This was a pretty standard episode of Grey's Anatomy, meaning that we spent time with a lot of our key players. It's going to be difficult to remember all of the stuff going on here, but I'll do my best not to go on too long.
Cons:
Jackson and April. I know I'm a broken record, but these two just don't really interest me. I like them both individually as characters, but when the plot line focuses on their relationship, and all its ups and downs, I just lose interest. This week, Jackson asks April out to dinner. April is thrilled, thinking this is a sign they can start repairing their relationship, but Jackson is intending the dinner to serve as a platform to talk about divorce. At the dinner, April gets paged to the hospital before they can get to the serious talking. They agree to talk later, and then at the end of the episode it looks like they've fallen back into bed together. This is going to be tedious, I can tell. April will be all happy and think they can repair everything, while Jackson will feel regretful and guilty. The roller-coaster is exhausting. They are by far the least interesting relationship on the show right now.
Pros:
The main plot of the evening was a very complex one, involving Meredith, Callie, Penny, Jo, and Stephanie. All of these interweaving cogs had a piece of the puzzle, and it worked very effectively. Basically, there's a patient who is getting a long-awaited kidney transplant, but it turns out that he has a giant tumor on his head that he's been hiding from everybody with a hat. They need to find a way to remove the tumor so that he can qualify for the organ. Jo, who has worked with this patient since she was an intern, comes up with the idea of using the kidney donor as a skull donor as well.
While this is going on, Meredith is keeping Penny on a short leash, being perfectly pleasant to her but not letting her do any real work. Callie gets increasingly angry, confronting Richard and Meredith about Meredith's unfair treatment of Penny. It all comes to a head when Penny tells Callie to stop butting in, and then also tells Meredith that even though she doesn't need Callie fighting her battles, Callie is right. Meredith needs to teach Penny, and if she can't do that, she needs to take her off her service. Meredith lets Penny participate in the transplant, which pushes Jo out of the surgery. Later, Jo yells at Penny for taking her patient. Stephanie, who is still on the outs with Jo over the events of a few weeks ago, asks Penny if she wants to go out for drinks.
This whole plot thread was such a mess of complex relationships, and I loved it all. Throughout the entire episode, I kept thinking - Meredith is right! Callie is right! Penny is right! Jo is right! Everybody is right in their opinions, and has totally valid reasons for their feelings. But then whose side should I be on? It's all so deliciously complex! I liked that Penny got a victory in this episode - she told Callie off for butting her head in, but also stood up to Meredith and demanded that she do her job. But Penny's victory came at the expense of Jo, and I felt really bad for her as well. This was her patient, and her final victory over a long struggle to get this guy a kidney was stolen from her. Hell, Jo was the one who came up with the skull transplant idea and everything! It's pretty unfair that she got cut out. I'll be curious to see what will happen with Stephanie, Jo, and Penny moving forward. This could be an interesting dynamic. As could Callie and Meredith's relationship. Will these two be able to get past Callie dating Penny and remain friends? At the moment it seems unlikely.
My absolute favorite plot thread of the night concerned white privilege and racism. Maggie is annoyed when a patient defers to the white male doctor in the room instead of looking to her. When she complains about it to Amelia and Meredith, they both agree that the sexism is horrible, but Amelia is shocked that Maggie thinks race may have played a part. Later, Amelia bashfully asks Stephanie if she thought that she'd believed Jo about Stephanie's illness being a lie because of race. Stephanie said no, but she says that it did cross her mind, that it's always there, and impossible not to consider. Amelia asks Maggie about it, and Maggie tells her that if she feels uncomfortable, she needs to check her white privilege and try not to do it again. The astounding thing about this plot thread was that it might have opened up so many white people's minds to something that they'd never even thought about before. I mean I give a great deal of thought to my own white privilege, but of course there's still a lot more that I could and should be doing. Everything Maggie said was gold. She pointed out that she's not the spokesperson for all black people and that it's actually rather annoying to be asked questions about this stuff as if she has all the answers. My favorite part was when she told Amelia not to make Stephanie work hard to make her feel better about her potential inadvertent racism. It's really not a black person's job to appease a white person's guilt, or hold their hand and explain things to them.
And that wasn't Maggie's only shining moment of the episode. The final serious plot thread of the night involved Dr. Nathan Riggs, April's friend from the war. Bailey hires him for the cardio department but forgets to tell Maggie about it. She's angry that she wasn't consulted about a new member of her own department, but Riggs quickly impresses her with all the research he's done about her and her department. Their battle of wills is settled rather quickly, and while Maggie is still annoyed that she didn't get to select Riggs herself, she doesn't mind the thought of working with him. But then there's Owen, who hates Riggs with an inexplicable passion. Whatever happened in their past, it is not good. He actually has a PTSD flashback of some sort, and nearly hurts one of the interns, and he lashes out at Bailey, telling her that her decision to hire Riggs was thoughtless and stupid. This is quite the mystery! I'm loving it. Whatever Riggs did, it must be bad. But at the same time, they're setting him up as such a likeable character, and the New Zealand accent makes him really hot, I must say.
I think the best part of this plot thread was Meredith, though. She quietly goes to stand next to Owen after he freaks out in front of Bailey and a bunch of other people. She says that she promised Cristina to be Owen's person if he needed it, and then without asking for an explanation, she just asks Owen "do we hate him?" Owen says yes. Later, when Riggs tries to engage Meredith in casual conversation, Meredith says "I'm a friend of Owen Hunt's." Riggs looks a little freaked out by this, like he doesn't want people knowing whatever it is that makes Owen hate him so much. I love Meredith's staunch loyalty. It might be a bit dark and twisty to hate somebody without knowing why, but you can't deny that she's a good friend to those close to her.
This episode, to counteract a lot of the more serious drama, had three small plot threads with a lot of humor. First of all, Bailey is sick of Jackson sleeping on her couch, and tells Ben in no uncertain terms to get rid of him. She withholds sex, until Ben, desperate, tells Jackson that he needs to have sex with his wife, and Jackson needs to get out. That was pretty funny! It was a nice way to introduce some lightness to the episode.
Then there's Alex and the interns. He warns the interns to stay away from a mother of a patient, because she's a "Doc Knocker." This proves to be true, as the woman kisses one of the interns, causing him to rush out and miss a critical piece of information on her son's case. All ends up well in the end, but this intern is now scarred by the aggressive sexuality of the woman. This was hilarious! "Doc Knocker" is the funniest thing I've heard. And Alex's immediate identification of her was hilarious. Owen weighs in, telling the poor intern that he'll learn to recognize the signs for himself in time. So funny!
Finally, Arizona is trying to get back in the dating game, and she looks for somebody to go with her to a lesbian bar as a wingman. People keep turning her down, until Richard overhears that it's trivia night and invites himself to come along. When they get to the bar, Richard keeps talking excitedly about trivia, and Arizona finally tells him the truth. Richard looks around and realizes for the first time that he's in a lesbian bar, but he steps up graciously to his job as a wingman and asks Arizona who she's interested in. Oh my God this is just too precious. First of all, Arizona looks damn hot when she's dolled up. I mean not that she's not always gorgeous, but this was a whole other level of beauty. Wow. And then there's Richard's awkward realization of his social mix-up, and then his sudden settling into his wingman role. He asks Arizona if she likes the girl with the glasses, or the one with the tattoos, and then goes over to talk to the women on Arizona's behalf. Richard is the best!
I guess that's all I've got. April and Jackson's plot thread is dragging me down, but I thought this was, in general, a masterful episode.
8.5/10
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