Grey's Anatomy: Anybody Have a Map? (15x07)

I. Am so. Annoyed.

Cons:

This episode is aggravating for about a thousand different reasons. Let's start with this one: Catherine Avery has a very aggressive and cancerous brain tumor.

Nope. No. Okay, look, I get that this show is a soap opera, and that stuff like this is bound to happen in such a story. But seriously? Another character with a crazy, unlikely, extremely rare brain tumor? I can't take the stupidness of this anymore! And Catherine is already a character I find to be occasionally annoying. Like, I want to root for her, and for everything she represents, but I always found her treatment of Richard to be worrisome, and her relationship with April always rubbed me the wrong way, and the complaints go on and on. And now we're going to have to deal with another annoying brain tumor story. I'm tired!!!

Okay. I liked some of the stuff that Richard dealt with in this episode. I liked his rage, and seeing how being without his sponsor has effected him. But the whole plot about the pregnant nurse who died felt completely unnecessary. Grey's Anatomy has a large ensemble cast, and we never spend any time at all with the nurses or any of the hospital staff other than the surgeons. This character is brand new, and they tried to shoehorn in this long history and friendship between her and Richard. It felt forced, in a big way. She's just the most witty, delightful, perfect nurse ever, and of course she and Richard are BFFs. And then she dies. Here's the thing: the end of this episode shows Richard freaking out, doing a great amount of property damage to a bar that was letting people turn in AA chips in exchange for shots. This moment is built out of his frustration and anger. His grief. And it all would have been so much more effective if it had just been about losing his sponsor, and the way he's been struggling lately. Instead, we introduce a random nurse, kill her, and make her be the emotional trigger for Richard. That's not earned. That's not effective.

Okay, now let's turn to Jackson and Maggie. They're happy and all couple-y, and then Maggie sees texts from a girl on Jackson's phone, talking about how much she misses him, with heart emojis. I was already primed to be annoyed. Jackson having an affair makes no sense, and indeed he's not. But he did find someone to talk to about God and open up to about what he's lost, and that person isn't Maggie. Turns out, he's also been talking about this stuff with April. Maggie gets pissed off, throws a fit, then begs Jackson to talk to her about it. Then Jackson does, and Maggie cries and runs off, sending a dramatic text to Meredith about the world ending.

If Jackson and Maggie were compelling to me as a couple, this plot thread wouldn't actually be all that bad. It's often interesting when you have a scenario where both people are kind of wrong, and kind of right, and you can't really pin all of the relationship problems on one person. In this case, Maggie annoys the hell out of me, but I admit that she fully has every right to be pissed off about this woman that Jackson is texting with. Not because he has a woman who he considers a friend, but because this is someone that he met when he ran off without telling Maggie, which was a dick move as it is, and clearly he's hiding her from Maggie, which is also gross and wrong. Jackson's not an idiot, and even if he never flirted with this woman, she's clearly flirting with him.

But then we get to the part where Maggie goes too far. Jackson confesses that he's been talking to April about his newfound belief in God and what this all means for him, and Maggie is mad that Jackson is talking to "other women" about his issues. April is not "other women." April is the person co-parenting a child with Jackson. April is the woman who was 100% supportive of Maggie and Jackson, and does not deserve to be put on the same level as the rando that Jackson met at a temple or whatever. That sucks, Maggie.

And then you have Jackson opening up to Maggie, even though he says the problem is that she never opens up to him. Maggie claims that being a genius and growing up isolated from people her own age meant that she didn't really learn how to be in relationships. Okay, fair enough. She has a hard time opening up. But she yells at Jackson for opening up to other people and not her. She's enraged. And then Jackson does open up. He talks to her about the complicated, messy feelings he's having. About how God was always an obstacle in his relationship with April, and he is mourning the timing. Now that he finally believes in God, and it could be something the two of them shared, they are both on different paths and won't ever be together. He loves Maggie, but he's still thinking about the life he might have had, the life he lost. That's complicated, and I'm sure it's hard for Maggie to hear, but she just basically forced him to open up about it. And what does Maggie do? She bursts into tears and leaves. I'm not saying that Maggie's feelings are wrong or illegitimate or stupid. She's allowed to feel how she feels. But if she wasn't ready to talk about complicated stuff with Jackson, then she really shouldn't be screaming at him for talking about those complicated things with other people! Hypocrite!

Bottom line: Jackson sucks for having something approaching an emotional affair with another woman, if it even went that far. Maggie sucks for policing what Jackson can talk about and with whom. Jackson sucks for accusing Maggie of not opening up, trying to blame their problems on her instead of on him, when he's the one who ran off. And Maggie sucks for telling Jackson to be honest with her, and then running off the second that he is. This whole thing is making them both look like shit. And that sucks.

Pros:

Whew. Anyway. Wow. That was a lot of ranting. I'm just so annoyed about it all. But let's talk about the good things in this episode, because they do exist.

Like I said, I liked the end of Richard's plot thread. It would have been better if his rage had boiled over because of existing stuff, not just the random death of a random woman we just met. But the moment when he turns his chips in, my heart stopped. And I knew. I knew he went there not because he wanted a drink, although I'm sure he did. He went there because he was furious. And with good reason. So now we've got the stupidity of Catherine having cancer, and we've got Richard getting himself arrested. These two are not a model for healthy marriage, let me tell you, and I'm excited to see how Meredith helps Richard with this whole situation.

Once again, I must say that Catherine having a brain tumor is STUPID. But, I must admit, I liked the material with her, Meredith, and Koracick. I kind of can't believe how interesting I find Koracick now, and I wish we could have more of him. He's blunt and he's cocky. He's almost Derek-like, only even more extreme. I like that attitude. I like that he uses his bluntness not to put people down, but to lift them up. When he says something, you believe it, because he's not the kind of guy who would lie to make you feel better. I like that a lot. And if it weren't for the stupidity of yet another character having a rare cancer, I would be really compelled by this story, especially for what it offers to Koracick, a hard-ass with a secret heart of gold. The friendship between Koracick and Catherine could be really fun to explore. Again, if not for the inherent STUPIDITY of the scenario.

Do you think I used the word "stupid" enough? Anyway. This review is over. I'm annoyed.

5/10