Grey's Anatomy: Don't Let's Start (11x06)

Hmmm.... Actually, I was not a fan of this episode. There were parts of it that I liked, but for the most part, I thought it fell flat, unfortunately. I'm just going to glance at each of these plot lines in turn, because they didn't overlap very much.

April's mother shows up in Seattle, eager to help with preparations for the baby. When April blows her off and says she has to keep working, Jackson agrees to go with April's mom to shop for baby stuff. April is annoyed when she gets home and sees that her mother has already bought a bunch of stuff. She tells her mother that she doesn't want any of her help. Later, April realizes that Jackson was the one who called her mother for help - Jackson is freaking out, because he doesn't know how to do this whole parenting thing. April apologizes to her mother, and asks if she can call her with questions.

This plot thread irritated me because it felt very lacking in context. What was April's relationship with her mother before this? Were we supposed to know that they didn't get along very well? I mean, yeah, April's mother was a bit annoying and over the top with the baby stuff, but April was just mean! I didn't understand where her anger was coming from. In all, this thread felt like a forced excuse to pull April and Jackson into a story for once. I could have done without it.

Arizona continues to work on the fellowship with Dr. Herman, but she is unhappy with how Dr. Herman treats her. She doesn't stand up for herself, until Alex talks to her about it. Arizona tells Alex that she and Callie have split up, and that the fellowship was part of why it happened. Arizona knows she can't lose this fellowship, because it's all she has. Alex tells her she has to stand up for herself, because she doesn't deserve to be treated this way. Arizona goes to tell Dr. Herman that she wants to be treated with respect, but Dr. Herman delivers shocking news: she has a brain tumor, and only has six months to live. She has decided to try to teach Arizona all she knows before she dies, so that Arizona can continue on after she is gone.

A brain tumor? Really? I'm sorry, but how many doctors at this hospital are going to have life threatening illnesses? It's just stupid! Usually when I watch Grey's Anatomy, I don't feel like I'm watching a soap opera, but here I really did. Waaay over the top. However, I did like the stuff with Arizona and Alex. I think it's nice that she confided in him about Callie, and that Alex tried to stand up for her when Dr. Herman was being unreasonable.

Derek decides that Meredith and Maggie need to get to know each other as sisters. At his suggestion, Meredith invites Maggie over for dinner. Derek then invites Richard to come, too. Meredith thinks this will be a terrible idea, and Maggie isn't sure if she wants to go, either. However, Derek keeps pushing. The day of the dinner, Derek and Meredith are arguing again, as they have been a lot lately. Meredith calls a time out on the fight, and the two of them decide to go have shower sex for some inexplicable reason. As such, they are not there to let Richard and Maggie in when they both arrive for dinner. This gives the two of them a chance to talk. Richard tells Maggie that he didn't know about her for all of these years, and he knows he didn't handle the news very well. Maggie accepts Richard's apology, sort of, but she's mad at him for lying to her. She says she didn't need him to be her dad - she just needed him to be honest with her.

Okay, ugh. Maggie needs to get over it. At least she knew she had a biological father floating around out there somewhere. Richard had no idea that he had a daughter until very recently. Maggie is being very insensitive to the fact that she has just dropped a huge bombshell on these peoples' lives. Then there's Meredith and Derek. How mad are they at each other? Are they still fighting? Was the sex supposed to be them making up, or was it just a release for them? I am confused! It felt so... weird and insincere for them to have sex at this moment. And awkward, too... they're having people over for dinner, for goodness' sake! Still, there were one or two things I liked about this plot thread. I like the fact that Meredith was the one to invite Maggie for dinner. It shows that she does have some interest in a relationship with her. Also, I loved it when Derek said that Zola needed more black people in her life because Derek was running out of ways to do her hair. That was pretty cute.

Owen and Jo help treat a veteran who has been living in her car, until the car was stolen. Owen encourages the patient to go get help from the resources available for veterans, but the patient says that those resources aren't for her - she wasn't out in the midst of the bad fighting, but rather working on computer codes. Owen pulls rank on her, and tells her that she served her country and she deserves the help. Working on this patient makes Jo realize that she has let herself get complacent with Alex. She doesn't really have a home or a bed - she just uses Alex's. What happens when things change? Where will she go? She remembers what it was like to live out of a car and have nothing. Alex assures Jo that he's not going anywhere, and that she's not going to have nowhere to go.

This was one of the only two plot threads in the episode that really worked for me. I loved how Owen encouraged the patient to get help, and the complexities of this woman feeling like she doesn't deserve the help because she wasn't a "real" soldier. Then there's Jo, telling people that she used to live in her car. Jo was actually the one to figure out that the woman was homeless. Callie isn't convinced at first, because the patient has a job. Jo says it's totally possible to have a job and not a home. That's one of those things that people don't talk about very much, and I liked seeing it acknowledged here. Also, Alex was very sweet when he was reassuring Jo. (He was also sweet with Arizona. What a sweet guy! He's my fave).

The plot thread with Bailey was also quite good. Bailey is working on a patient who is very unhealthy due to a poor diet and lack of exercise. His poor health has caused him to get cancer, and Bailey realizes that she needs to make changes to her own life. She starts by going on a jog. Ben makes fun of her for it, but Bailey runs the numbers on her own cholestoral, etc., and begins to be afraid she'll die young due to her poor health. Ben says he doesn't want to change anything about her, but he agrees to support her as she makes these changes.

I enjoyed this a great deal. One thing I liked was that Bailey's physical weight was never mentioned. Maggie didn't comment that she was trying to lose weight when she saw Bailey out for a jog, and Bailey never said that she wanted to change the way that she looked. It was all about being healthier.

I'll stop there. I liked the Jo/Owen/veteran plot, and I liked Bailey's stuff. Other than that, this episode was a bit of a dud.

5/10