Grey's Anatomy: My Shot (16x08)

Oh, Grey's Anatomy. You wouldn't be you if you didn't have manufactured coincidences popping up around every corner. I loved this episode, for the most part! Let's take a look.

Cons:

So, the thing about doing a medical drama/soap opera is that a lot of really unrealistic stuff has to happen in order to keep the drama quotient up. The characters in this show have been through more trauma than is remotely realistic for any group of people, and over the sixteen seasons of this show, every single character has done stuff that's super illegal and messed up and bad. When you have an episode like this, where Meredith's past gets dredged up, you're forced to realize how completely improbable it is that Meredith would still be allowed to practice medicine in the first place. Or frankly, how Richard and Alex would be allowed to continue, what with committing assault, breaking the law, the list goes on. And that's fine, it doesn't matter most of the time on this show. But when a spotlight is shone on all of the things that have happened over the years, it starts to feel a bit more shark-jumpy than I'm comfortable with.

Also, I can take some cheesiness, but all the patients rushing in to testify for Meredith, and the letter from Cristina, and letters from Addison, Callie, Arizona, April... come on. That's a little much, don't you think? I wanted this to be more grounded in reality. Meredith probably should be taken to task for a lot of what she's done. There could have been a better balance there, with some of her bad behavior actually being condemned. I think they tried to do that with Bailey, but for me it didn't quite stick the landing.

Also Jackson and Maggie - ugh. Please stoppppp. Maggie is really upset after killing her cousin, and Jackson is there to comfort her. I didn't strictly hate this at first, and thought maybe they were going for an easing of the tension, like the two of them could be friendly with each other and stop resenting one another so much. And then Jackson leans in for a kiss, stops himself, and Maggie kicks him out. She tells Meredith: "I hate someone I used to love... I don't want to see or speak to him ever again." That line, about hating someone she used to love, is actually really powerful, and if Jackson and Maggie weren't such a stupid train-wreck, I might really have liked it. But - but why? Why does she hate him? What did he do that was so awful? They had a somewhat crappy relationship and Maggie felt like Jackson didn't respect her, and it fell apart. But Maggie's anger feels misplaced, somehow. I was so happy last week to have a story that was about Maggie that didn't annoy me, since she's become so irritating over the years. And now here, it has to be about Jackson again, doesn't it? Those two were the worst things to ever happen to each other on this show.

Pros:

In perhaps a direct contradiction to what I said above, it was a bit fun to look back over the years and remember all the crazy crap that Meredith has done. Obviously a lot of the context has been stripped away, but the fact remains, she's done a lot of messed up stuff! This episode brings up ancient (yet legendary) history like the LVAD wire, stuff like the Alzheimer's trial, a patient Meredith had on her first day as a doctor, and more recent stuff like Alex assaulting Andrew, and Schmitt being the one to turn Meredith in to Bailey. I'm a sucker for longevity. I like sinking in to a story for a long, long time, and it's cool to do an episode like this where you can actually pull footage from back when George W. Bush was still POTUS and examine a character's life through so many years.

Koracick has a brief role in this episode, and we can mark this as a good appearance for him. They trashed his character early in the season in an attempt to get us on board with Owen/Teddy, but they seem to be softening that approach and rehabilitating him a bit here. He's still a cocky bastard a lot of the time, but when Amelia tells him she needs his help, he immediately agrees, and does everything he can to help the patient. I really love him and hope he gets the happiness he deserves.

And Amelia and Link also have a brief moment, where we see their relationship continue to develop and strengthen. Amelia is worried she might kill the doctor who killed Derek, which is why she lets Koracick do it. That's a sign of maturity and strength from Amelia, her ability to step away and let someone else perform the surgery. And when that man dies on the table, she can be confident that she wasn't to blame. Link comforts her through the confusion of the situation, and it's just another brick in the foundation of trust they are building between them.

I like the DeLuca/Meredith drama, actually. There's this moment when Meredith yells at the doctor who killed Derek, calling Derek "the love of her life," and I immediately thought... oh no. Are we going to do the whole drama thing where DeLuca decides he can't compete with Derek's memory or whatever? But instead, they go for something slightly different. Basically, DeLuca knows he's never going to replace Derek. But he wanted to work towards something, to be Meredith's partner in a real way. He's realizing now that he doesn't have Meredith's respect, that she doesn't view him as an equal, and he worries she never will. He basically breaks up with her, but frames it as giving her a chance to think things over. I like Andrew a lot. I like Andrew and Meredith together, I think it's genuinely interesting. It's not as intense as Meredith and Derek, but the show has done a smart thing by not trying to make it like that. I'm on board for whatever comes next for them, as I think a break-up plot thread with these two might actually be interesting, whether or not they end up together in the end.

The Bailey/Richard dynamic as explored in this episode was really intriguing to me. I was complaining a few weeks ago about Bailey's over-sized reaction to what Meredith did, but here we get more of an explanation. Not only does she feel betrayed by someone that she raised to be a doctor, but she feels betrayed by Richard as well, and feels jealous of the way he will bend the rules for Meredith. We even find out that Meredith didn't originally match with the hospital, and that Richard made a call to make it happen all those years ago. That's such an interesting "sliding doors" moment!  Richard then flips the narrative on Bailey, however, saying that Meredith is family and he'd trust her to back him up the same way he backed her up. He says he feels the same way about Bailey, or he did, before Bailey turned her back on them for their actions.

It's not even necessarily a cruel moment from Richard - he's saying it because he knows now what Bailey is feeling, and he knows how to get underneath that feeling, to an even bigger truth. And it works - Bailey goes back in to the hearing and says that while Meredith Grey is a pain in the ass and deserved consequences for her actions, she's also a fine surgeon and doesn't deserve to lose her medical license. Who knows whether or not that was the tipping point, but at the end of the day, Meredith wins and she's still a doctor!

It was interesting to bring in the doctor whose negligence resulted in Derek's death. Frankly, I vacillated about which section of this review to put my discussion of this in, because I can't quite decide how to feel about it. The whole point here is that Meredith is unconventional, but ultimately very good at her job. She saves lives. It's interesting to contrast that with this man who hasn't broken any rules, but who killed someone. He's not only allowed to remain a doctor, he's allowed to vote on Meredith's fitness to remain a doctor. This is so manifestly unfair that it's clear to the viewer that Meredith is in the right. But this man's presence, and then later the influx of testimonials from patients and fellow doctors, overshadows Meredith's crime. It's interesting in that I wonder if there will be lasting consequences - will she be under heavier scrutiny when it comes to pro bono cases, or will this be the one thing the finally tarnishes her reputation? I'm excited to find out.

Schmitt has the setup for a future plot thread here, as he confesses to being the one to turn Meredith in, unwittingly. As his fellow interns find out, he watches as they lose respect for him, especially Helm. This could be so cool. As I said, it's not as if Meredith doesn't deserve some sort of consequence for her bad behavior. And what was Schmitt supposed to do, just trust on blind faith that this wasn't a mistake, that Meredith had done it on purpose? Was he supposed to put his career on the line for her? That's an unreasonable expectation, and I hope he stands up for himself, with the support of his boyfriend. It's time to start giving some of these characters more screen-time.

That's it! Another long review, for a pretty solid episode. I think next week is the mid-season finale!

8/10