obnoxious. However, I like the fact that it didn't work. She tried, she failed, but she didn't kill the girl or anything. It was a bit humbling, and a lot more realistic than the idea that Maggie could succeed where so many before her had failed.

Also, Holly was kind of hilarious and awesome. Her attitude about life, sex, and death was refreshing, and I like the fact that there was no twist where she ended up falling apart. It sucks that she's going to die, but at the same time, she knows what's up. She's made her own peace with it, and even a whole group of doctors trying to tell her how she should feel doesn't stop her from doing whatever she wants. Poor Cory, her awkward one-night-stand dude. There was this sort of tragicomic element to it, where the guy just could not grasp that Holly was done with him, but at the same time, if Holly hadn't been dying, maybe there could have been more there.

Maggie, Meredith, and April are all amused and rather delighted by Holly, which I found awesome. As the episode ends, all of these women are galvanized to move forward with their relationships, in one way or another. Maggie wants to go out and get laid, and April expresses her desire to have some fun as well, although she says that she doesn't want a boyfriend. Meredith, in the meantime, makes an important gesture too.

Earlier in the episode, we see Meredith taking out the giant tumor drawing hanging in her bedroom, as a symbol of moving on from Derek. She chickens out on having Riggs over to spend the night, but then makes the heartbreaking decision to put her and Derek's marriage post-it note away in a drawer. Later when she sees Riggs as he leaves the hospital, she reaches out and holds his hand. In this moment, she decides to celebrate and cherish the time she had with Derek, but not let it hold her back from ever being happy again. Her hesitation with Riggs came from a lot of different places, but now that the Maggie issue seems resolved, she can focus on making a decision for herself.

I like Riggs. I like Meredith. I like them together. I really wish I could believe that Owen's sister wasn't about to show up in a shocking twist that we all saw coming from a mile away, and ruin their tenuous grasp on happiness. But hey. Until it actually happens, I can pretend it won't, right?

That's where I'll wrap this one up. A fine episode, for the most part. Minnick is starting to really piss me off now. I try and try to be as supportive as I can, for Arizona's sake, but at this point I just really miss Callie.

8/10