Grey's Anatomy: Living in a House Divided (18x10)

I feel so much unreasonable anger over being forced to watch parts of this show I don't care about lol. This is a me problem.

Cons:

Meredith's boyfriend Nick... okay I caved and payed attention to his name finally... he's just So Boring. They're really playing this up as this romance that we're supposed to feel connected to/happy with... we see him meeting Amelia and Maggie for the first time, and they're all interested in Meredith's new relationship, and Nick is confessing deep feeling for Meredith and wanting them to stay with each other more. And the whole time I'm just yawning at the screen. Especially aggravating because we saw Hayes for like two seconds this episode, and his moment where he talks about how much Meredith meant to him in handling his grief over his wife was more electric and powerful than anything Nick has ever provided. Sorry, dude, but you're boring.

I guess having relationship drama with Teddy and Owen that's about medical stuff is more interesting than the usual roundabout they're always on, but since I still dislike both of these characters quite a lot, I'm not really enthused about having to follow this plot thread. Teddy spends the episode desperately trying to figure out what Owen is up to, what he confessed to Hayes in the car. She talks to Owen, to Hayes, to Megan about it, and finally sees one of Owen's patients' wives in the room with him, and follows her out to Owen's car to confront her about what she's just taken from there. So now we're at the point of no return, Teddy about to discover what's happening... and again, I'm just not at all here for it. Boring and annoying all at once.

Link and Jo are gross. So they have sex, and Jo has feelings, and we waste a rare Carina DeLuca sighting on this show, having her give Jo relationship advice that she needs to tell the guy her feelings, or stop sleeping with him... yeah, thanks, never would have figured that one out... Jo decides to cut things off with Link before she can get hurt, and Link seems totally cool with that because he doesn't have feelings for her. I'm just annoyed with them, the whole concept is irritating to me, I wish it wasn't happening. What else can I say.

Pros:

I've got to say, I'm here for the Levi angst, the Webber Method drama... all of this stuff has been a highlight for me in these first few episodes back from hiatus. I love the complexity of the question at hand. So many different people with opinions that I can understand. Richard's defensiveness makes sense. Bailey's confusion and ambivalence makes sense. Maggie's anger and grief makes sense. Schmitt completely having a breakdown makes sense. Helm feeling a lot of guilt also makes sense. We're really seeing how this tragedy is creating ripple effects throughout the whole cast of characters.

I like that Catherine is defensive of backing Richard up, but then later tells Bailey that it's up to her to shut down the program if she wants to. And Bailey telling Richard she wants to end the Webber Method, and Richard agreeing to that because he's worked through his feelings on the subject already with his pseudo-daughters, was quite lovely. He admits that he used Catherine to get what he wanted, going over Bailey's head, and that he shouldn't have done that.

I like that Maggie and Meredith were both briefly the object of Richard's ire as he's resentful of them for not having been around a lot recently, and not backing him up in his moment of distress. But they have a good talk with him and work things out quickly, which I also appreciate.

Helm and Bailey's conversation was another highlight for me. I like Helm, she doesn't get a lot of time on the show but she has little moments that make her shine.

And then of course there's Levi, who shows up to the M&M conference but rushes out very quickly. We see him later at his mother's place, as Nico comes to look for him and is promptly dumped and sent away. Like I said, I'm kind of loving the angst here, because I think it's a good opportunity to see these characters grow from the ashes.

We also had a shining moment for another of the new docs: Zander, who gets to chastise Link for dismissing a patient's pain due to her weight. I like how Bailey took down Link's protestations efficiently without going on a big rant about it, just explained to him succinctly why BMI was a bad system for making predictive suggestions in health care. And Zander got to shine especially when he said "fat people already know they're fat". That rang so true to me. I've been told I need to exercise more by physicians who haven't even asked me how much I am exercising. They look at me and make their judgments, and it sucks!

And since I'm so anti Link and Jo, and anti Teddy and Owen in general, that's about all I've got to say for this episode. I want the characters I like to be safe and happy eventually, and I want to not have to watch Link and Jo kiss ever again thanks so much.

7/10