Grey's Anatomy: It Only Gets Much Worse (13x13)

Well, I watched this episode in public which was a mistake, because it actually made me cry. Yikes.

Cons:

Meredith doing the voice-overs is always awkward when she isn't even in the episode. I've got to say that the voice-over thing is my least favorite element of Grey's Anatomy. I mean I know it's here to stay, but come on. Maybe try not to be so obnoxious with it.

For whatever reason, I'm noticing that in this season the ensemble nature of the cast has been a real burden. There are only so many characters you can focus on at a time, and as such, several plot threads get dropped and it feels very awkward. Is Alex not back to work yet? How is Meredith handling suspension? Even if it makes sense to set those two aside, what about Amelia? It makes no sense to me that Meredith and Maggie aren't more worried about where she's at. And hey, here's a question: why on earth bring Leah back if you're not going to do anything with her? 

Pros:

Despite all the things this episode couldn't manage to fit in, we actually covered a lot of ground here. There was something very smart in focusing on one central theme: the battle for control of the residency program. Throughout this, you can tease out lots of different elements and character dynamics. Let's talk about some of them.

April: April is getting hell from everybody else about accepting Meredith's job. She's actually enjoying her promotion, but this doesn't mean she's against Richard, per se. What nobody else in the hospital seems to understand is that she's trying to do right by her hospital. It's kind of heartbreaking, because everybody is being so cruel to her, and nobody is congratulating her on her promotion. Eventually, Catherine does tell her the she deserves the job and is allowed to celebrate. I think the most telling moment here is when Jackson talks about how he's "surprised" by April. We can take that to mean disappointed. It's a cutting blow!

Maggie: Nobody is more harsh to April than Maggie, who is playing up her loyalty to Meredith to an extreme level. April, Maggie, and Jo work together on a patient that used to be Meredith's. Maggie glares daggers the whole time, and when there are complications, she blames April. April fixes the complications and removes the patient's tumor, causing said patient, who had been very distressed by Meredith's absence, to thank April for saving her life. I liked how harsh Maggie was. Sometimes a lot of the drama on this show is done through passive-aggressiveness, but here we had a real blow-out between these two women. It was refreshing to see. I also liked how April stood up for herself. I'm not sure I agree with everything April is doing or saying, especially since Minnick isn't all she seemed to be at first (we'll get there!), but I still like it when April stands her ground.

Catherine: She's still my least favorite character on the show, but I do enjoy the unique position she's in, and how she plays off of the other characters. She wants to keep the peace in her marriage to Richard, but of course she is the one who pushed Bailey into hiring Minnick. She wants to encourage April to take pride in her accomplishments, but by doing so she's taking April's side over Jackson's. Lots of delicious complexity!

Richard: Here we finally see why all the attending surgeons are so loyal to Richard. They were all taught by him, and he knows what he's doing. Stephanie loses a patient on the operating table during her first start-to-finish solo surgery. I'll talk more about that in a minute. When Minnick fails to comfort Stephanie, she goes to Richard, who handles it perfectly, helping Stephanie to grieve for the life of the little boy, and then going with her as she tells the parents what happened. This was the scene that made me cry, and it was all because of Richard Webber. Minnick's new technique might be better in many ways, and I really do believe it has many advantages. But here's where you have the writing on the wall: Richard knows how to be a mentor to these young doctors in a way that Minnick could never hope to compare to. Of course, along with Richard being there for Stephanie, he's also got to contend with the messy situation of his wife turning against him, and his favorite student and good friend Bailey losing her faith in him. This is the most interested I've been in Richard as a character in a long while.

Bailey: She's become something of a villain in all of this, in some ways even more so than Minnick herself. Minnick didn't know any of these people when she showed up, so she didn't really betray them. That was all Bailey. As I think I've mentioned in past reviews, the great thing about this is that I completely understand why Bailey is behaving the way she is, but I don't necessarily agree with her at all. The scene where Bailey and Richard get into a fight during Ben's solo surgery was one of the highlights of the episode. These two old friends are finally letting out some of their frustrations, and as a viewer, it's really hard to pick a side.

Ben: I take that back - I'm on Ben's side. The poor guy is one of two residents chosen by Minnick to implement "phase two" of her program, where a resident gets to be head surgeon from start to finish, with the attending assisting. Ben does a great job on his surgery, but the experience is somewhat ruined because Bailey and Richard won't stop arguing. The tension is delicious. Obviously, asking Richard to scrub in on a surgery that Minnick has arranged is already a tense situation. Add in Bailey, and you've got a full-blown argument. Ben expresses it best to Miranda at the end of the episode: he wants to side with the residents, because Minnick is good for them. But the attendings are his friends, and now they won't even talk to him, since he's married to Bailey. He's stuck in the middle of this thing more so than anybody else.

Stephanie: Stephanie gets the other solo surgery of the night, and as I mentioned above, it does not go well. I love this actress. Her performance was amazing. She runs the gambit from being really excited about her solo surgery to being scared and devastated when everything goes wrong. To see Stephanie, the confident doctor that she is, fall to pieces like that was really emotionally affecting.

Arizona: This whole scenario provided a lot of meaty tension between Arizona and Minnick. Arizona insists on being there for Stephanie's surgery, since the patient is a nine-year-old boy, and that's Arizona's department. After everything goes wrong, Minnick runs off, leaving Stephanie to seek comfort from Richard. Arizona is there for Minnick when she learns that Minnick has never lost a child on the operating table before. She also gives Minnick a hug as she sees her breaking down in her car at the end of the day. Arizona is another one of those character who is situated squarely in the middle of all the drama. Obviously, Richard is her good friend. But on the other hand, she's the only doctor in the whole hospital who has made any kind of a personal connection to Minnick so far, and she can see that this new woman is not a bad person at all.

Minnick: This episode certainly did a lot to humanize Minnick, who was starting to grate on my nerves a little bit. Everything she decides to do goes perfectly for her, so it was cathartic to see her fail in such a big way, and not know how to handle it. This failure doesn't mean her method is wrong. It just means that she's not equipped to handle certain aspects of teaching that she really should be equipped to handle. Nobody's perfect.

Political commentary of the day: everybody sits around and discusses April defecting to the other side. They remark that it's like learning that your friend voted wrong. Owen asks: "can you vote wrong?" and everybody else responds: "Yeah!" I liked the pointed look that Maggie gave during this scene. Especially given recent events, I'd say that there absolutely is a wrong choice sometimes.

I guess that's where I'll stop. This was a meaty episode that managed to keep the plot streamlined, and still explore a lot of different character dynamics. I hope we can keep things moving forward a little quicker now that we're in the back half of the season!

9/10