TV Recap: Grey's Anatomy - Life During Wartime

This.... is an episode of freaking out. Callie and Erica freak out because Erica is the biggest gay to ever gay in gaytown. Yang freaks out because McBadass is back. Bailey and The Chief aren't necessarily freaking out, but the Chief wants to groom Bailey to be his successor and she'll start by curing a girl with an inoperable tumor, so she probably should be freaking out. McBadass is shanking pigs so that he can train everyone in trauma surgery, so he's kind of a walking freak-out at this point. Izzie freaks out because Alex is still an ass and McBadass likes to train on animals. Lexie is still freaking out that George is oblivious and George is too oblivious to freak out that Lexie isn't talking to him.

Ok, repeat readers know by now that I'm a bit bored with the whole Callie/Erica storyline by now, so let's just get that out of the way. After an apparently mind-blowing night of sex, Erica breaks down in happy tears. She likens her experience with Callie to finally getting glasses as a kid, thinking there was nothing wrong until she got glasses and realized that all those green splotches on trees were leaves. After years of sleeping with men and thinking that the experience was fine, her amazing sex with Callie has made her see what she's missing and she now realizes that she's so definitely, incredibly gay. Callie - and, admittedly, I - spent the length of Erica's speech staring at her uncomfortably and slightly freaked out. Callie finally just says that she has to go and runs out of Erica's apartment. Erica, obviously feeling very vulnerable right now, breaks down in sad tears and spends the rest of the day being even more bitchy than normal.

Callie hooks up with Sloane for a booty call and is disappointed to realize that, while sex with Erica was awesome, it was also awesome with Sloane. After she explains the crux of the problem to Sloane, he points out that there's not really anything wrong with Callie liking boys AND girls, but the one important difference between him and Erica is that Sloane knows that Callie slept with Erica this morning, but Erica doesn't know that Callie's slept with Sloane. This makes Callie a cheater and, while Sloan is totally okay with that, Callie needs to ask herself whether or not she's okay with that.

Callie apparently decides that she's not okay with it and goes to fess up to Erica. Callie tells Erica that she didn't see leaves and may never see leaves (and then goes on to horribly mangle the metaphor), but she wants to be with Erica and that means that she has to start by telling her the truth. Erica is surprisingly okay with it all, so they're apparently finally a couple. All I asked was for this storyline to start going somewhere and it finally has, with the added benefit of actually showing a sensitive human side to Sloane, so I'm very happy tonight.

Yang and Meredith are walking down the halls of Seattle Grace talking about something totally inconsequential when they round a corner and see the Chief introducing Derek and Sloane to the new head of trauma - McBadass! Yang freaks out because she - for some reason - doesn't want him to see her. When those residents and interns not on Bailey's surgery team - again, more on that later - are assigned to a trauma workshop taught my McBadass, Yang tries to hide behind everyone else until he singles her out and asks her name. Yang is incredulous, but tells him her name, but he shows no recognition through most of the show.

The trauma workshop consists of McBadass whipping out a pocketknife, stabbing four sedated pigs, and telling the doctors to save them by whatever means necessary. Izzie's freaked out by what she feels is the unnecessary torture of animals and walks out. The rest of the doctors get to work on the pigs until a set of traumas come into the ER and everyone but Yang and her interns go to work on the incoming patients.

In the ER, McBadass continuously rags on Izzie about her aversion to animal testing and Izzie comes right back at him, citing cases of "flipper babies" resulting from drugs tested on guinea pigs, which have different physiologies from humans. They go back and forth, citing benefits and drawbacks to animal testing until Izzie finally shuts him down by saying that he is free to do what he wishes, but she just doesn't believe in it and thinks it's cruel.

Alex seemingly takes to McBadass's lessons the best, showing a real aptitude for the quick and dirty work of trauma surgery when he superglues a man's headwound to stop the bleeding. It looks like Alex may have finally found his mentor and niche.

Derek and Sloan are less taken with McBadass, annoyed that he through them out of the ER when they came to help and by Alex's superglue method, pointing out that, if Derek hadn't been able to restore the blood supply, the man would have been scarred for life. Surprisingly, McBadass is receptive to their concerns, admitting that Seattle Grace isn't the battlefield and he may need to adjust his approach. He asks them to tell him what they think he could have done better medically and promises to hear them out.

