Grey's Anatomy: Head Over High Heels (15x22)

Well that was a rough one.

Cons:

I will now lodge my familiar complaint: I don't want Teddy and Owen to get together, and I think Amelia should mind her own business, and I think Tom and Teddy are way better together... and also Owen's trauma being that his dad died was just kind of... underwhelming? I wish that this all hadn't happened in one episode, I guess. Just last week, we were introduced to the idea that maybe Owen's shitty behavior was due to PTSD that was making it impossible for him to be happy. Okay, I could buy that. But now this week, he goes to therapy and in his very first session he gets to the heart of the issue and has a nice cathartic cry? Yikes, I didn't realize it was that easy. It all felt way too convenient for me.

Jackson asks Maggie to move in with him. I don't hate this pairing with every fiber of my being anymore... when they're not undergoing drama of their own, they are perfectly inoffensive to me. But this feels like a big step, and now I have to complain about it because inevitably we're going to have to deal with Maggie having a meltdown and being insecure and rambling about it, and I'm just sick and tired of that.

Pros:

Jo is in a really, really bad place, you guys. I admire how far they're taking this, because at this point I'm honestly terrified that she's not going to be okay, and that Jo and Alex aren't going to make it. I never thought I'd be saying that back at the beginning of this season. Jo returns to the hospital, but Meredith asks Jackson to check in on Jo, and Jackson discovers that Jo is drunk at work. She's not seeing patients, but still. That's a very big deal. Jo and Alex finally have it out, and Alex threatens to go visit Jo's mom to find out what the hell happened, and Jo says that if Alex ever threatens that again, Jo will leave him. Wow. This is seriously intense.

I loved Meredith being there for Alex the best way she could. Alex is concerned that "it's happening again." Pretty much every woman he's ever been with has freaked out and then left him, and the pattern appears to be repeating itself with Jo. It was so smart of Meredith to use Jackson as an intermediary to try and get Jo to open up, and if it weren't for the fact that Jo was drinking on the job, Jackson's interference might actually have helped. I'm anxious about how this story is going to develop, but in a good way.

Then you have Levi and Nico. As if I wasn't devastated enough this week with queer romances (*cough The Magicians cough*)... but anyway. Nico has a fairly routine surgery on a young patient that goes spectacularly wrong due to his own error, and the patient ends up dying on the table. Bailey forces him to stand by while the dead patient's grandfather is given the news. Levi tries to be supportive, but Nico snaps at him and accuses him of using failure as an excuse. Nico goes ahead with an important interview, despite Levi suggesting that maybe it could be postponed due to Nico's horrible day.

When this plot thread started, I thought the drama was going to be that Nico was potentially taking a new job moving away, and I was all ready to be sad about that. And then bam. What a tragedy. Usually when characters on this show lose patients, it's because they were doing some groundbreaking, crazy surgery that was probably never going to work anyway, and they can't manage to beat the odds. But this was just a routine. This was a mistake. And I can't even imagine how wretched Nico feels about it. Levi was being such a good boyfriend, trying to help him and offer his support however he could, and to have it blow up in his face so spectacularly was especially wretched. I want to see them work this out, but this is going to be a really rough patch for them to get through.

Richard comes face to face with a fellow addict who has fallen off the wagon. He ends up giving her the tough love speech and getting through to her, after helping with a surgery to repair a wound she got from having a high heel impaled in her chest. This is one of those plot threads that doesn't really feel like much of anything special on its own, but comes alive when placed next to some of the other plot threads in the episode. We see Jo who is drinking to cope, and we have a reminder of the struggle Richard goes through every day. Richard is able to get through to a fellow addict and help her to keep fighting, even in a really rough moment. I wonder if Richard is going to be helpful in getting through to Jo, as well.

Bailey has a brief subplot where she learns that Tuck called Ben "Dad," and her ex-husband Tucker heard this and had his feelings hurt. I don't have particularly positive or negative feelings about this plot thread either. It was brief, but it worked best in how it highlighted the one truly positive and fun plot thread of the night: Meredith and Andrew.

I know not everybody is as jazzed about their romance as I am, but I'm genuinely having a good time with it. I had predicted that maybe Meredith's kids would end up being a point of drama with them, but instead, everything goes pretty darn smoothly. Andrew awkwardly runs in to Zola in the hall, but nothing catastrophic happens, and Meredith and Andrew finally actually talk about kids. Andrew reveals that he has a ton of nieces and nephews and that he loves kids and is great with them. Meredith then sits down with Zola, Bailey, and Ellis and tells them about Andrew, and it goes great. After all the other painful plot threads going on in this episode, this was a desperately needed bit of good news and fluff. I want to watch Andrew with Meredith's kids. I like seeing them both happy.

That's all I've got. This episode put my heart through the wringer, but I enjoyed most of it.

8/10