Grey's Anatomy: (Don't Fear) the Reaper (14x11)

Bailey-centric episode! With back-story! Yes yes yes!

Cons:

This is such a minor thing, but I needed a tiny bit more build-up to Bailey realizing that she's having a heart-attack at the beginning. As it stands, it's really, really hard to blame the doctors for being hesitant in the beginning. Obviously as it goes on and they continue to ignore her, I no longer have any sympathy for their position. But right at the start, it's hard not to think "horse, not zebra." Maybe if we'd seen just a slight amount of Bailey's symptoms affecting her - like, she says she's nauseated, so can we see her worry she might throw up? I don't know if I'm making any sense with this.

The random woman who Bailey saves and who is next to her in the hospital is fun or whatever, but nothing came of her and she felt rather out of place. I like the idea of Bailey having a blank-slate stranger character to riff off of until some of her friends actually show up at this other hospital. But I wanted a bit more of a payoff.

Pros:

We learn about Bailey's backstory, her relationship with her parents, and the fact that she had a sister who died at two months old, before Miranda was even born. All of these details serve to add dimension to a character that we've all spent fourteen seasons getting to know. I love the fact that the core characters of Grey's Anatomy can still become deeper and more complex as the years go on. The buildup with her mother had such an excellent payoff when Miranda called her at the end to tell her that she was hurt but that she would be okay, and her mother, who had always been over-protective, asserted that she knew Miranda would pull through. I actually started crying during this scene. Completely wonderful in buildup and payoff.

The social commentary was strong in this one, with Bailey having to fight tooth and nail to be taken seriously as a black woman with a white male doctor. She was patronizingly dismissed, people assumed that her problems where psychological instead of physical, and it wasn't until it was almost too late that anybody stopped to listen. Maggie shows up and has to force her way into the situation to save the day, and Richard, infuriatingly, has to cow-tow to this white dude's sense of his own importance in order to get Miranda the help she truly needs. Bailey is the kind of person who speaks her mind and doesn't put up with any crap, so it makes sense to hear her list out statistics and loudly declare that she's not ashamed of her OCD. But it's not just in Bailey's soap-boxing that we see the way the injustices work, and it was nice to see Richard and Maggie show up and see how they interacted with Bailey and the fact of her medical neglect.

Maggie and Richard actually made quite a fun duo here. I loved the moment where they both showed up and didn't want to tell the other about Bailey, unaware that they both already knew. They get into quite the comedy routine trying to lie their way in so they can see Bailey. Maggie even claims to be Bailey's daughter, which Richard warns her not to repeat in front of the woman in question. When the three of them are in the room together, you can see how all three of these people connect and relate, and their varying degrees of closeness. Webber and Bailey have this long history of being mentor and mentee, and a deep friendship that has grown out of working together for a long time. Maggie and Webber have a slightly awkward but increasingly strong father/daughter bond as they navigate the newness of their familial relationship. And then Maggie and Miranda share a systemic truth: they are women of color who have worked extremely hard to excel in their chosen field, one dominated by white men. There was a lot of great interplay between the three of them in this episode, even while Bailey retained the focus.

Then there's the stuff with Ben. He's setting up to go off into spin-off land (and before you ask - no, I don't think I'm going to watch). I'm glad to see that they're not just going to break Bailey and Ben up in order for him to pursue this new career. That would be a cheap and frankly unrealistic way to approach the situation. Instead, we see that the strain on their relationship has gotten worse and worse as Ben continues his firefighting, and we see the parallels between Bailey's mother's overprotective attitude in the flashbacks with the fear that Bailey is experiencing in the present. All of this leads to a great moment in which Ben says he'll stop firefighting, because he blames the stress he's been putting on her for her heart attack. Bailey is able to come back and say that life is not worth living unless you're doing what you truly love, and she wants Ben to be happy. Great message, and great development of this relationship.

The use of flashbacks not only showed us insight into Bailey's life, but also gave us glimpses at earlier moments from the show. We see George, we see Callie, we see Bailey when she was giving birth to Tuck, we see Bailey as an intern being lectured by Richard. This is the kind of cool stuff you can do when a show has been on the air for this long. You can really dig in to the entire personal history of a character like Miranda Bailey, and understand her more holistically. Episodes like this, which take one character and focus on her for the entire hour, allow us to tie together elements from the whole of this person's life and further deepen an already complex character. I was very pleased with how this shook out.

And... yeah. That's what I have to say. I wasn't really nervous that Bailey was going to die, but there were a few moments in there when they started showing flashbacks that I did feel a flicker of fear. They've killed off some major characters in the past. But, whatever you think of Shonda Rhimes, I think we can all agree she's savvy enough not to kill off the world's most iconic black female TV doctor, especially not during black history month. Here's to many more years of Bailey yelling at interns and putting people in their place!

9/10