Grey's Anatomy: Bridge over Troubled Water (22x18)

I want to be nice, but I can't be too nice. A lot of this stuff sucks!

Cons:

I'm not going to harp about Owen and Teddy too much here, I actually have compliments to pay them later. But I will say their big emotional reconciliation scene just felt kind of... tepid to me. The fact that they're leaving the show is the only reason I'm cool with them getting back together. I still think they are utter poison for each other and make each other worse.

Checking in with our other established relationships that I hate, I don't have a ton to say about Jo and Link other than that I think I'd be excited to explore their story lines next season if they were still just bffs who weren't supposed to be in love and married. They just don't give off that energy at all, and it makes everything about them feel so... paint by numbers. Bland.

And speaking of bland, yeesh, Nick Marsh, I'm sorry but you will never make me like you. There was this whole thing where Jules was so upset that Nick was hurt because Nick believed in her? And like, Simone made sure to tell Lucas that he was hurt and reassure him that he's okay after the surgery was a success. This feels like blatant manipulation, trying to make us all feel like Nick is a character that any of us should give a shit about. But he feels like a cardboard cutout. He feels like the outline of a human man with nothing filling it in. I'm fine knowing that off-screen, Meredith is with a solid stable dude who loves her and her kids, but every time I actually have to watch parts of their story play out, I'm bored out of my skull! I guess next season I'll have to endure Meredith and Nick getting married? Man, I wish I thought this guy was at all interesting.

Jules and Winston are boring and I feel like Jules has been reduced to just being this starry-eyed young thing with a crush, and it bums me out. I have not been sold on this. Also, I really like Wes and Simone and am therefore dreading more of the love triangle with Lucas come next season. 

And last but not least in the "I hate most of these romances" category... I really hope Toni and Amelia are still going to be a thing, that we're going to get to see that play out and have it be something long-term for Amelia. Of course there's going to be drama on the way, but I just don't want it to fall off the map like so many other prospective partners for Amelia have. This doesn't really belong in the "cons" section necessarily but I wanted to note it somewhere... it really bothers me that we have all these queer women in the show these days: Amelia, Cass, Toni, Teddy, even Helm, and they're all so femme. Like, mix it up a little bit, please, Grey's.

Pros:

For all that I have my complaints, there are aspects of many of these story lines, and a few more we haven't touched on yet, that I did like.

The big thing is, for all that Teddy and Owen don't make sense as a couple to me, and for all I've grown to hate Owen Hunt over the years, this was a good final episode for him. I appreciated the subverted expectations, that he wasn't actually that injured, and the episode was about him helping a family in distress using his field medicine expertise. I liked the way he kept the family calm, I liked his rapport with the man driving the car, and it felt good that they all made it through because of Owen. It's so cheesy when Grey's does the little montages as characters exit the show, and yet it gets me every time. I do like seeing the clips of earlier moments with Owen and Teddy both. Whatever I might think of them, I've known them for a long time so it is sort of weird to see them go off. What will I have to complain about next season? :)

Like I said above, I'm actually tentatively interested in the stuff with Jo and Link, even if I wish they were just buds instead of married. I would love to see a story about one of these surgeons actually deciding not to practice medicine anymore, and then seeing them still stay on the show and be a character. What would Jo want to do with her life, if not this? I want to find that out, I think it could be fun. And seeing Link take the pills out of that bottle at the end was so sinister and made me feel such a sense of dread. It looks like maybe we'll be doing an addiction story-line with Link next season, and even though he annoys the shit out of me a lot of the time, I used to like him quite a bit. Maybe this story will bring that back for me next season!

While I dread the Lucas/Simone/Wes love triangle, as I said, I do really like Wes. I like the way he talked about how hard his intern year is, how it feels like nothing belongs to him. I also like that Lucas apologized to Simone, just because that simply needed to happen after the way he talked to her before. What I want to happen is that Lucas decides to move between seasons so I never have to see him again, and then Simone and Wes can be together. I know I'm not getting that, but a girl can dream.

A rare surprise inclusion of Catherine Fox in the "pros" section... I do kind of like this whole story line about medical ethics and working within or around the system. We see that Catherine concedes to Bailey being in the OR for Nick, because Meredith asked for her. I was actually a tiny bit touched that Catherine rushed off to be with Meredith when she heard about Nick. They have a rocky relationship but they are family, of a sort. I also like Amelia and Meredith being supportive family to each other in this episode.

Bailey and Ben never let me down being the best relationship on the damn show. All season we've been building to this, as Bailey gets more and more discouraged by all the pulled funding etc. that doesn't let her treat patients the way she wants. I love the idea of her getting a Masters in Health so she can have a seat at the table when it comes to policy decisions. I love that Ben is immediately on board and ready to be super supportive of her growing her career and going back to school. He'd be a hypocrite not to be supportive, I suppose, after all the career changes he's made over the years.

Richard probably shouldn't be on the show anymore, frankly: I was sort of jump-scared by the younger Richard when we were doing the Owen montage, and man, this guy has been around for a lonnnnng time. But if he's going to be here, I think positioning him as a bit of an antagonist for some of the other characters maybe makes a bit of sense. It'll probably be tedious, but there might be something kind of cool about Richard and Catherine owning their villainy as a couple and being the obstacle Kwan has to push against. I am so upset that he's fired, but from what I can tell looking around online, the actor isn't leaving the show, so it looks like this is the start of a story line about Kwan fighting for his job. That, I'm very into. I loved that Teddy had Kwan's back and had him help out with stuff during the big bridge collapse disaster. Of course, all of this is nonsense in the real world sense; he and Bailey both should absolutely be fired for their shenanigans. But I like them so I'm glad for the unrealistic nonsense anyway.

That's all I've got, we've reached the end of yet another season of Grey's Anatomy! There are a few things I'm distinctly looking forward to exploring more of when we come back in the fall, and of course a few other things I'm dreading having to sit through. But at least I can take Owen and Teddy off my list of woes!

6.5/10