Grey's Anatomy: Add It Up (15x18)

Koracick is right, Owen. Back the hell off.

Cons:

It's a bit hard to pin down this particular complaint, but I will say that this episode felt very disjointed. There were plenty of individual pieces that I enjoyed, but the whole was less than the sum of its parts.

One of those parts that irritated me to the point of no return was Owen and Teddy. I am 100% on Tom's side, here! I'm not sure if I'm supposed to think Tom is a jerk for the way he talked to Owen, but I simply don't. I want Owen to understand that he's played with Teddy's feelings for far too long. If he were to be with her, he would inevitably change his mind again and we'd have to get back on this never-ending merry-go-round. It's frustrating in the extreme.

Also, I don't care about Link and Amelia. I'm not at all interested. The end.

Finally, I appreciated what they were trying to do with the gender-queer patient, and Richard having a hard time using their pronouns. I think that's a good story to tell. It just felt a touch too "after school special" for me, and didn't really resolve particularly well? Richard said he understood the issue completely, and was just having a hard time catching up with the changing times. Fair enough, but that sentiment doesn't square with his annoyance earlier in the episode. I don't know... I'm probably being a little too harsh; it wasn't a bad plot thread, just maybe not as good as it could have been.

Pros:

The one good thing about Owen and Teddy's plot thread was Tom's speech to Owen. Like I said, I think he completely has the moral high ground here, and I appreciated that the moment didn't come across like he was just posturing, but instead like he genuinely cares about Teddy and is worried about putting her through emotional turmoil. You go, Tom. You have my full support.

I also appreciated the effort with the nonbinary character, and I liked the way that while Jackson and Helm were immediately respectful, they still had this brief pause where they sort of sounded like they were reading off of a script when talking to their patient. That felt true to life - even the best of intentions can take practice and careful thought. And it was fun to see Helm standing up to Richard. It can be awkward to correct people who are your superiors in the workplace, but she held firm and helped to teach him something important.

I think my favorite story of the day was little Nora, a genius girl who needs surgery. This plot thread bleeds in to what's happening with DeLuca, but just on its own I found her to be the sweetest thing. She ends up having a math competition with some of the interns (Qadri, Levi, and Parker) as well as Bailey and Maggie. It was so fun to see all of the doctors getting so deeply in to the competition, and I loved that little Nora found herself surrounded with friends.

Nora's doctor is Alex, and Andrew DeLuca works with him. The thing is, Andrew's a little preoccupied feeling angry and upset with everything that went down with his father. When there comes a moment where Nora's mom isn't sure whether she should force her daughter to have the surgery, DeLuca snaps, and says that she should force Nora to get the help that she needs. Obviously, this is more about DeLuca's situation with his father than anything else. Alex is rightfully furious, and tells DeLuca he's off the case, but later Andrew goes back and talks to Nora, and helps convince her to have the surgery after all. The whole thing culminates in Alex telling Andrew to stop attacking people who are trying to help him.

I like that even though Andrew is clearly going through something, we see his compassion come through in the end. I like that his instinct was to be mad at Alex, but actually, Alex is in the right here - he's the attending, he's the acting chief, and DeLuca was way out of line, even if he ultimately did the right thing. I also like that Alex was able to give some good advice about letting people help. He did it in a typical Alex-like way, snapping at him, but it was still a nice gesture. (Although... is it a bit strange that this whole plot between the two of them went down without any mention of the time that Alex beat the shit out of Andrew? No? Soap operas are weird, guys.)

Meredith and Andrew are really sweet. Their relationship has developed in a nice, gentle sort of way, and I really appreciate that. Obviously there's sure to be big drama ahead, as that's par for the course in this show, but for now we're seeing the trials of their relationship in a more realistic way. They don't have some big dramatic fight, and then make up by running into each other's arms and making out in a thunderstorm or anything like that. Instead, it's Andrew being a little bit distant at work, Meredith being unsure how to handle this, and then Andrew inviting her over and the two of them having a frank conversation about it, before sitting down to eat the delicious dinner that Andrew prepared. This feels like the way real relationships might work. There are some bumps in the road, some miscommunications or mistakes, but often these things are fixable, and that's what we see here. I'm loving it.

A couple other little things I want to mention:

Maggie has this new idea of atmosphere therapy where she has rooms with blue light, rooms with plants, etc. But unfortunately, everyone keeps going into the rooms to hang out and play video games (Bailey) or hook up (Amelia and Link) and so we're not seeing yet what the research will show. I liked this touch, of the doctors coming in and out and acting like true friends would, invading each other's spaces in a casually intimate sort of way.

Jo is gone for the whole episode, meeting her birth mother. Next week is going to be a whole hour of just that, and I'm extremely intrigued by what we're going to find out. I like that we kept touching base with Alex, as he's calling her, eager to find out how everything is going. He's such a good husband. I'm excited for next week, and also quite frightened for poor Jo...

Okay, that's all! In writing this review, I think I landed on a slightly more favorable impression of the episode than I originally thought I would. The Owen/Teddy/Amelia/Link stuff is boring and annoying, but there was plenty of other stuff going on that I really liked!

8/10