Grey’s Anatomy – S13xEp05 – Both Sides Now
Amelia’s period is late. Amelia wants kids. But Amelia has given birth once already to a son who didn’t have a brain — so it’s pretty understandable the idea of being pregnant again is a bit jarring for her. But she’s forced to face that idea this week when her period’s not on time.
Meanwhile, Owen’s babysitting April and Jackson’s kid. At first, he’s struggling a bit, though as the day goes on, he becomes more comfortable with little Harriet. So when Amelia later reveals to him that she might be pregnant, he’s overjoyed. Owen’s wanted to be a dad as long as we’ve known him, and now that he’s married, he’s ready as ever. He immediately starts brainstorming how they should lay out the house, and then… Amelia finally takes the test, and it turns out negative. No baby yet.
That being said, it was absolutely absurd that they dragged out the “Is she?” or “Isn’t she?” pregnancy storyline the entire episode!
Watching the sisters bicker and fight over who got to work with Stephanie was one of the highlights of the episode. Stephanie has become the rockstar of her class, and it was about time someone other than Amelia recognized and benefited from it.
Bailey recruits DeLuca to be her Ed McMahon on a day of delivering joy to patients; they’ll be performing a liver transplant on an 80-year-old Granny June, whose hospital room is full of family members and freshly baked cookies. I love the tough, take-no-prisoners, chief-of-both-surgery-and-the-known-universe version of Bailey, but it’s really fun to see “Feel the joy!” Bailey resurface too. Seems like it’s been awhile since we’ve seen her.
Grey’s Anatomy – S13xEp3 – ‘I Ain’t No Miracle Worker’
The big medical case of the week, took part in most of the episode. It came as a result of a multiple-car-crash on the way to a funeral; the whole family is injured, including the one who caused the accident, who is no one else than their long lost black sheep sister Kara, who no one’s seen for years, and who’s pregnant. Kara’s mom, who is overwhelmed by the news that Kara’s there, and by having to say good-bye to her husband’s body again, goes into cardiac arrest holding her dead husband’s hand. Maggie and Amelia and Stephanie try to revive her for over forty minutes, and then call time of death.
And then, just like that, she’s alive again. It’s Lazarus syndrome — the spontaneous return of circulation after failed attempts at resuscitation — and, yes, it’s real, although Stephanie points out there are only 38 cases on record.
April confesses to Jackson, “I did not know a miracle could be so boring.” Naturally, things in the ER were anything but boring, the widow of the dead man, who died herself, came back to life! While Jackson continues to be the perfect baby daddy, and melts hearts everywhere.
The second big thing of the episode was the return of Arizona ( Ghosh ! How I missed her ) . She confronts Karev about his fight and asks why he didn’t return any of her calls or text. She tells Karev how mad she is at him for what happened. He completely agrees and tells her all he can do is keep doing his time working in the clinic and try to get back to where he was. But despite being angry with Alex, Arizona tells Owen that she thinks a felony is a bit excessive for Alex to be charged with for beating up DeLuca. The next time Arizona runs into DeLuca, he asks if he needs to move out because of all the drama going on. Arizona reassures DeLuca that she wants him to continue to be her roommate.
Another important story ( in the long-term ) was Meredith and Riggs continuing to do their little relationship dance around Maggie … but this could come to the surface soon. I really thought at some point that Amelia put one and one together and figured out the truth. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and this is not going to end well.
Then we got Miranda and Ben. These two have the ability to be both sweet and incredibly sexy in one scene. Watching Ben take on the role of bad cop was a fun way to teach Tucker a lesson. “You need a bad cop. Deputize me.” Ben’s methods of teaching Tuck right from wrong are certainly unique. Together, Ben and Jackson show Tuck just what happens when you fight with images of DeLuca after his attack from Alex. But Ben exaggerates the affects and says that now DeLuca is blind. It seems to work though, and he’s horrified by the images.
Grey’s Anatomy – S13xEp2 – Catastrophe and the Cure
We’re at the 2nd episode and the focus is on Alex, whereas he is around his work space, cutely reminding a young patient that nothing’s as bad as broccoli, or whereas he’s dealing with his felony assault he got charged with in the second degree.
The Catastrophe is mainly hitting as Jo made it clear that they were over, and Chief Bailey decided that he could no longer operate at Grey Sloan and gave him the clinic to manage so she wouldn’t have to fire him.
