I’m a huge fan of ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ The show has good writing and good character development. That said, I’m just going to come out and say it: I was kind of disappointed by tonight’s episode. My biggest problem was that I felt Meredith’s whole afterlife experience was a bit too drawn out. That’s not to say that it was an entirely terrible episode. There were a few redeeming qualities and someone did die, though I’d hardly call it a “devastating conclusion” which is what ABC promised. The episode, titled “Some Kind Of Miracle” had two great things going for it. The return of Denny and Sandra Oh’s performance. Other than that, it was a bit too predictable and cliché for me to fully enjoy.
I should also add that Ellen Pompeo put on a pretty great performance as well, given what she had to work with and though I felt the first half of the episode was kind of corny, it did finish strong.
The episode began where last week’s left off. Meredith was in an empty hospital room with Denny and Dylan (the bomb guy). They tried to convince her she was dead but she argued that this was just her brain reacting to the trauma. Her and Derek’s dead dog, Doc showed up and she sat there for a while, petting him. Bonnie (the girl who died from the pole through her lower chest) and Ellis Grey’s old scrub nurse arrive. They all try to talk to her and convince her that she’s dead. There’s a mention of how there isn’t enough time. Obviously their purpose was to get her to come to grips with her situation. Denny confronts her about the bathtub incident and suggests that she might have actually let herself drown.
Meredith argues with Denny about this, saying she did fight to stay afloat. Bonnie keeps collapsing and the area of her chest where the pole was starts to bleed profusely. Meredith tries to revive her but it’s a fruitless effort as there is no actual wound, just a lot of blood. Dylan disappears when Meredith orders him to go get some surgical supplies. When he reappears later, he tells her he can come and go because when he died, his life was complete. He saved her life that day with the explosive and completed his mission.
Denny continues to talk to her about accepting her reality and finally comes out and tells her that if she dies, her friends will never recover. He says Derek still believes in true love and soul mates and that her friends can barely breath. Her death would destroy them. He mentions what Cristina went through, as a kid when she literally watched her father die and brings up Alex’s problems though doesn’t elaborate on that. He pauses and sort of shudders with happiness. He explains to her that sometimes when he and Izzie are “in the same place” he can almost hear her voice. It’s a brief feeling of total happiness but it doesn’t last. He misses her. He tells Meredith that all they have are moments.
After taking all of this in, Meredith admits to Denny that she did fight to swim in the bay but that she reached a moment when she thought it didn’t matter so she stopped fighting. She tells him she wants to live. She begins to panic because she doesn’t know what to do at this point.
Meanwhile, the doctors are doing everything to warm her body up. Her heart has stopped and they can’t try to restart it until they get her body temperature up to 98.6 degrees. Addison gets called out to deal with her Jane Doe and Alex leaves with her. Cristina decides that she can’t stand there waiting around for Meredith to die so she leaves. Derek tries to go back in to help Meredith but Addison tells him he can’t help her in the condition he’s in so he leaves. George and Izzie have an argument about Callie and then they both leave.
Izzie finds Callie in the clinic donating blood. Callie tries to be nice to her, telling her they have to pull together but Izzie says there is no “we,” meaning Callie isn’t one of them. Callie is fed up with Izzie’s nastiness and tells her that she shouldn’t put George in this situation because she can’t afford to lose any more friends.
Alex talks to the Jane Doe, whose face is extremely swollen and bruised. She’s awake but she can’t remember anything, including her own name. She has a ring mark on her finger but doesn’t know if she’s married. Alex returns to her later to tell her that apart from the bruising and other external damage from the accident, she’s fine and so is her baby, which is he confirmed, is a girl.
Derek sits around the waiting room for a while and then decides to go visit Ellis in her hospital room. Ellis demands some water and he gets it. Then he tells her that she broke Meredith by calling her ordinary. His mild outburst is definitely due to the helplessness he’s feeling. Addison pulls him out of the room and he tells her that he thinks it’s his fault that Meredith drowned. He even goes as far as to suggest that she might have gone into the water on purpose. Just then, Ellis’s monitors start beeping. She’s crashing and Derek goes into her room and tries desperately to revive her.
