Grey's Anatomy: The Winner Takes It All (15x11)

So this whole episode was pretty much all about Catherine's dumb cancer plot thread. You may recall that I'm not a fan.

Cons:

The thing is, I don't much like Catherine as a character, and the whole time we're talking about this giant, improbable fancy tumor on her spine, I'm just thinking about all of the other characters on this show who have have interesting illnesses and injuries. I know it's a soap opera, but I just can't with this one. And the resolution that we have for the time being is very odd. Catherine didn't die, but her cancer was also not cured. She's going to have to live with it for the rest of her life. That just means that Catherine can go off and not be around in the story much, but can pop in for some dramatic moments whenever the show needs to insert more angst. It feels lazy.

I liked the scenes with Thatcher and Meredith, but I wish it had been built up a bit more within the season. Thatcher has been such a nonentity on this show for so long that I had forgotten that Meredith would have trauma related to him. Also, it's always pretty funny when this show decides to depict Meredith being a mother, because most of the time her kids aren't around. It's a little clumsy.

Pros:

It's odd, because the two big premises in this episode were pretty flawed - Catherine having cancer is dumb, and Meredith's dad suddenly being in the story again for one episode felt forced. But the performances were really excellent in both stories, and there were lots of really powerful moments to examine within the flawed structures.

So, to start with, I really liked Meredith going to talk to her father and having this sort of in-between attitude about the whole thing. Her resentments are in the past, and she's not struggling every day because of them, but she's also not going to pretend everything is dandy. She tells Thatcher that she's happy for him that he was able to build a new life again after Lexie died, and I think Meredith really means that. But she's also hurt. She learns that Thatcher really did want to try and make something of their relationship, and he tried, in his own way, to be there for her. I liked the part with Meredith telling Thatcher about her three kids. That was incredibly sweet. It was also pretty great that Meredith told Thatcher that Ellis and Richard had had a daughter together, and Thatcher was just happy that something good came out of so much pain. I think Meredith is probably pretty glad that she decided to see her father one last time.

Jackson was just breaking my heart with his reaction to everything. I loved Maggie being there for him. She was using her own experience of losing her mother in order to identify with and help Jackson through his pain, but she didn't make it all about her, for once. Great performance from Jesse Williams as Jackson broke apart. I also thought his moments with his mom at the start of the episode were a lot of fun, particularly the dancing. That's the sort of cheesiness that will get to me every time.

Koracick. Talk about a surprising character arc. He's tied with DeLuca for the "Character I'm Surprised to Find I Now Care About" award. I absolutely loved watching him and Amelia kick ass together in the operating room. I like that they admitted to each other that they weren't feeling in the zone, but they helped each other. Everything about the surgery scene, particularly the soundtrack, added to the intensity of it, and really made the surgeons seem bad-ass. I loved the moment when Amelia asks Koracick to help with something, and he's frozen for a moment, scared and unsure, and then he just locks in, puts that cocky mask back on, and gets the job done. Excellent. We then see him talking to his dead son in church: "I saved my friend today, David. I didn't think I could, and it wasn't perfect..." his line delivery here was amazing. I got goosebumps.

Amelia also got a pretty powerful moment. She tells her anonymous group about how she saved a legend, and how happy and grateful she was that she got to be sober and experience the natural high of doing her job and doing it well. Just like Koracick, she echoes that it wasn't perfect, but it was real. I loved that. I'm glad that we continue to see how important it is for Richard and Amelia both to work on their sobriety and prioritize it.

There were a lot of characters that we didn't check in on this week, as the focus really was on these two stories. We did get little bits of Teddy, though, and they're clearly warming up a Teddy/Koracick situation. I was so annoyed with Teddy last week, but here I actually kind of liked her. She was supportive of Koracick from afar, and she took a chance and asked him out for a drink, which I thought was pretty cute.

That's all for now. Next week looks like a much lighter episode, and I'm excited to get back to that silly love triangle nonsense!

8/10