We can already see that the staff of Grey Sloan are picking sides. Amelia for example openly said she was on #teamJo, inviting her to her first dinner party as a married woman; along with Riggs (whom her husband hates), Maggie (who wants to sleep with Riggs), and Meredith (who has already slept with Riggs). The party is as awkward as expected, especially after Mer tells Riggs to shut her sister down when she asks him out.
Meanwhile, I still don’t get the Baby choice name of ‘Harriet’ Kepner-Avery, but she is cute and healthy and ready to go home from the hospital, but April isn’t — her incision from the C-section still isn’t healed. ( Thank you Shonda Rhimes for writing a realistic script ).
She’s devastated not to be leaving with her baby, and Jackson tries to calm her down until she basically tells him to leave so she can cry forever until she’s dehydrated, then die.
Through a Tablet, April started singing “Faith” by George Michael to the baby to get her to sleep; as much as it was weird to choose that song on this particular moment, I think the choice was just perfect, unpredictable and made a sense for the whole episode.
Grey’s Anatomy – 13×1 – Undo
We’ve Proudly watched Alex Karev Grow all through those seasons from being a self-centered careless boy to excelling at being a brilliant Surgeon; Only to find him crawl back at his lowest moment in one thoughtless fraction of a second. Alex didn’t think before his first punch, or after his second. He got caught up in a moment, and beat Andrew to almost-death.
Meredith: It’s not blind. He’s earned it. When I first got here, he was one of the worst people I had ever met in my life, and now he’s one of the best, and I know both of those people are still in there. I just want to make sure the right one wins
You know what, forget it. It’s like I said… you can’t help it. It’s not your fault. It’s easy for you to throw people away and just move on when things are bad. It’s not you, it’s the way you were raised or not raised. I wanted to marry you. I was asking you for something you’re not capable of. I should’ve known better.- Alex
A little coffee. A little sunlight. Your troubles will get smaller – Webber
Grey’s Anatomy – S12xEp24 – Family Affairs
The most exciting thread of the night — April giving birth in Meredith’s house. It makes sense: That house has seen weddings, mental breakdowns — it was only a matter of time before it played host to a home birth. April ends up alone with Ben in Mer’s house after he drives her there to look for Owen’s wedding rings (because she’s his best man, which is actually adorable), when her water breaks. Having a home birth with a competent doctor isn’t actually high drama, so of course Grey’s ups the stakes. The baby is breeched, and Ben’s going to have to perform a C-section on Meredith’s kitchen table with an old scalpel, hand sanitizer, ice, and dish towels. For inexplicable reasons, Ben calls Jackson who’s able to hear April scream as Ben cuts a baby out of her with no anesthesia whatsoever. It’s horrifying…
Jo’s confession to Maggie’s former boy toy may offer a legitimate reason for her to not marry Alex, but it doesn’t change most of the fundamental problems in that relationship. In fact, her determination to keep secrets from him only adds to the list of reasons that they should break up.
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At the hospital Meredith runs into Riggs for the first time since their hookup. Riggs wants to spend some time with Meredith, but she warns him not to get any ideas. We’re not quite sure how we feel about this couple, but we do enjoy watching Riggs and Meredith’s flirtatious banter.
Back to the beginning: Amelia’s mother and sisters aren’t coming to the wedding, and the writing spins their absence as disapproval of Amelia’s choice to marry Owen. Amelia has a near-hysterical phone call with her mother the morning of the ceremony, and tries to refute her mom’s claims that the wedding is too soon and that she’s making a horrible mistake, none of which is in line with what we know about the Shepherd family.
Most of the episode is dedicated to Amelia’s indecision and Meredith’s one-day stint as her person and her entire family. Most sibling relationships on television are either overly close or overly acrimonious, but what I love about Meredith and Amelia’s dynamic is that they are two people who very literally, very seriously do not like each other very much, but who are committed to loving each other anyway, which I feel like is how most people feel about the majority of their family members in real life. Anyway, there’s some panic — Amelia gets particularly upset when she overhears Meredith telling Owen (accurately) that Cristina might have been the greatest love of his life — and at one point, Mer and Amelia and Maggie run away to a convenience store for slushies, but they come back, and Amelia makes it down the aisle. And you know what? Good for them. I have no idea what the writing is doing with Owen and Amelia half the time, but most movies and TV shows subscribe to the idea that a woman has to be de-complicated or solved somehow before she’s worth being married to. Amelia is still a mess and a half (and frankly, so is Owen), but there she is, happy, next to a good man. As ever, Grey’s brings hope to the dark and twisty.
