All of my poor Grey's Anatomy characters are in such pain right now! Pain ranging from intense to mild, but still... yikes. I feel so bad for so many different people. That's the beauty of this show - I really feel like I understand the perspectives of all the different players in each conflict. Even when it's easy to pick a side, I still feel bad for the other people involved as well!
Cons:
The least interesting plot thread of the night for me involves the continuing drama of Maggie and Andrew DeLuca. In this week's installment, DeLuca gets annoyed with Maggie for trying to force him to have dinner with Richard, and for trying to give him special treatment in surgeries. DeLuca shuts that down right away, but is still getting comments from his fellow interns (especially Cross) about his relationship and the unfair advantages it's bringing to him. In the end, DeLuca angrily tells Maggie to stop trying to give him special treatment, which leaves Maggie confused and hurt. See, these two had such a cute little romance going. Now, I'm getting disenchanted with it right along with the characters. Maggie is one of my favorites, so I wish we could see a more interesting story here with her and DeLuca, instead of the same tired story about power dynamics that always comes into play when an attending dates a resident or an intern. We've covered this ground already, and the whole thing is making DeLuca look like a jerk, and Maggie look kind of pathetic.
Pros:
There were two main medical cases this week, and I liked the balance afforded by the fact that one patient, a tricky triple organ transplant, was a complete success, while the other one was a fluke mountaineering accident that ended in tragic brain death. The patients didn't get a ton of screen time - there were too many other things going on - but I liked what I saw. I almost hope we see more of the patient who is now brain dead. Her parents insist on keeping her alive with machines, while her boyfriend, who they do not approve of, knows she wouldn't want to live like that. It's a basic setup, but the brief moments we saw of these characters were enough to make me interested in how this would go moving forward. Will they come back? I'm not sure, but I hope so.
The most light-hearted of the character stories focused on Meredith, who has been vacillating about whether or not to go on a date with Thorpe. She agrees to go out for drinks, but Alex is sure she'll end up cancelling later, which indeed she does, while in the middle of a difficult surgery. Most of this plot thread features Maggie and Alex arguing over what's best for Meredith, with Maggie saying this date is a good thing, and Alex continuing to insist that Meredith is going to blow it off. Maggie eventually corners Alex and convinces him that it's a good thing for Meredith to try and get back out there. This leads to a touching scene where Alex talks about his own experiences getting back on the horse after having lost people. Sure, none of his partners have died, but after Izzie he still felt like he was betraying her when he met somebody new. He convinces Meredith that it's okay to find somebody new, and that it won't mean betraying Derek's memory. Thorpe shows up at the hospital and gives Meredith a ride home, and the two sit and eat takeout while talking and laughing and seemingly having a good time. Meredith doesn't seem ready to make the next step and invite him inside, but she is starting to move on.
There were a lot of things to love about this. Maggie and Alex both arguing about Meredith and who knew her best was great. Meredith became basically invisible amidst their bickering, until finally she shut it down and used her mom voice to force them to stop making petulant faces at each other from across the operating room. This humor segued very nicely into the touching moment with Alex, which was just so perfect in so many ways. We've gotten a lot in the past about Meredith gatekeeping Alex's relationship with Jo, but here we seemed to have a situation where Meredith needed Alex's permission, in a weird way, to accept the idea of going out with somebody new. It was played very nicely, and Meredith seemed to appreciate Alex's seal of approval on the whole thing.
Another moment of humor came when Meredith asked for Callie's advice while Callie was in a bathroom stall. Meredith leaves partway through Callie talking about what it's like to get back into the swing of things after a dry spell, and Bailey comes in to hear Callie talking about sex to an empty bathroom. Bailey plays it off hilariously by making her own sexual metaphor when an embarrassed Callie exits the stall to see not Meredith, but Bailey waiting outside.
And then there's the ending with Thorpe himself. Sure, this guy seems like Manly McWonderbread Sir Borington at the moment, but I didn't mind it so much, because at the moment it's not really about the guy - as Alex points out, the first guy after losing your husband is bound to be awkward no matter what, so Meredith might as well rip off the Band-Aid. That's what Meredith is doing right now. It was really sweet to see her munching away on some takeout and talking about the successful surgery, laughing and smiling and unwilling to cut the night short. It might not be easy, but she's really trying to put herself back out there. It's a healing experience for her, and it's nice to see.
Amelia was the character whose heartbreak really hit me the hardest tonight. Basically, she and Owen start off the episode in a really good place, with Owen telling Amelia that his birthday is coming up next week and that he wants to celebrate it with her. She even has a moment of reconciliation with Meredith, when she offers Meredith some of her clothes that she has at the hospital so that Meredith can prep for her date. Meanwhile, Owen and Riggs get into a screaming match about their brain dead patient and end up discussing the forbidden topic of Owen's sister. Riggs tells Owen that he needs to stop taking all his anger out on him - turns out, Owen was the one who gave up the search, while Riggs never stopped looking for the missing Megan. Owen, incensed and devastated, goes home and gets drunk, forgetting about Amelia. When she shows up for their date and sees that he's totally hammered, she leaves, distraught.
