Strange... it's not often that I have this complaint about Grey's Anatomy, but I actually thought the episode was a bit crowded. And while I didn't hate any of the plot threads, there are things I dislike about a lot of them. Unfortunately, this episode wasn't a winner...
Cons:
One of the main plots followed a cheerleader squad that had all been injured. A lot of the story focuses on how catty and cruel these girls can be. I liked some things about this plot thread - in fact, it was the best of the episode - but one thing that drove me nuts was the teen speak. One girl actually said "hashtag that" about something. Let me tell you, having been a teenager not that long ago, that nobody says that unless they're being ironic or perhaps even post-ironic. I mean people hashtag things, sure, but they don't use the word as a verb. For the most part I liked the cheerleader characters just fine, so the few jarring moments of teen speak really stood out.
The most aggravating subplot of the night followed Ben. He is called up to psych to deal with a patient who appears to be dying. He sends a fellow resident/intern (not sure which) out of the room to try and find a crash cart and an attending, while he tries to keep the guy alive. Since they're in the psych ward, there's nothing sharp around, and Ben ends up using the edge of the metal part of a clipboard to cut into the guy. Richard shows up just as Ben is doing this. They rush the guy to the OR and he actually survives his ordeal. Ben gets in huge trouble from Richard and later from Bailey, his own wife. As the chief, she has to discipline him and she suspends him for three days. Here's my question, though: what else was Ben supposed to do? He tried calling for an attending, and the guy was going to die if he did nothing. I feel like his kind of innovative thinking could just as easily have been praised by the narrative and the characters, instead of being condemned by it. Everybody kept chastising him for what he did, but I didn't hear a single person offer an alternative solution to his situation. There was some shoe-horned in part of the plot thread where Ben was apparently trying to prove himself because the other residents made fun of him for being older... it didn't really work.
Maggie and Andrew's plot thread was all about whether or not they should go public with their relationship. While I still think they are very cute and I like their love story, this plot thread was just tired. Basically, Maggie wants to keep it a secret, but Andrew wants to tell everybody. Then, when Andrew hears Stephanie and Penny complaining about the unfair treatment that Ben and Jo both get for sleeping with Bailey and Alex, respectively, Andrew starts to think maybe keeping it a secret is a good idea. Meanwhile, Maggie has learned from Alex that she's making too big a deal out of this, and decides to tell the truth. She announces their relationship in front of people, much to Andrew's concern.
I don't know, man. When Alex was talking about how nobody cared, I feel like he was talking for the audience as much as for the characters. I don't want another plot thread about resentments and power plays between relationships in the hospital. How many more times are we going to see people being scandalized by a relationship between attendings/interns? Yawn.
The main plot focused on Callie, Meredith, Bailey, Jackson, and Jo going to perform a very experimental surgery. Basically, they amputated a guy's leg and parts of his pelvis and attached the remaining leg to the center of his body so that he looked like a pogo-stick. This surgery was super difficult and the guy's main surgeon was resistant to the idea. There were setbacks, of course, but Callie managed to pull out a miracle. This plot thread was really predictable. They felt unprepared for the surgery, and there was a major setback and then Callie came up with an amazing solution at the last second and saved the guy's life. Yeah, like nobody saw that coming. Also, this show is usually pretty good at making me feel something for the patient, but this guy was just an unconscious random dude on a surgery table. Nobody even thought to talk about the stigma of having such a weird body configuration, or how his potential quality of life might not be worth the risk. Other than the one angry surgeon, nobody was really arguing the other side. It felt sloppy.
Nothing new on the Jackson/April front either. Jackson still doesn't know about the baby, which is kind of ridiculous. They keep eking out small bits of April's story, as she resists telling Jackson. Why have an entire episode about them and then radio silence afterwards?
Pros:
Stephanie and the cheerleaders! Like I said, this plot thread with the cheerleaders was really the best of the night. Basically, we learn that Stephanie used to be a cheerleader in high school - and not only that, she was squad leader! She uses her knowledge of how to deal with cheerleaders to whip the girls into shape and get them to stop fighting long enough to be there for their injured team member. There wasn't a lot of complexity here, but just enough that I felt connected to Stephanie again. She's been one of my favorites since she got here, and I was glad to see her getting some focus. I loved the part where all of the other cheerleaders came up to see their friend, and Alex watches as the formerly rude and snobbish girls file in, timid and polite. Alex demands that Stephanie show him how she did that. I loved it!
Over in Callie's plot with the "dream team," I did like the moments when we felt like everybody was really working as a close team, like when Meredith calmed Callie down and got her to work through a problem, or when Jo and Callie teased Jackson because the nurse at the hospital they were visiting was flirting with him. Callie talks about the fact that since they see him every day, they've gotten desensitized to his ridiculous good looks... but that doesn't mean everybody else has! And despite the cliché nature of the whole thing, seeing Callie get a story line of her own was rather refreshing. She is a medical bad-ass, we mustn't forget!
Arizona once again had almost nothing to do in this episode, but she lit up the screen for her brief moments. She continues to encourage April to tell Jackson about the baby, chastising her for letting Alex find out before the father of the baby himself. There was also this great moment after Maggie told everybody about her and Andrew. Arizona, laughing, tells her that it was hard to watch, because of how awkward it all was. Precious!
Despite my annoyance with Ben's plot thread, I liked the fact that Bailey truly didn't give him any special treatment. If Ben's supposedly terrible behavior had been more believably terrible, then I would have enjoyed digging into this more, but I still did appreciate the difficult situation that Bailey found herself in. How does she maintain a good husband/wife relationship with Ben while putting her foot down as the chief? I think she handled it about as well as could be expected.
The surgeon who was so reluctant to let Callie and the others do their work did get one good thing out of the whole experience: Meredith's phone number. Meredith was at first resistant to the idea of this man's interest, but by the end of the episode she had decided to give it a shot. I don't anticipate this guy being the next great love of Meredith's life, but I do like the fact that we're not going with a toxic idea of total widow loneliness for Meredith for the rest of her life. She still has a chance for something special with somebody new some day, even if it is weird as a viewer to root for her with someone other than McDreamy.
So, there you have it. Grey's Anatomy rarely ever produces bad episodes, per say, but I can't exactly say this was a good one. Better luck next week.
6.5/10
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