TV Recap: Grey's Anatomy - An Honest Mistake

Tonight’s episode seems to be about not being able to let go and harassing the Chief over it. Derek cannot let go of the patient whose aneurysm he nicked lord knows how many episodes ago, The Chief can’t let go of his plans for Bailey being the next Chief, Sloane just can’t quit Lexie, Izzie can’t let go of her own craziness, and Faye Dunaway plays a surgeon who can’t let go of surgery.

…with wacky results. Except not really.

You’d think that after at least three episodes, I could remember this lady’s name, but I can’t. The pregnant lady who ran over her husband is still around and going under for what we hope is one more surgery to repair a bleed. The surgery takes so long that Addison is about to remove the baby to save its life, but Derek finishes just in time. The lady can talk normally again and everyone’s happy…for about five minutes, until she has another complication and they have to take her in again. This time, the only solution that Derek can think of is to remove parts of the woman’s brain while her baby slowly runs out of time. Things get incredibly tense with everyone questioning Derek’s judgement (the dude looks tired and out of it, but refuses to relinquish control) and Addison wanting to at least save the baby. Derek pretty much just tells everyone to kiss his ass and stay out of the way, so Addison sends Alex to get the Chief, who makes Derek let the patient go (she has almost no brain left anyway) and Addison save the baby.

The husband, as one would expect, does not take the death of his wife, whom he was repeatedly told was undergoing routine procedures, well at all and calls Derek a murderer.

Sloane is still trying to court Lexie, but she’s not budging on the no more secrets thing. She has a funny line about Sloane hiding in her attic while she sneaks him in and out of the house and brings him food makes him Anne Frank, not her boyfriend. Sloane finally relents and goes to tell Derek about his relationship with Izzie, but right after Derek was called a murderer is probably not the best time. Derek punches Sloane and they get into a very big fight, drawing blood and almost falling off of that little walkway thing. Sloane even sprains his arm from punching Derek so hard. Nobody dies, though, and both men end the day being nursed by their respective Greys.

Bailey tries to gather recommendation letters to the board that decides who gets into the pediatrics program, but can’t seem to get the most important one – the Chief’s. When she finally does get his recommendation letter, she’s disappointed to find that it was a form letter full of noncommittal language. When she confronts him about this, he yells at her for abandoning him and his plan to make her the next him. Bailey takes no man’s shit, so she yells back at him about him not having the right to dictate her life or career. This is never really resolved since the Chief had to go break up the McRumble, but Addison writes a glowing recommendation for Bailey on her way out of town, which I suppose is just as good.

I heard the name of Faye Dunaway’s character, and I remember that it started with a “C”, but that’s really all I can remember about the name, so let’s just call her Mommy Dearest, shall we? Excellent.

So Callie, Yang, and McBadass are checking out a patient who fell down a flight of stairs shortly after an operation. Something about this confuses them all until they realize that the surgeon was Mommy Dearest, which apparently explains it all to Callie and Yang because Mommy Dearest is an old surgeon who apparently makes a lot of mistakes. Mommy Dearest overhears their exchange and verbally bitchslaps Yang as an inexperienced surgeon who knows nothing. She continuously asks McBadass questions to prove her point that new methods aren’t always the best.

As Yang is running a CT scan, she finds a rather large mistake that Mommy Dearest made during her surgery and brings it up to the Chief (told you everyone’s running to him today!). The Chief explains the error to the patient and tells him that he has the right to choose another surgeon for the surgery to repair the mistake, but the patient still wants Mommy Dearest.

During the surgery, the Chief scrubs in to observe, Yang and McBadass to assist. Mommy Dearest continues to trying to smack Yang down by quizzing her on how to perform a procedure if certain machines aren’t available. Yang admits that she hasn’t really thought about it, but the machines keep people from making the kind of mistakes that Mommy Dearest did. Mommy Dearest loses it and kicks Yang out.

Later, McBadass makes a subtle comment that the Army essentially fired him (though they called it an honorable discharge) when his time as a military trauma surgeon was over, and he’s thankful to them. Mommy Dearest takes the point and decides to no longer do surgeries, though she makes it a point to praise Yang yet warn her that she’s just like Mommy Dearest.

McBadass later makes the same point and says that he’ll probably have to pry the scalpel away from her in forty years. Yang nods and says “Out of my cold dead hands”. McBadass gives this bashful smile and says “You kinda missed the point – I want to be around in forty years.” And everyone goes “Awwwwwwwwww.”

And my teeth ache.

The woman that Sadie had to tell that she may have cancer a few episodes back comes back to tell Izzie that she had a million tests done and the only thing wrong with her is she has anemia. She suggests that Izzie find out whose lab results were mixed up with hers, because they think they only have anemia when they may have cancer. Izzie and I both remember that the lab results told her that Izzie only had anemia, so….

Izzie gives herself all kinds of exams, but can only really find a mole on her back. She has it removed and the dermatologist tries to reassure her that it’s nothing, but Izzie doesn’t seem reassured at all. She spends most of the rest of the episode berating the interns for knowing nothing and making stupid mistakes, but finally decides to use this as a learning experience. She gathers all of the interns into a lecture room, puts up her x-rays and whatnot, begins rattling off her own stats, and challenges them to figure out what’s wrong with her.