Grey's Anatomy: All Star (19x08)

Oh man, this one was a tear-jerker! Poor Link.

Cons:

So I gotta say, Jo's characterization is a little puzzling to me lately. I feel like they're still going the Link/Jo romance route which I hate, but this week she really felt like she was relegated to a character being there to emotionally support Link on his journey. It's like... she got left by her husband, which I'm still furious about, had a baby, and now she's all settled into single motherhood and content with her career, which means that all that's left is for her to sit around and wait for Link to sort his shit out, and then they'll be together? That's the vibe I'm getting and I disapprove of it, let's just say.

I like the intern stuff overall but I'll admit I got a little exhausted the second Simone's secret boyfriend came in the door to greet her... like, can't we just let Simone and Lucas have a little sprinkle of happiness, here? I get that this is a soap opera and there's always more drama around the corner, but sometimes my brain just doesn't want to deal with more of it.

Pros:

As I said, I liked the intern stuff a lot. They're all repairing and painting the house, and fighting over who gets what bedroom. It's so lovely to have that intern house energy back. I really do care about Simone and Blue and Lucas and Mica and Jules. So far I feel like Jules is the one I understand the least about, but even with her I find my time enjoyable. And the others all have a lot of life and personality to them. It's fun watching them compete for the rooms, for the coolest surgeries, all of it. And we get different combinations of bonding. Obviously Jules/Blue and Simone/Lucas are shaping up to give us that romance energy, but this week we saw Blue and Simone connecting over the fate of their patient, football player the Tank.

And oof. They really did a lot in a short time to make you care about this twenty-two year old football player who just wants to get back out there and make his family proud. His goal is to be able to move them all to the states through his professional football career. And Link's job is to fix his leg so he can do that. Everything seems to be going fine, and then an unexpected clot forms, and the Tank dies on the table. It's pretty heartbreaking. Link is crushed, Simone and Blue have to call the young man's mother to give her the news, and reporters are swarming all over the hospital, accusing Link of killing this young talented man. That's not going to be good.

Simone and Blue's bonding was really sweet. Benson (Blue) is turning into a favorite of mine, because he's an overconfident asshole but they don't take that extreme too far. He's willing to be vulnerable, he doesn't scoff in the face of other people's pain. He needs to learn how to emotionally connect with his patients, and the compassion with which he treated Simone, and then the Tank's mother on the phone, shows that he's willing to put the work in.

In other patient news, we saw Jules and Jo treating a woman pregnant with her third child, who was experiencing some spotting. It turns out it's just stress and the baby is fine. Which is when we find out that the woman experienced extreme post-partum depression after her first two pregnancies, and this third pregnancy (an accident), is something she's terrified of going through with. She doesn't want to go into that darkness again, she's afraid of leaving her kids. So Jo and Jules walk her through an abortion, while her loving husband stays on the phone with her to hear how she's doing.

Grey's is always great at this kind of thing. It's an actual technical explanation of what an abortion at this stage of pregnancy would be like, and it's kind and informative and it's not, despite what I'm sure some people would say, preachy or judge-y or trying to say anything about the moral good or bad of the action. It's a medical procedure that a patient requested, nay, that a patient required, for her quality and longevity of life. That is all. I found it quite moving, to be honest. And Jo praising Jules for connecting with the patient was really sweet. Maybe there's a mentor/mentee vibe forming there!

Once again, I found Teddy's subplot pretty enjoyable because it wasn't focused on Owen drama. Get these two assholes a divorce, stat, and maybe I won't have to despise them. Anyway: Richard and Teddy's back-and-forth was genuinely hilarious. As was Bailey and Amelia each interfering in their own way. I love that Teddy had her demands, then Richard called her bluff, but then Amelia called Richard's bluff, and Teddy ended up with the job, along with some of her required enhancements, in the end. I'm sure things aren't going to be smooth sailing from here, but at least we landed on an answer. (The funniest bit was Teddy's bemused reaction to Richard using the word "service" to describe working at the hospital. "Kind of a weird way to put it, especially to someone who actually served...")

I'm prepared to eat my words, but I still kind of like the Maggie and Winston drama? Like, it annoys me a lot that we even went there, but all the times in the past I've been frustrated with Maggie it's been that she's so ignorant and entitled and selfish, and the narrative seems to frame her as justified. This time, I feel like Maggie is getting a very necessary wake-up call, you know? Winston is right. And Maggie needs to learn her lesson. Let's see where it goes, this could get really irritating really fast, but so far I'm strangely on board with it.

And that's where I'll stop. I note we still have Meredith narration, so it's almost like she never left. We'll see how her absence makes an impact, if at all, as we move forward!

8.5/10