This is a perfect example of a situation where I feel for everybody involved. It was so devastating to see the contrast of happy and giddy Amelia and Owen to the sight of a drunken Owen trying to pull himself together as a tearful Amelia ran from the trailer. I watched this episode with my mom, and her immediate reaction to that ending scene was to remark that Amelia should have tried to stay there for Owen, who was clearly in distress. And yeah, I can totally understand Owen's pain, even if his hatred for Riggs is unjustified by all rules of the logical universe. But my initial reaction was that Amelia should get out of that situation immediately, for the sake of her own tenuous sobriety. She's an alcoholic who had a not-too-distant relapse. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for her to show up at Owen's expecting to have a fun romantic evening and instead be confronted with a wreck of a man, fall-over drunk. I feel so bad for both of them, and also for Riggs, who has, it seems, just as much reason to hate Owen for Megan's disappearance as Owen has to hate Riggs. In fact, perhaps more of a reason, if Riggs is indeed correct in pointing out that Owen gave up first. But unlike Owen, who cut himself off from his old life and staunchly avoids the slightest mention of his sister, Riggs doesn't seem to bear a grudge against Owen for all of this. Does that make him the better man here? I don't think so... but it makes me just as sympathetic towards him as I am towards Owen. I hope these two patch it up before the somewhat inevitable soap-opera appearance of the long-lost Megan, which I'm fairly sure is coming up at some point.
Meanwhile, you've got the most dramatic and potentially most devastating plot thread of the night... April and Jackson. Jackson is furious with April for not telling him about the pregnancy sooner, especially upon finding out that she knew she was pregnant before the divorce papers were signed. April is livid with Arizona for telling Jackson before she herself had the chance to. Arizona spends the episode seeking validation for her decision, but is told by everybody that what she did was very wrong. Jackson blows up at April and declares that he's out, that April can raise the baby by herself, but Richard talks him down, reminding him that this is his child, no matter how angry he is with April. As the two of them finally talk about it, Jackson is angry that April decided to wait so that it would be "too late" to do anything about it if the baby had the same disease that killed Samuel. April, in turn, is angry that Jackson would even consider something like that when he knows full well that abortion is not an option for her.
Oh gosh. The pain is strong with this one. Let me start by talking about Arizona. She is 100% wrong. There's really no way around it - she didn't even give April an ultimatum before she told Jackson about the baby. She was worried about her friends and the pain they would have to go through, but that's no excuse! She spends the majority of the episode going to everybody from Callie to Bailey to Amelia, looking for somebody to tell her that what she did was okay, but nobody has any words of comfort for her. Each of them, Bailey in particular, toes the line between complete distaste at her horrible decision and sympathy for her current plight. I liked the fact that while they all condemn, unequivocally, what she did, they don't condemn her as a person. And Amelia finishes things off by telling her there's nothing she can do but wait it out and admit she was in the wrong. Maybe April will forgive her, maybe she won't. It's out of Arizona's hands. This season has been low on meaty Arizona material, so I'm happy to see her getting focus in a storyline. Does she deserve April's eventual forgiveness? Gosh, I don't know. But for her sake and for April's, I hope they can eventually move past this.
On the Jackson and April front, I guess I'm slightly more on April's side by the end of the episode, but my goodness do I feel for Jackson as well. He has every right to be furious with April for hiding this from him, as Riggs points out to April, and as Jackson makes very clear when he gets into a shouting match with her in the hospital. April was trying to avoid the drama, but that doesn't excuse her hiding such a big thing from Jackson. Obviously April didn't want to tell Jackson before the divorce was finalized, because Jackson would have changed his mind and stayed with April for the sake of the child alone. Who would really want that? It's not a sustainable situation. But on the other hand, of course it would change things for Jackson. He deserved to have all the information before making such a big decision.
Each of them gets a great scene with an outsider who helps to give them some perspective. Jackson talks with Richard, who points out that he only found out about his own child, Maggie, after decades of missed time. Richard wasn't about to take that out on his kid, and neither should Jackson, who knows what it's like to grow up without a father around. April, on the other hand, gets a scene with Owen, who cuts through all the rest of the bullshit and reminds her that she's going to have a baby, and that it's a miracle. April bursts into tears and thanks Owen, and the two share an embrace. This scene got me right in the gut. April and Owen have a sort of older brother/younger sister vibe going, and Owen's protectiveness and kindness was just the thing April needed to shore up her strength.
The final confrontation between Jackson and April was a real doozy. April is totally justified in telling Jackson that this is her body, and her baby, and her decision. Jackson was wrong to try and work his way in to that decision, but at the same time, of course the thought of going through another loss like Samuel is frightening to him. Of course he's going to do whatever he can to avoid that pain. April gets a lot of bad-ass points for cutting him off at the pass and telling him he has no rights to this child. She gets an extra dose of credit for her anger towards Arizona, which as I mentioned before is 100% justified. The best moment? "I believe in this stuff, so I want you to know how much I mean it when I say: go to Hell." Damn. Don't cross April. She's not messing around.
I want to point out one really amazing thing about this plot thread - this show is brilliant at diversity and media representation. Probably the best example I've ever seen, and I'm including shows like Orange is the New Black in the mix. Honestly. April's devout religiousness is something that makes her character theoretically hard for me to relate to, being an atheist myself. But never once do I feel like the show is making a blanket pro-life statement when the issue of abortion comes up for April. She says it plain and simple: "that's not an option for me." For me. Seasons earlier in this same show, Cristina made the decision to have an abortion, and while it caused intense problems in her relationship with Owen, she wasn't condemned for it, and her exit from the show was presented as Cristina finally getting what she wanted from life - a hella awesome career without a family to limit her choices. Both April and Cristina are perfect examples of a pro-choice attitude - it's a choice. And both of these characters are making choices that we as the audience can respect and understand.
That's where I'll wrap up - I tend to go on and on when I enjoy an episode of this show, because there's just so much good material to discuss! I feel so bad for Jackson, April, Arizona, Owen, Amelia, Riggs, and even Maggie, as we escalate forward into the final third of the season. What will happen to everybody? I'm more interested than ever.
9/10
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