Grey's Anatomy: When I Get to the Border (19x05)

Well then, I guess we know why Meredith won't be around much for the rest of the season!

Cons:

This episode was odd, it felt like an outlier that arrested the progress of certain key arcs. This was the first episode all season where I felt kind of "meh" about the new interns, and that's because we spent all our time focusing on Lucas Adams, and how his co-workers think he and Amelia are sleeping together. I thought that a was funny and potentially dramatic little wrench to put into the works when it first happened, the classic lie that grows out of control. But now we've got this whole thing where it's tied up in Lucas being a disappointment to his family and trying to stake out his own identity... and I'm just kind of bored with it all. What's going to happen when the others learn that he's Amelia's nephew? Well, nothing much, probably. They'll all judge and/or shun him for being a legacy kid, instead of for sleeping with an attending. Who cares.

Catherine Fox has never been a favorite of mine. When I saw that Jackson and Tom Koracick (my beloved fave) were going to be in this episode, I got really excited. But Tom's entire purpose was to talk to Catherine about her cancer, which has come back and is probably going to kill her this time around. I don't dislike Catherine to the point of wishing for her death, but god am I sick of the back and forth on this. She's had cancer for years now, we're constantly waiting to see if this is when she'll finally succumb to it. Can we not give Richard a break? He's lost every woman he's ever loved to sickness. I'm getting tired of this.

Also, I rather like the Zola and Meredith stuff, I don't actually have a problem with it in concept, but I do find it odd that the entirety of last season was this big will-she-won't-she game for Meredith about whether or not she'd move away from Seattle. And then the answer was "no". And now the answer is "yes", but for an entirely new reason that was just sprung on us a couple episodes ago. I don't know, it just feels weird from a pacing point of view. At the same time, I'm grateful I didn't have to hang out with Mr. Boring Nick this week, so whatever.

Pros:

Despite being sort of annoyed about Catherine, I was still really delighted to see my guy Tom Koracick. I don't know why I love him so much, I think he's just so... different from any other character they've ever had on the show, in this undefinable way. I find the performance to be charismatic and complex, I think he's funny, and I think he and Teddy would have been a way better relationship than anything she's ever had with Owen. (As a bonus "pro" of this episode, there were no Teddy and Owen scenes to suffer through. Huzzah!)

I liked seeing Zola light up with interest and joy at being exposed to a more gifted student environment. But I also liked how she was worried that it wouldn't be a cure-all to their problems. What if they move to Boston, and Zola keeps having panic attacks? Meredith is a good mom, telling her that she's extraordinary no matter what, and that she doesn't have to worry about all the what ifs. She wants to move here and go to this school, and Meredith is going to make that happen for her kid. We're really hammering it home that Meredith is being the mother for her own children that she never got to have with Ellis.

In conversations with Jackson, we also give Meredith another super compelling reason to move, and that's Jackson's research money that might lead to some innovative new opportunities in hunting for a  Alzheimer's cure. I really like this for her character, it seems like an appropriate way of sending her off for a time, kind of like how they wrote off Cristina to explore future scientific advancements overseas. If we can't have Meredith around, this feels like an okay way to lose her for a while. I like that as a direct counterpoint to the way her mother behaved, we see Meredith moving heaven and earth to be there for her daughter and make sure Zola is being cared for. But her identity as a doctor isn't erased either.

The other big plot thread of this episode was extremely heavy, and also heavy-handed, but I think it still worked beautifully. We see Addison and Bailey volunteering to help at a reproductive health clinic. They are tasked with picking someone up from across the border into Idaho where the rules are a little more questionable, to assist with terminating an ectopic pregnancy. On the way back, the woman begins bleeding profusely, the ambulance is stuck because of a traffic jam and does not arrive, and the pregnant mother of a young girl, who was hoping for another child, dies tragically. All because her OBGYN wouldn't treat her, for fear of breaking the law by ending a pregnancy.

Obviously this episode is preaching to the choir in terms of how I already feel about abortion and reproductive health care in general, but I do think it's important to show this kind of story, to acknowledge the full horror of what's happening in our country right now. They show Bailey and Addison as incredibly compassionate, skilled medical professionals who are always excited and eager to help people through their wanted pregnancies, but who also have no qualms about the moral rightness of a person's right to make their own decisions. It's simple, or at least it really ought to be. And it was brutal, watching this woman talk about all the things in her daughter's life that she didn't want to miss, listing out the fullness of experience that she will now miss getting to see. It was an abject tragedy, and I really felt the weight of it.

So that's all for now: next week we're already at the mid-season finale of Grey's, apparently. That came really quickly! I hope we get to check in with Schmitt, I missed him this week. I hope we do not get to check in with Teddy and Owen, unless we get an update on Leo. Where are the kids, anyway?

8/10