Okay guys, the Gods of prime-time have answered my prayers. I’ve been thinking about Grey’s Anatomy all week and how I’m recapping it and I hate it so much. I was getting bummed out because I didn’t know if I was being too hard on it, or if it was just legitimately annoying. So this week, I decided to approach this episode with hope. Hope that Lexie wouldn’t annoy me, hope that there would be no veterinary rescues, hope that there would be no more heartfelt confessions while people were dying from lack of medical treatment. I don’t know if it was hope or just Shonda Rhimes getting her act together, but tonight’s episode was really good. In fact, I’d say it was the best episode since say, halfway through last season (or whenever the episode right before the one where Izzie and George slept together was).
Meredith VO: “In life, only one thing is certain: no matter how hard you try, no matter how good your intentions, you are going to make mistakes…you are going to get hurt. If you ever want to recover, there’s only one thing you can say:”
Callie is sitting on the bed not talking to George. “I forgive you,” is all she says. George looks dumfounded. Clearly, this was not the reaction he was expecting/hoping for when he told her that he slept with Izzie. She goes on to say that they made vows and that she is not leaving the marriage. Something tells me Izzie is not going to be pleased with this turn of events. At the hospital, George tries to find Izzie to tell her what happened, but she’s not picking up her phone. He passes by Derek, who is asking Meredith if she wants to go away for the weekend. She’s still pretending that they’re not a couple, because lack of commitment gets her hot or something, so she only agrees after he’s all, “it’s not about romance, it’s about doing it for two days straight.” She says she’s in. Aaand I’m going to end this paragraph before I make an immature joke.
Izzie gives me the first indication that this episode is going to be awesome by going all Dwight Schrute on her interns: “Is that a seven? Or is that a nine? If I have to ask myself that question during the middle of an emergency? Your patient is dead. You killed him…with your handwriting. Think about that.” Beets. Bears…Battlestar Galactica.
Callie finds Izzie before George does and tells her they have to talk. In the cafeteria. High noon. What was that sound? Ah yes, that’s the starter pistol for a….Girl Fight!
Second indication that this episode is back to Season 1 and 2’s standard of awesomeness? Grandpa Gilmore/aka Norman the oldest intern in the world/aka my new favorite character. McSteamy is their resident for the day, and he tells them to go tell a hospice patient that it’s time to die now. Norman’s trying to prove he’s down with the kids as it were, by learning the nicknames. He calls Sloane McSleazy and says “seriously” all the time. This scene made me realize that one of the things that had been bugging me about the show was that it just wasn’t fun anymore. Everybody was all weepy all the time and it was just so overwrought. It’s nice when they can poke fun at themselves.
Patient roundup: A woman comes into the clinic with a crushed ankle. She was reading a book on the stairmaster and fell off. Oh my God, I feel her pain. I come so close to doing that every time I’m at the gym. I won’t even be reading. I’ll be watching Rock of Love or whatever and I’ll stop paying attention to where my feet are and I’ll do a really embarrassing half fall thing. Some dude totally busted me last time too. He could tell that I almost died because I was laughing at a stripper. What a way to go. Anyway, this woman is a lot worse off. Not only is she working out obsessively, but she’s doing it because her boyfriend said he wants to move in with her—if she gets back down to a size four. Daaaaaamn. That’s harsh. She just kind of stopped eating, so in addition to the jacked ankle, she’s malnourished—which is only cool if you get adopted by Angelina afterwards.
A high school football player comes in with a spinal injury. His dad/coach is with him and basically yelling at him to be a man and walk it off. He’s kind of got a point. Jellyfish don’t have spines at all. And they get around just fine. Derek says they have to stretch his upper body and snap his spine back into place. Gross.
The third patient is Camille, the Chief’s niece. She was in the hospital back at the end of season two, when they threw the prom for her. She comes in and her vitals are falling and she’s not breathing. Izzie sticks a tube in her neck. It turns out that she has a mass in her throat. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was 14. Things do not look good for her.
So, speaking of patients, the one Norman and Meredith told was dying? Isn’t. Norman read the room number wrong. Izzie is right! Poor penmanship kills! Or at least makes people believe they’re dying. Turns out this poor woman just came in to have moles removed. Now that’s an awkward turn of events. Even more awkward? By the time they go back to fix their mistake, she’s already left the hospital, thinking she’s dying.
Izzie and Alex talk about the impending girl fight. Alex promises to pull Callie off of her if she tells him what she did to piss her off. The look of disgust on Alex’s face when she tells him she slept with George is absolutely priceless. He says he’s embarrassed for her. Wow. The thing I love about Alex is that even when you know he’s going to say something bad, he always manages to come up with something worse than you would think. He’s pretty talented.
