Grey's Anatomy: Gut Feeling (15x03)

I don't care about several of these story threads, unfortunately. Still, there are some intriguing things to explore...

Cons:

Jackson ran off to reevaluate is life? Or whatever? That's just kind of stupid, and it adds unnecessary drama to an already uninteresting relationship between Jackson and Maggie. I was excited to see Jackson explore this newfound faith, but why does that exploration have to cause stupid problems for the sake of quick drama?

Amelia/Owen/Teddy... snore. I kind of like the dilemma that poor Maggie is in right now, trying to protect Amelia from future pain even though she can't say anything about Teddy's pregnancy. But the relationship stuff is just boring to me at this point. Amelia and Owen being all happy and raising these two invisible children together is just unrealistic. I'd be maybe slightly more interested if the Teddy dilemma didn't exist, because then when we watched Amelia and Owen implode, it would be because they're unsuited for each other, not because of an unavoidable external bombshell.

Alex isn't an idiot, and his bumbling around with the budget was kind of stupid. I like this idea of him being the interim chief, and people underestimating him, and all of that. But the fact that he made such a basic mistake with the budget is just silly. It makes Alex look dumb, and it makes Bailey look dumb too. This whole "interim chief" thing is in danger of becoming farcical.

Pros:

That said, I did like the story with Alex and Dr. Roy, the troublesome intern from last season. See, Dr. Roy was actually picking up a lot of the slack for Alex's shaky first day, handling the administrative stuff and getting Alex organized. He was basically acting like Alex's assistant. But then he left a guy with a bloody nose in the ER unattended for five hours. Turns out, the bloody nose was something a lot worse. The guy dies on the table, and Alex fires Dr. Roy. This is so twisted, because Dr. Roy does tend to push the blame off on other people, but Alex is part of the reason that this intern keeps dropping the ball... it's not entirely one person's fault. We'll also see how such a big decision to fire an intern goes over, when Bailey realizes that her pet project was ended on Alex's very first day.

I like that Jo is learning to stick up for herself, even if this whole magical cure-all plot thread is a bit silly. It's fun to see Jo doing so well in her career. And I forgot about her changing her last name to Karev! It was such a sweet and powerful moment last season when she told Alex that, and now we're seeing the slightly inconvenient practical consequences of that decision, as there are two Dr. Karevs running around the hospital. I love that Jo really wants to make that name work for her, though, and she's asserting herself in that as well as in her career.

Richard confronts some old demons in the form of a patient who appears to be an alcoholic. This man was drunk when teaching wood shop in school, and he injures two of his students. Richard tries to get the man to admit he has a problem, but the teacher stubbornly refuses to admit he had anything to drink at all. Richard eventually figures out that the man is telling the truth, and that instead he has a rare disease that is fermenting sugars inside of his body and making him drunk. It's a happy ending all around, but Richard pisses off both Link and Alex with his insistent behavior and rude dealings with the patient. I liked watching Alex assert authority over Richard. He was right to do so, and it shows that even with the more comedic mess-ups as he starts his term as interim chief, he also knows how to make hard decisions, and assert authority over his mentor.

Richard ends the episode going to the bar with a sexy-motorcycle-riding DeLuca, along with Link. The three of them seem like an unlikely group to hang out together, but I think it could actually prove to be pretty fun. I like that DeLuca has got this whole cool guy thing going on now. It's really working for him, I gotta say.

Poor Meredith is being harangued by her patient-turned-matchmaker into answering all sorts of invasive questions about her childhood. Helm is along for the ride, still with her helpless crush on Meredith. I really hope this quest for love goes somewhere, whether that be with Link or someone else. It's going to be a hard sell to see Meredith in a serious romance with anyone other than Derek. They were starting to convince me with Riggs, so I think they can do it again. I liked Meredith talking to Alex about it. Alex is such a good friend. He tells Meredith that after everything she's been through, and all the people she's lost, she's allowed to be selective about the people she lets in to her life.

I'm sure there's other stuff to talk about. Schmidt is still being flirted with by hot ortho dude, Maggie decides not to text Jackson after he left her with nothing but a message, Meredith bought clothes to do a fashion show with her kids... this whole episode was good, but something about it didn't quite mesh for me. I think it might just be my personal mood when I watched the episode, but it's also that there are several romances and story lines thus far this season that just aren't my favorites. Oh well. There's always enough going on that something is bound to pick up!

7.5/10