As Amelia walks down the aisle, Meredith and Riggs make googly eyes at each other from across the room, and it seems like Meredith is finally ready to give love beyond Derek a try. That is, until Maggie leans over and tells Meredith that she really likes Riggs, and she thinks Riggs likes her too. This is certainly going to make for an awkward situation next season.
Grey’s Anatomy -S12xEp23 – AT LAST
I didn’t really see Kyle’s death coming, but that may have been willful blindness on my part. I recognize that happily-ever-afters make for boring stories, but I was really hoping that she’d be leaving to go to Europe with him and not taking a leave of absence to get over his death. Kyle was the end of a very long dry spell for her, and I’d hate to see her clam up even more than she was before. Jerrika Hinton has an excellent resting bitch face, but most of the enjoyment from having an ice princess character is having someone break through that shell.
Owen invites Amelia to move in with him during surgery, which is good. Safe. It’s not like there’s a patient open on the table or anything. And then they talk kids and engagement, which only Maggie seems to find alarming. Meredith seems angry because Owen sold Derek’s trailer (technically, legally Owen’s now, but come on). It turns out Meredith is becoming a little bundle of irrationality, accusing Amelia of taking over Derek’s life. Because she has his job and lives in his house and, confusingly, is marrying Christina’s ex? Not sure how that one checks out. But irrationality is kind of the general M.O. at Grey Sloan Memorial.
Meanwhile, Mer was so busy sulking over Amelia and Owen, and her own misery, that she hurried away when Alex called her on her BS and told her that he was going to get hitched, and she was going to be his best man. “Deal with it!” he added. First, there was just the little matter of getting Jo to finally accept his proposal. Unfortunately, that night, when he asked again if she’d marry him, she seemed more concerned about the dinner that she’d messed up than about deciding the course of their future. When at last he demanded a simple yes or no, she replied, “I can’t” and shot him down.
Oh, dear, sweet, Penny Blake: GET OUT. After the custody hearing did not go their way, Penny and Callie are, well, broken. Callie can barely speak to the woman whose love was so great she needed to risk her parental rights. Penny tries to adjust their plans — she will come back to visit Callie and Sofia every weekend — but Callie doesn’t see a point. She summarizes the future they have if they attempt to make long distance work, and it ends with their relationship slowly petering out. Callie will never leave Seattle without Sofia; Penny can’t give up her fellowship. They’re doomed, supposedly. Not that I want Callie and Penny to stay together, but, come on — it’s just one year. Get a grip, girl. And thus ends the epic romance of Callie Torres and Penny Blake.
As brilliantly as Sara Ramirez sells her anguish in this episode, I have no sympathy for Callie. After breaking up with Penny, Callie begs Arizona to switch Sofia’s schedule for the second time — all so she can have a little comfort at the end of a horrible day — and Arizona goes off. She tried to be agreeable the first time, but, after everything Callie put them through, she’s done being nice. You brought this on yourself, Callie. I stand with AZ.
I’ve saved the very best for last, and the show did too. In the parking lot, as Meredith’s heading home, Riggs calls her out for how grumpy she’s been about Amelia all day: “She gets to get all the good stuff, right? With Hunt, of all people.” There’s some angry banter and then finally, one messy, hard, passionate (and Meredith-initiated) makeout session, up against Meredith’s sensible mom car. Raise your hand if you just now realized how much you missed Dark, Twisty Dating Meredith too.
Grey’s Anatomy – S12xEp22 – Mama Tried
Callie and Arizona go to court, where a judge decides who gets sole physical episode of Sofia. Owen and Meredith speak on Callie’s behalf while Webber and DeLuca vouch for Arizona. The judge prefaces the whole thing by warning, “The things said here will undoubtedly be harsh.” That’s not quite true: None of the witnesses say anything awful, though Penny does (unintentionally) screw up a bit.
Bailey had Arizona’s back, sisterhood style. I loved how she took on the lawyer about the sexism of the working mother attack so bluntly.
What’s fascinating is that the show uses the trial to hit some of the big questions only Grey’s seems willing to tackle these days. Are you a good mother if you choose work over your kid? How many times can you choose work over your child without becoming a bad mother? Is it a sign of weakness to need and ask for help as a single parent? Is taking — and enjoying! — time away from your child acceptable? If so, how much? Why do we put expectations on mothers that fathers are spared? Is it OK to slut-shame in court as a means of proving that your ex-partner is less fit a mother than you are? (Hint: NO.)
