ABC
Talk about your potential non sequitur/’here’s something different’ for two hot seconds there; it was almost like this episode was planned and shot after the COVID-19 Pandemic crisis because of all the rushed backstory they were trying to cram down our throats – Cormac Hayes’ whole tragic backstory, Maggie Pierce’s mystery love from back in Boston, and Teddy Altman’s once-upon-a-time-in-the-land-of-bisexuality; there was so much happening – it was like whoa. (Can’t even touch on Richard Webber right this second because my stomach is still flipping and my eyes are still leaking.)
Whoever did the flashback makeup for 20-years-ago-Teddy deserves MAD PROPS. Not that Kim Raver looks particularly old, but I would absolutely believe that was footage we dug up from two decades ago. Though how from seasons six and seven – through to her reappearance till now have we never not even once even hinted at her bi-sexual lifestyle!? (Even when she was with Mark and Mark was in bed with Reed she seemed completely put out by the idea – so WHERE is this coming from?) But this does sort of reinforce my ‘once a cheater, always a cheater’. PLEASE say that this means she’s going to go back and tell Owen that she cheated with Tom.
Maggie’s resident (whose name we didn’t even really catch) was fulfilling the obligation of ‘9:00pm time slot’ because there was lots of sexy time with the two of them – jumping right in like this was the spin-off pickup from their own personal medical drama (‘Boston Residents’) and they fell back in step. With a relationship that never happened. We got a lightning round of what they are. Is he coming to Seattle? Doctor No-Name? As a replacement for Nico Kim (who clearly has got to go) because Maggie can’t leave Seattle with doctors dropping like flies. Or was the title of this episode a red herring and we’re supposed to see that the love of Maggie’s life is really her dad, Richard? Seriously just think this quarter of the episode was to fulfill the ‘Bonus Sexy Time’ obligation of the 9:00pm time slot.
Hayes’ story was really tragic. Except we saw it already, literally earlier this season, when Meredith went all ‘BAD MEMORIES BECAUSE YOU KILLED MY SPOUSE’ on that judge. This was exactly that, except we already knew the MerDer backstory and we didn’t know the Abigail/Cormac backstory. A very, very meet-cute for them, and it gets everyone caught up to speed on the why and how of who he is, I guess, so that we can all feel like we’ve absorbed his storyline over several seasons, even though he’s only just showed up in the last couple of whiles here in Grey’s Anatomy. Seriously the oddest and least likely grouping of ‘Grey-Sloaners’ hanging out at a conference – Maggie, Cormac, and Teddy. So weird!
ABC
Richard, oh Richard!!! Not even mad that we’ve already done visual-audio hallucination plot lines because that ‘saved our marriage’ with Catherine was so darn cute – ‘we had a fight and you bought a hospital!’ and that relief of telling her about Gemma; all of those things were beautiful. But that gut-dropping moment when you realized that she was never really there – seeing him alone in his hotel room? From that moment all through when he started to take the stage, my stomach just dropped and my heart was racing so fast I probably would have set off a monitor if I had been hooked up. It was almost like a really beautiful moment from David Auburn’s Proof and oh my God the tears when Maggie got up to get him. That ever-popular moment with Cristina – SOMEONE SEDATE ME – comes to mind because I just started crying. We already got screwed out of Alex … and I don’t think they’re going to take Richard away from us? But who knows …
The important takeaways here are:
- Teddy – once a cheater, always a cheater, one-true love was actually best friend Allison and her daughter is named after her lover from 20 years ago.
- Maggie – found her nerd guy, she was the boss, he was the attending, it’ll be on its way to Grey-Sloan (if the world unpauses in time for us to start filming the last three episodes) [Editor’s note – it won’t as the season will be cut short with no true finale at Episode 21].
- Cormac Hayes – tragically widowed, but is even more of a real man for crying his way through it to strength; needs to get it on and get together with Meredith.
- Richard – is totally about to die, probably.
Bonus Zola time this week too! Next week we’re going to hope that we save Richard (we probably will.) And then there’s only one more filmed episode … but we did survive the writer’s strike of season 4 … so we’ll survive this too. Probably.
Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 9:00 PM on ABC.
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