Grey's Anatomy: Helplessly Hoping (17x07)

What the heck did I just watch with my own two eyeballs? What the ever living fuck? Spoilers ahead, ye be warned.

Cons:

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and compare Grey's Anatomy to The Walking Dead real quick. Both are long-running shows with a large ensemble cast, and the cast grows, people leave, new characters are added, and we're meant to feel emotional attachments to new characters as well as to those few originals who are still sticking around. Oh, and main characters die on a semi-regular basis, for the drama of all of it.

Now, the thing is, Grey's is actually better than The Walking Dead at getting me to give a crap about new characters as they get folded into the show. So many of my favorites today weren't originally part of the show. Jo is a good example of this. Callie wasn't an original character, neither was Arizona, and I loved them. Link is a more recent fave. The list goes on. You know one character I particularly loved?

Andrew DeLuca.

And it was a bumpy start, with him. I thought he was boring as sin at first, but gradually he became one of my favorites. The problem with a show like Grey's is that eventually, you might start hemorrhaging all the characters left on it that the audience gives a damn about. This happened to me long ago with The Walking Dead, and over the past couple of seasons of Grey's, I've started to worry about the same thing happening here. Losing Alex Karev last season was such a blow, especially because of the terrible way they went about it. And now, DeLuca? Are you serious? And killing him off? He was one of the only reasons I was excited to follow the show week to week, and one of my tethers to it has just been snapped clean.

And let's talk about the specifics, here. Andrew DeLuca, man struggling with mental illness. Man who starts to learn to manage it, to find happiness and balance in his life. He manages to catch the big bad child trafficker, but dies nobly in the attempt, thus making his death... what, worth it? Heroic? I hate this narrative on TV, especially for young men, especially for young men with mental illnesses. Jesus, this felt particularly tone deaf to me, in a way Grey's usually isn't. Or at least, not on this issue.

To turn to some other aspects, I will say it's super annoying that they want me to watch Station 19. I'm not gonna watch it. It's annoying that Carina is obviously getting all her stories over on that show now, when I like her so much and want more time with her. Although now it's just going to be her grieving her brother after also having lost both her parents young in life so... yay, I'm sure that'll be fun.

In terms of the other subplots, I'm a Tom Koracick stan. I know he's a dick but I just can't help myself. That being said, I thought his whole "I need you to tell me you never loved me" thing with Teddy was a little too high octane drama. It didn't match Tom's whole sardonic personality. Also, Teddy sucks, I don't feel any sympathetic connection to her struggle over how she totally loved both Tom and Owen at the same time. Like, girl, you need to get over yourself.

Pros:

I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I'm liking the whole subplot with Link and Amelia at home with Scout and also Meredith's three kids. They're obviously having a hard time, but we're not devolving into more Amelia-drama. She's upset, and dealing with so much stress, and she's also... handling it. Her conversation with Zola was actually really heartwarming.

I also liked Link, Jackson, and Maggie's new beau (sorry dude, I'll learn your name soon I'm sure), having beers before noon and talking out their stress. I especially liked Link admitting that he's thinking about how his life will be ruined if Meredith dies. The other two reassure him that there can be lots of different reasons to want someone to live, and some of those reasons can be selfish. Link is a good man, and he's doing everything he can, and he's nearing his breaking point. It's okay to be selfish. I think like that too. Like, if I lost someone I rely on or love very much, I'd worry about how it would affect me and my day-to-day. I don't think that makes me a monster, that's just a normal way of framing things inside your own mind.

Not entirely sure what the heck is up with Levi and Nico right now, but I like that Levi is falling apart and Nico is there for him. I hope that we get some time to sort out whatever their relationship is... I really want it to be my theory, where Nico realizes he's in love with Levi, while Levi is having his glow-up and moving on. Nico deserves to suffer a bit of anticipation, at least, before he gets what he wants. Especially after the way he treated Levi.

I find DeLuca's death to be a uniformly bad choice in terms of scriptwriting, but I can still praise the performances. I liked the beach scenes with Meredith and Andrew. There was something very full-circle about that. It's absolutely bananas bonkers that Meredith is losing another love interest, even though she and Andrew haven't really been together for quite a while... but if we set that aside, they had this really interesting connection, this affinity for each other that was romantic, but was also a lot of other things. It meant something, that we got to see them have that final connection before Andrew died. Also, they really managed to highlight the tragedy with that little sandcastle moment. This isn't someone going peacefully into that good night. Andrew had a lot of shit he still wanted to do. He's not actually okay with dying, even if he is happy to see his mom in the afterlife or whatever. It's bleak, and I appreciate that if they're making this dumb choice, at least they're acknowledging the inherent bleakness.

And just to pile on the tragedy, Jo's patient, the new mother who had to be separated from her premature daughter Luna, dies. Honestly I appreciate that Grey's does this kind of thing sometimes. They let the patients survive often enough that you always have hope, and then when it doesn't happen... oof. I was more angry about Andrew's death, but I was a more choked up about Jo's patient, to be perfectly honest. We also saw Hayes and Jo have a little subplot of connection over grief and loss, which I appreciated.

Okay, I'll stop there. This episode is overshadowed by Andrew's death, and I really hated that aspect of the episode. There are other things going on that could prove interesting moving forward, but goddamn, I am not okay about this at all.

6.5/10