Elsewhere in the bar, Jackson and April very calmly and quietly attempt to figure out the custody of their baby. There are looks. They’re totally getting back together.
If there was one positive side effect of Calzona’s custody battle, it was that it seemed to inspire Jackson and April to want to work out an arrangement well ahead of their child’s arrival, lest they ever find themselves putting up their dukes in court. (God knows we’re well aware of how ready Catherine always is to lawyer up!) Miraculously, the exes’ discussion started out civilly and remained that way, even as they divvied up his and hers holidays with Baby Avery. (Hell, it went so well, it was practically a love scene!)
Edwards regrets breaking up with Kyle, but Jo stops her from drunk calling him. At the hospital Edwards sees Kyle’s name on the patient board and immediately looks for him to find out what happened. Amelia explains that Kyle passed out from possibly having meningitis, but Kyle has absolutely no desire to see Edwards after she broke up with him through a note.
“Mama Tried” was brutal from beginning to end, but the standout moments were Arizona walking out of the courtroom knowing she may have just lost Sofia, and Callie’s terrified “How the hell did this happen?” Oh, Callie, you know how it happened.
Grey’s Anatomy – S12xEp21 – ‘You’re Gonna Need Someone on Your Side’
Edwards notices her new boytoy Kyle has a tremor on his other hand and wants to help Amelia operate on his brain once again. Amelia says no once she sees Edwards and Kyle swap googly eyes, and that makes sense: Operating on a loved one — or, in this case, a lusted one — can be dangerous because of the very fact that you know this person. There’s extra pressure to get it right and extra guilt if something goes wrong. Remember Denny? But Edwards is mad. She’s mad that Amelia is telling her no, that she’s taking Edwards off the case when she’s only slept with this dude twice. In real life, she’d understand why she can’t go in the OR with him. On Grey’s, she acts like she’s never even considered ethics at work.
Things are looking up for the Bailey-Warren household, but “up” does not necessarily mean clear skies ahead. Watching Maggie and Riggs stuck between their fight was so uncomfortable. What ever happened to “church and state,” people? Bailey should have left it at coolly professional, and Ben should have had the latest medical digest to pretend to read.
Speaking of being together, Arizona and Callie make zero progress on the whole Sofia situation. They spend the episode asking their friends to vouch for them in court, and Callie eventually gets Meredith and Hunt to stand up for her. She’s feeling good about it, and Arizona is feeling…not good. Webber gives her some typical Webber wisdom, telling her she needs to fight for this harder than she’s ever fought before.
It’s a rough day all around for Arizona, actually, who finds what could be an abnormality in Jackson and April’s ultrasound, and spends the rest of the day scrambling around, trying to get the testing done that will settle April’s mind. It turns out to be a false alarm (maddening for those of us who aren’t cool with the way Grey’s uses pregnancy drama as an emotionally manipulative storytelling device), but confirms for Arizona that she can’t be April’s doctor and her friend, and she’s choosing friend. The whole mess also precluded her from asking Jackson and April to be her character witnesses, which makes her case seem awfully wobbly.
The saddest bit of the episode centered around Leo, an older man who took a nasty fall and was brought into the hospital by his doorman, Vincent. The two men were in love, in spite of the fact that Leo was married to a woman, and at times in the episode, it appeared that Leo might leave his wife for Vincent. It got even more tragic when Leo’s surgery revealed incurable cancer, and, according to Meredith, he only had a year to leave. He tells Vincent to leave, indicating that their relationship is likely over, and his wife — here’s the awful part — GIVES HIM A CASH TIP FOR BEING SUCH A GOOD DOORMAN ON THE WAY OUT.
In the grand tradition of Grey’s romantic speeches that tend to seem more like nervous breakdowns, Amelia shows up on Owen’s doorstep and asks to be a committed couple. He wholeheartedly accepts (i.e. there’s a lot of making out).
Greys Anatomy – S12xEp20 – Trigger Happy
Despite his suspension, Ben’s desperate to get back into the OR, so he decides to apply for a job in the anesthesiology department. He gets one, and he takes it, but it comes at the expense of Bailey’s feelings. She tells him that if this is what he wants to be doing, he needs to find someplace else to sleep. So much for their church-and-state agreement.
