This week’s episode is one of those classic Grey’s episodes that’s all about the carnage—there’s not a single sex scene or overly dramatic “pick me, choose me, love me”-type monologue to be found. It’s all about the blood.
Mer Vo: We go into medicine because we want to save lives. We go into medicine because we want to do good. We go into medicine for the rush, for the high, for the ride.
Cristina is dancing like a crazy person in Meredith’s room. Mer whines about how she’s sleeping with a man who’s dating other people. While I admit that that’s a crappy situation to be in, I kind of don’t care because she brought it on herself over and over again. Cristina doesn’t want to hear it either, so she just tells Meredith to dance. God, I do not want to watch these two burn calories. When the writers come back, can we do a scene where Meredith just eats nachos? Please?
It looked like George and Izzie had come to some sort of resolution last week about the state of their relationship, but that is apparently not the case, as George is sleeping on the floor and Izzie is grumbling about how she’s sick of Meredith and Cristina’s love affair with each other. She’s jealous because she and George aren’t as happy as they are. George asks if she wants to dance and she just stalks off to the hospital.
Bailey at home! We’ve never seen her there before. She’s having an argument with her husband about how she’s never home and he is pissed. The kid who’s playing her baby is adorable, but I would have though that he would be a lot older by now. Little George only looks like he’s about six months old. Although, I really know nothing about babies, so he could be like, in kindergarten for all I know. Tucker wants to talk about their problems, so Bailey tells him to come down to the hospital and meet her for lunch. Uh-oh. I’m pretty sure that means he’s going to die.
There’s a good amount of lovin’ going on at the hospital. Meredith and Derek presumably have sex in the on-call room, after which she tries to tell him that she doesn’t want him to see other people, but she wusses out. For his part, Derek immediately goes and hits on Rose, the nurse from last week. He puts his floppy-haired charm on her throughout the episode and it definitely seems to be working.
Lexie is trying to be mad at Alex, but he’s having none of it. She says she’s not speaking to him, so he just makes out with her. Sounds like a good strategy to me.
Patient Roundup:
As this is an episode devoted to carnage, there are a lot of patients. It kicks off with Seth Green. He had a tumor, which Sloan removed, but the surgery left his carotid artery vulnerable, so it could burst at any minute. Out in the ambulance bay, a man comes in with a chest infection two weeks after having heart surgery. They’re about to wheel him inside when another ambulance comes out of nowhere and crashes into the one that the patient just came out of. It’s a nasty crash and the guy gets shrapnel stuck in his leg.
The two paramedics who were in the ambulance that got hit are now trapped upside down inside. The other ambulance crashed because the driver had a seizure. Her partner Shane has internal injuries. Bailey starts to treat him, but he wants nothing to do with her. He asks for a guy doctor. Bailey eventually gets the chief to come and take a look at him, but Shane doesn’t want him either. It takes both Bailey and me a minute to figure out that this guy just doesn’t like black people. The chief tells Bailey to go find another doctor, so Bailey grabs Cristina off of Hahn’s surgery. Cristina is pissed, but Bailey explains that she needs to treat Shane because she’s not black, but she’s not white, either. Shane, predictably doesn’t care for this turn of events, but eventually lets Cristina examine him. She unbuttons his shirt to reveal a giant, Edward-Norton-in-American-History-X swastika tattoo on his stomach. Cristina may be neither black nor white, but she is Jewish and does not appreciate his body “art.”
Back at the overturned ambulance, Stan can’t feel his legs. He’s worried that they’re broken, but what’s actually happened is that he’s been cut in half internally. As soon as he moves, he’s going to die. It’s just like that episode of Homicide where Vincent D’Onofrio gets pushed onto the subway tracks. Stan’s wife conveniently works in the hospital, so she comes out to say her goodbyes. Everybody is standing around watching her, which strikes me as kind of creepy. Meredith, of course, finds a way to make the situation about her. She cries to the Chief about how she’s the one who handed the wife the worst day of her life, so in her story, that’s who she is and that’s who she’ll always be. Okay. Now, I’ve never lost my husband, but I’m pretty sure that in that situation, you’re not going to be all, “and the worst part was, this rexy-looking doctor with stringy hair gave me the news!” What I’m trying to say is, I don’t think you’re going to be in her story at all, Mer. Get over yourself. Before he dies, Stan helpfully points out the oxygen regulator imbedded in his partner’s back, so they’re able to get him out of the ambulance without killing him.
Back in Seth Green’s room, he’s taken a shine to our little Lexie. He tells her about how he just broke up with his girlfriend and she says that she’s kind of seeing someone who seems like a jerk, but is actually a nice guy. Seth Green is slightly disappointed, but undeterred. His perseverance looks like it may pay off, because guess who’s back? Ava! She asks Alex out for coffee, but he has surgery. She gets him to sneak her into the gallery so she can watch him in action.
Surgery:
Mary, the ambulance driver who had the seizure, has a brain tumor that caused it. Derek starts surgery, but the navigational computer goes out while he’s in her brain, so he can’t see what he’s doing. If he doesn’t keep his hands right where they are, she’ll probably die.
Hahn’s patient needs his sternum removed, so she asks Sloan to scrub in and help with reconstruction. He’s still smitten with her and asks her out on a date. She flatly refuses and eschews any other personal conversation. Lexie, of course, sits next to Ava in the gallery and immediately finds out about her relationship with Alex.
Shane refuses to sign the release form for surgery unless there’s a white doctor in the OR to keep an eye on Bailey and Cristina to make sure they don’t murder him. Cristina doesn’t want to do the surgery at all, as her stepfather’s parents died in Auschwitz. Bailey tells her that they’re going to rise above and perform the surgery. Bailey calls on Jesus and then slices that tattoo right in half, while telling everybody that no one is ever allowed to call her “The NAZI” again.
Meanwhile, her husband is miraculously not dead and is calling her for their lunch date. Lexie storms into Seth Green’s room, all sad because Alex turned out to be totally what she said he was—minus the “nice guy” part. They’re both flirting with each other and the whole scene is creepily reminiscent of Denny and Izzie, when his artery explodes! I yelped a little bit, you guys. It scared me.
In Two Weeks: Part 2: Who will live and who will die?
Happy Thanksgiving! Feel free to return to your turkey comas.