Yang and her interns get attached to the pigs while trying to save their lives and name each of them. When they finally stabilize all of the pigs, McBadass congratulates them on a job well done and then tells them to euthanize all of the pigs. Yang shows some rare emotion and confronts him in the hall to tell him that it's unfair to make them spend all day saving the pigs just to kill them, not to mention cruel to the pigs to put them through it all. McBadass points out everything that Yang has learned because of the procedures they performed on the pigs and that the pigs would take months to fully recover - it would be cruel to make the pigs suffer through that.

Yang sees his point, but still can't believe that he didn't remember her name. He tells her the story of what's happened since the last time we saw him - his entire squadron was killed, he was the only survivor, and was discharged - and says that he tries to only live in the time after that, he doesn't like to remember what happened before. A lame - or poorly conceived - excuse, if you ask me, but evs. Cristina likes 'em damaged.

Which brings us to Bailey's surgery team. Chief takes Bailey onto the roof and tells her - in brief - that he considers her his right hand and that he imagines she'll be the next Chief, especially after last week's domino surgery. He tells her that if she's going to be him, she needs to start sooner than later. Thus, from now on, she doesn't need to ask the Chief for permission to do things. She has the authority to make her own decisions and to take lead on any surgeries as she sees fit. Bailey's all about it, but wonders why they needed to come on the roof for that. Cue the helicopter with the little girl who has inoperable cancer. Bailey's first/next challenge will be to find a way to cure her, with her own handpicked team. Obviously, Chief is on the team. Bailey begins to speak to the residents, each of whom does something to disqualify themselves, except for Meredith who is in because of her weird doll with removable organs - it's very disturbing.

The family of the girl has heard of Erica and demands that she be on the surgery team or they're walking out. When Erica sees the x-rays, she doesn't see the point of trying to operate on a tumor that threatens the blood supplies to all the major organs and tries to bail out. Bailey insists she be on the team, so Erica just spends the majority of the days being a naysaying bitch.

I don't really understand how it's supposed to work, but the team develops a plan to remove all of the major organs, putting them on ice, removing the tumor and splicing artificial arteries to replace the ones damaged from the tumor removal. Erica continues complaining about why nothing will work until Bailey snaps on her and the Chief - inspired by the girl's father's insistence on doing whatever he can to take care of his daughter - insists they all start working together instead of letting their egos get in the way. They finally snap out of it, begin actually communicating, and develop some last-minute improvisations to save the girl's life. Everyone learns a valuable lesson about teamwork and not letting their egos get in the way of their work, yay.

Backing up a bit, Izzie and Alex wake up together and Alex asks her if they're sleeping with other people or he should cancel his date with some random chick. Izzie gets all indignant and calls him an ass. Honestly, I have to agree with her at the moment. Later, in the hospital locker room, Alex doesn't understand why she's so upset when he just wants to know if they're all in or not. Izzie asks him how she can be all in when he's such a barbarian. He just shrugs his shoulders and says he'll go hook up with the EKG tech. Later, that night, Alex comes into Izzie's room to demand some answers. She initially starts to blow him off as a dick, but finally realizes that he actually wants to be exclusive and just doesn't know how to expose himself emotionally to ask. They have a cute moment, agree to go steady, and start making out.

Meredith finally confronts the Chief about his inability to look at her. The Chief tells her that she's imagining things and snaps at her that she needs to worry less about him looking at her and more about the girl they're about to operate. Later, he calls her into his office and, hearkening back to the first issue when the Chief blames the lowering of standards in the hospital on Meredith's presence - admits that Meredith wasn't imagining things. Meredith's presence reminds him of cheating with her mother and all of the other mistakes in his life. In his words, Meredith is a walking reminder of every failure in his life, thought that's not her fault. In a weird pseudo-apology, he tells Meredith that if he thought the word "sorry" would mean anything to her coming from him, he'd say it a million times a day.

I do believe this was my favorite episode this season. All of the storylines and subplots seem to actually be moving forward and all of the characters had some sort of growth. Tonight had both good storytelling and a great story.

I declare myself pleased.