Most of the episode focuses on two 8-year-old boys, one of whom shot and paralyzed the other (they were playing with his mother’s gun, which was supposed to be locked). It gave a storyline that was already pretty heavy a Very Special Episode feel, and despite some really strong moments, like Amelia trying to help the shooter realize he truly didn’t mean to shoot his friend, the episode never shook that off.
Amelia’s also the one who gets to deliver the moral of the episode in a conversation with the mother, promising that her gun was locked up. “Kids watch. They pick up everything you do.” It’s a sad little callback to the moment at the beginning of the episode when Amelia and Meredith and Maggie were joking about Zola picking up on the fact that they were talking about sex.
I would have liked to see some more of Jo’s story, and not just because it would have meant more Alex. I totally get why, as a 16-year-old girl living in her car, she originally may have wanted a gun. There just wasn’t enough story development getting her from her NRA sound bites to her giving up the weapon. Sure, a paralyzed child is tragic; I don’t deny that. But it didn’t feel like that was enough to sway her. A good persuasive speech from Karev would have been nice.
Over a non-breakfast with Arizona, Callie excitedly informed her ex that she and Penny had found a great two-bedroom apartment in New York, and it was near Preminger, and it was close to some super schools, and… Not so fast. “Somewhere, sometime, you heard me say yes to this,” Robbins interjected. “You heard me say, ‘Yes, please, Callie, take my daughter across the country.’ But I never said that. From there, things went downhill fast, with Arizona pointing out that Callie had promised she’d “be able” to visit her daughter anytime she wanted and Torres noting that hello, Sofia wasn’t just Robbins’ daughter. Callie eventually tried to defuse the situation by restating that they were only discussing options. Unfortunately, it didn’t sound that way to Arizona. (Did it to you? To her credit, at least Penny understood that she needed to stay the hell out of the debate.)
Later, as Callie attempted to apologize for jumping the gun, Robbins — after angrily confiding in Richard — suggested that if her former wife wanted to discuss any more “options,” she could do so with her attorney.
Along the way, it turned out that Miranda had an issue with Callie’s move, too. Was Torres really gonna sacrifice her career for a (gasp) resident?!? Bailey wanted to know.
And let’s end up with some least interesting course of events : Edwards has been texting Wilmer Valderama’s character Kyle since she and Amelia operated on his brain to fix a hand tremor. But now that Kyle is actually back in town and wants to take Edwards on a date, she’s avoiding him like the plague. Meredith finally convinces Edwards to go on the date with Kyle, and she ends up putting herself out there and having a good time.
Grey’s Anatomy – S12xEp19 – “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
Episode 19 deals with the ramifications of Ben’s actions, and begins with Ben taking his anger out on his wife over the fact that he’s in trouble for trying to save a patient’s life. Bailey has asked Meredith, Maggie and Owen to comprise an advisory panel to judge the incident, but Webber thinks that Bailey needs to deal with this problem herself, despite the fact that it involves her hubby. Bailey explains that since she knows she will be partial to her husband she’s trying to take a step back so that the results aren’t biased.
The panel talks to the other doctors involved and eventually agree that they believe Ben when he says that he didn’t see the elevator doors open. Bailey punishes Ben with a six-month suspension from the hospital’s residency program, which he declares is a death sentence. Ben and Bailey had decided to separate their personal and working relationships like church and state, but Ben is upset that Bailey won’t reconsider his punishment and give him just a little bit of special treatment. However Bailey declares that it is special treatment; if it were any other resident they would have been fired.
Meanwhile, things are tense between Jackson and April after she serves him with a restraining order, but the situation takes a scary turn when April fears something is wrong with their unborn baby. Arizona assures her nothing is wrong. If fact, what she’s feeling is her baby kicking, something she never experienced with her son who passed away. By the end of the episode, Jackson finds April to talk things out. They share a sweet moment — and Jackson feels their child kick for the first time!
After Meredith tells Maggie and Amelia what she knows about Riggs andOwen‘s sister, Maggie confronts Riggs. He’s a good guy and a great surgeon. Why would he lie? Riggs states that he didn’t lie to Meredith. Everything he told her was true: there was a patient, there was a helicopter. He just left some parts out, namely the part where they fought and the fact that he cheated. He made a mistake and he’s paid for it ever since.
The seemingly well adjusted exes are sure to fight dirty when it comes to custody of Sofia. Arizona’s insecurity about her place in Sofia’s life is surely rising up with Callie’s announcement. I guess we’ll find out if the papers they signed with Mark end up holding up.
Season of Bloom 