The chief is telling his niece that the cancer is back and has spread to chest, lungs and throat. Treatment will include surgery, more radiation, and other procedures that sound thoroughly unpleasant. She tells her family that she just wants to go home and that she doesn’t want treatment. She’s 18 and she doesn’t want to spend what little time she has left in the hospital. They all try to convince her to fight the cancer, but ultimately The Chief tells her that he can’t make her do anything, much to his wife’s dismay.
The football player is having his spine fixed while his dad is still yelling at him to man up. The kid starts freaking out, so Lexie goes to comfort him—except that she takes his hand, which could keep his spine from being fixed and paralyze him. Cristina rightly yells at her and kicks her out of the room. However, Derek just catches the tail-end of this and since his weakness for Grey women is well-documented, tells Lexie that she can assist on the surgery and kicks Cristina out of the room. During surgery, however, Lexie gets in over her head and Cristina bails her out. A three-way truce is called and the football player is fine.
Girlfight! Everybody has gathered in the cafeteria and Izzie is gearing up to kick Callie’s ass. She points out that Callie may look scary, but Izzie is hillbilly strong. After all, she learned how to fight in a trailer park. At noon, Callie strides in like she’s going to a Wild West showdown. Izzie takes off her shoes and her earrings and puts her fists up. Callie looks at her like she’s crazy and says she just wanted to talk. It dawns on Izzie that things are so much worse than she thought. Everybody’s embarrassed.
After the girl fight that wasn’t, Callie is consulting with broken-ankle girl and her boyfriend. When she tells them that the cast will have to stay on for about three months, the boyfriend is all horrified at the prospect of his girlfriend turning into a fat ass during her recovery. Callie and Bailey both try to explain to them that the bigger problem is that if she doesn’t start eating, she’ll die. Then, to underscore the point, the woman starts puking up blood and Callie gives the boyfriend a great “told you so, jackass” look. Turns out, she has a bleeding ulcer and needs immediate surgery.
Commercials. OMG. Jennifer Lopez is going to be “singing” on Dancing with the Stars! Does she honestly think she’s going to be able to keep denying her pregnancy after she’s rolling around the stage in HD? Man, that’s going to be a good episode of a show I’ll never watch.
Norman finds the woman who’s not going to die. Turns out she’s had a busy afternoon: she quit her job, dumped her loser boyfriend and booked a one way ticket to Iceland. They tell her she’s not dying and she freaks out. She gave up her apartment! Although, all ends well as not only is she going to live, but she’s going to get a big fat settlement from the hospital. The moral of the story? Get those moles removed and buy a house!
Callie goes outside and finds her patient's boyfriend having a cigarette. She gives him crap for smoking, to which he replies, “my girlfriend’s in emergency surgery; I think she’ll forgive me.” Dude, shouldn’t the fact that your girlfriend’s surgeon is outside shooting the breeze with you instead of in the OR elbow-deep in your lady’s intestines be a red flag? Apparently not, because Callie comes right out and tells him, “No. No she won’t. Because she’s dead.” Now that’s a bedside manner. He whines about how he just wanted her to be healthy, but Callie has had a bad day and she is having none of it. She freaks out on him and tells him that he just wanted her to be hot and that he didn’t love her and that she wants to kick his ass. George and Bailey literally have to pull her away from him.
Afterwards, Izzie and Callie meet up again. Izzie apologizes about the whole thing in the cafeteria and then almost as an after thought, also says that she’s sorry about the whole banging her husband thing. Callie: “Don’t you dare come to me for forgiveness you traitorous bitch.” Love. Her.
Izzie, of course, is full of self-pity. Alex comes along and finally is the one to call her out about Denny. One of my big problems with the whole George/Izzie thing is that it cheapened the entire Denny/Izzie storyline. Alex tells her that he liked her and that she told him that she wasn’t ready to be with anyone after Denny—but then she goes and sleeps with O’Malley, who is married, and also…he’s O’Malley, which grosses Alex out.
George leaves the hospital to find Callie standing in the rain. He tells her that she can’t just forgive him because what he did was unforgivable. He tells her that basically she just said that she forgave him because she couldn’t deal with it. She tells him he’s right and goes home alone.
Meredith is ready for her weekend of uninterrupted sex, but Derek wants to marry Meredith and have kids with her instead. Mood killer! He says he’ll wait until she’s ready—but not if somebody better comes along! What a great guy. That Meredith is one lucky gal. Also, Patrick Dempsey mumbled his way through this scene like he had just gotten back from dental surgery. I had to watch it four times to get a basic idea of what he said.
Meredith VO: “Forgive and forget. That’s what they say.” Lexie thanks Cristina for saving her butt during surgery. Izzie is home and crying. “When someone hurts us, we want to hurt them back.” Alex comes in and brings her tissues and tells her to keep it down. Heh. I love jackass Alex. “The most we can hope for is that one day we’ll be lucky enough to forget.”
Next week: The past comes back to haunt them. Self-amputation! Ashes! Halloween! Loving the show again!
