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February must be ‘political hot-topic quota month’ on Grey’s Anatomy. But OH. MY. GOD. This week. ALL THE FEELS. Get your tissues ready! It’s an ugly cry that hurts so good and no one even dies!!! (Well, almost no one.)
Meredith might as well not be in this episode, except for the two seconds that she’s in it, which are somewhat significant on the most minor scale possible. She’s breaking a hospital record – longest surgery. Which pales in comparison to what actually hits the hospital. It’s a really nice subtle show of putting the world into perspective (unlike the huge smack in the face show of it that we get into with Jackson and the homeless Mr. Tennison). Though hands down to Bohkee for the cutest quote of the episode – ‘a Wonder Woman’ when DeLuca goes to update the family of Meredith’s 27+ hours patient.
Back to the rest of the episode. We get all the interns back this week! Yay! (But no Koracick, though his burgeoning romance with Teddy is discussed! And with Bailey nonetheless … ha!) Apparently we still can’t afford all hands on deck every episode. Also Ben pops in and out, which is good. He’s in the tertiary periphery but gives us one of the more profound quotes of the episode at the end. And he’s right. Live in the beauty.
LOVE how every single time there is an immediate put-down to Schmidt and Kim’s blossoming relationship, it’s immediately followed up with a cute and cheeky sort of ‘here is the practical reason why I’m opposing your romance – not because you’re a gay couple.’ Link shot them down – trying to pull the resident/attending-intern card, but it was quickly realized (despite the ‘butterflies between them’) that it was in favor of the drug-OD crisis that had flooded the ER, not any actual objections to their being together. They are really cute. But my God, has there ever been a couple on GA that HASN’T suffered some sort of hot mess along the way? I fear for that. Because they are so cute!!!
That whole Link/Amelia moment was a bit too much. It felt there was a romantic undertone that just feels inappropriate. But then again, every moment of extreme grief in this hospital also seems to correlate to extreme sex … so why not? Of course, that will leave Owen in the lurch again, if she ends up hooking up with Link, and Teddy has clearly moved onto Koracick. (He’s a comfy mold, growing on me more and more!)
ABC
I feel like everyone forgot Teddy was and is a Cardio God. She was chief of Cardio at – what was it then – Seattle Grace-Mercy West? (She was mid-merger I think.) And then went on to be a Cardio God in her own Cardio Kingdom in Germany. So when she’s the natural choice to take point on Betty’s cardio case – why do we feel so off-put about it? Like Maggie should totally do it because Teddy’s just Trauma-Barbie? SHE’S NOT. Though I did like her logic of ‘if Betty doesn’t make it, I should be the one to tell her, not her sisters’ sort of like Alex amputating Arizona’s leg … you need someone to lean on in times like that.
Shonda is once again ON POINT with the message behind this week’s episode. As the nation faces this Opioid Pandemic, with OD’s and OD-related deaths being at an all time high … this episode is yet another wake-up and awareness call to America. So much so that you’re even willing to forgive the 50-some (mostly) teenagers who all happened to OD in the park at once. It could happen, but most definitely more likely to happen in the doom-cloud of ‘Seattle-Grace Mercy Death.’
Shonda and team Grey’s continues to use their camera to spar with the nation’s most difficult issues. (Gun control last week. Border Wall next week, anyone? Or is Seattle too far removed from the southern border?) And it’s effective, at least emotionally. She’s become the ‘issues drama’ because we live in a dark and scary world, as Bailey says.
Really intense callback to Alex’s troubled childhood at the end. And it shows how much Jo has grown!!! When Alex went after that dad about ‘protect your kid’, with clear dissenting advice to what Jo was trying to prescribe, that would have started a major fight between the two of them, even just a season ago. Now she comes with hot cocoa and a clear understanding.
Maggie is never going camping, Jackson. Get that through your head. He loves camping, you love him, but take Bailey’s advice. Let him do his thing and you two do other things that you both love. LOVE LOVE LOVE Jackson’s interactions with Mr. Tennison, the homeless guy who brought in the toddler from the park. That smack-in-the-face of ‘put your life in perspective’ after Jackson went on and on about all the excess stuff he had for camping, while the homeless man just sat there listening … and then the struggle of trying to find him a place to stay. Loved Maggie’s short-term fix of just cooking the chart but she recognizes straight away that it’s a Band-aid for a bullet-hole type solution. Jackson giving him the camping gear was really touching. But it was Mr. Tennison’s words that really seal-in the ugly cry deal. ‘You had all of this just in the back of your car?’ We need to do more for our homeless. They aren’t a plague or a burden. They are human beings in need of help. (They’ve been featured throughout the series – the homeless guy whose legs Callie rebuilt, the homeless veteran who Owen got help for, the homeless old lady who Brooks was treating for asthma, etc.) But there is another clear message from TeamShonda that we need to do more.
Ultimately a powerful episode – Betty/Brittany did not die. And getting Amelia to confess to the parents about her own ‘boyfriend died’ (sorry, Linus – who we’ve seen for half a second – didn’t make it and that rattled Link) as a testament of strength and choosing life was beautiful. How you top that with 11 episodes still to go in the season … hard to say!
Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursday at 8:00 PM on ABC.
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