Cristina left the hospital and headed to the nearest dollar store. The sight of her walking down the aisle in her scrubs, pushing a cart full of dollar-store-junk was funny in a “I shouldn’t be laughing at this” kind of way. She goes to Joe’s bar and shows him her purchases. She gave him a bottle of gingerbread scented lotion to put behind the bar and then showed off a small plastic chair with “cat like creatures” on it, saying that its amazing that you can buy furniture for $.99. Only in America.
After a few beers, Burke finds her and tries to get her to back to the hospital. He tells her that Meredith is “her person” and if she’s sitting in the bar when her friend dies, she’ll never get over it.
The chief is becoming increasingly unraveled but Bailey keeps it together. Meredith’s body is warmed up but they can’t get her heart to start beating again. Just as they give up, Cristina walks in and demands that they try again.
After-life-Meredith is sitting on the bed, unsure of what she should do to save her own life. Just then she sees her mother down the hall. She walks towards her and when the two meet, Ellis tells her she needs to pull through this and that she doesn’t belong here. She hugs Meredith and tells her she is anything but ordinary. She then points down to the other end of the hall and tells her to go before its too late.
The doctors heed Cristina’s order and try one last time to revive Meredith. It works and her heart starts beating. When she’s stable and breathing on her own, they talk about possible brain damage. Everyone but Cristina leaves. Meredith begins to mumble something and Cristina moves closer. She tells her to just speak one word to show she’s not brain damaged. Meredith slowly says “ouch.” She opens her eyes and Cristina, overjoyed to have “her person” back, tells Meredith that she and Burke are getting married and that she was the one person she wanted to tell. She says she knows Meredith is ok but she just wanted to make sure she told her in case she slipped in the hall or something later.
Derek goes in to see her and the two share a moment. He goes to tell her about her mother dying but Meredith already knows. She says she thinks its ok. From what it looks like, Meredith doesn’t actually remember her afterlife experience but she was definitely changed by it. Derek just gazes down and Meredith and she looks back at him.
Addison witnesses their talk from out in the hall and she tells Sloan that Derek never felt that way about her. She seems touched and saddened by what she’s seen. Sloan tells her that he feels that way about her. He says he’s a mess but that it was never a game with her. She tells him that she’d agree to a real relationship with him if he can go 60 days without having sex with anyone. He agrees as long as she does the same. I guess this means no Alex-Addison hook-up. Though I do wonder if the 60 days thing will end with the big two-hour Addison episode that is supposed to air during May sweeps and lead to the big spin-off that was reported earlier this week.
Weber goes to sit by Ellis’ body. He tells her that he knows death is probably a relief to her but that it isn’t for him. He says he misses the sound of her voice and then admits about dying his hair for the ladies. It’s a sweet but sad moment.
Sydney comes up to Bailey and commends her for how she handled everything throughout the day. She goes on to say that there’s a lot of talk about Bailey getting the Chief Resident position and that she’s giving her a run for her money. When she walks away, Bailey says to herself that she is.
Finally, Izzie goes to George to try to patch things up with him. Earlier she told him that she couldn’t lie about how she feels about Callie. He argued that she can lie and that she should because she’s his friend and if it’s a mistake he’s going to need her. When she approaches him in the locker room and tries to apologize, he just walks away. Izzie starts to leave the hospital and pauses. She smiles and next to her we see Denny making that same blissful face he made earlier when he was telling Meredith about those occasional moments when he can feel Izzie. She feels him too. The moment passes and she walks out of the hospital.
All in all, the episode wasn’t a total disaster. I just felt it was extremely predictable. Then again, Meredith’s been dealing with her self-absorption and intimacy issues since the beginning of the show. If there’s one good thing that could come from this extremely gimmicky three-part episode, it’s that it will be a turning point for her character. Perhaps she’ll stop being so broody whenever things aren’t going her way and instead, learn to accept the bad moments with the good. The only times I felt myself coming close to tears during the episode was when Sandra Oh was on screen. She always delivers a stellar performance but tonight she outdid herself. The raw emotion she displayed in all of her scenes was pretty much what kept the episode afloat. I also felt Denny’s return, though cheesy, was very sweet. I can’t help it. His character makes me melt and it was nice to see him once again, if only as a ghost.
