Grey’s Anatomy :: Today Was A Fairytale

ABC

So … all the neat stuff aside — and it was a pretty neat episode — did we just suspend time? Or does no one care that when we last left Grey-Sloan, Megan Hunt’s child was clinging to life in dire need of a heart transplant? Or does this week’s episode happen in a space-bubble outside of that somehow? At any rate — we get no Megan, Owen, Hayes (briefly a completely normal Altman) and an ‘in-passing’ Dr. Webber (who could have been CGI’d in if Grey’s had that sort of budget) for all he did this week.

We did get Maggie back. Yay I guess? She sneaks up on Winston at the outdoor coffee cart and the pair then spend the entire rest of the episode in bed. In — the attending’s lounge? Swanky on-call room? Hard to tell. He’s supposed to be with Bailey at the ‘recruitment’ event — but continuously ignores the pages and messages to be in bed with his newlywed wife.

Bailey, who is beside herself with fury that ‘top talent’ simply isn’t enough to recruit the ‘doctors of tomorrow’ (and she’s so right — watching these goldfish-attention-span med students gush and goo over all the ‘free swag’ and shenanigans that other hospital programs are offering … it speaks VOLUMES of HORRIBLE TRUTH about the youth of today. They have this repugnant sense of entitlement and are only interested in the ‘free stuff’ you can give them. I fear for future generations as this is an INSANELY accurate portrayal of whatever Genzenials these are supposed to be!) but she’s been abandoned, basically. Hunt got called into trauma (though we never see him this week … timelining the Farouk thing maybe?), and Meredith is Meredith … who basically got stuck in MN.

Hopping over to MN — that’s where the second third of this week’s episode is happening. Dr. Toxic Masculinity AKA Hamilton (who is scared as he watches his life erode away but rather than express that — he goes the traditional toxic masculine route, blames the woman, barks orders, and threatens to ‘cancel’ her) tries to shut Meredith down but she holds her ground — reminding him that ground-breaking medicine does not POOF happen at the snap of his fingers. This spirals her out of the lab (to the micro-plot she’s engaged with this week) and leaves oodles and poodles of time for Amelia and Kai to get their awkward but adorable flirt on!

The frustration of figuring out WHY what isn’t working isn’t working is very much like when Amelia was doing all those laser trials with Koracick. But the ‘getting to know you’ is really endearing, if adorably awkward. Like when Kai blatantly points out that despite Derek’s global infamy — that she actually has no idea who Amelia’s brother is. (Poor McDreamy.) The gut-clenching anxiety moment is when Kai is on their rigorously scheduled ’15-minutes-to-stress-out’ break, and starts talking about the ‘bad habit’ of whatever potato-chip/bagged salt-snack they’re consuming. And Kai starts joking that it’s the gateway to fries (at least they don’t say ‘gateway drug’) but you can SEE it all over Amelia’s face. And there’s that moment of ‘OMG is she going to tell them about her addiction?’ She doesn’t and this passes. But they continue to have awkward adorable flirting.

ABC

This — just as Link is realizing that no matter what — he still loves Amelia (not Jo …) and will just wait it out until she’s ready. Rewind and back it up to the two of them who are living together and raising their babies together, and who somehow both have a day off together and decide to go to some park to see a theatre troupe perform ‘Rapunzel’ (which of course Jo has no idea how dark and crazy it is). Inevitably — as all ‘events outside the hospital’ do? — something goes horribly awry. This time it’s the prince, climbing the tower, has a cardiac episode, and falls ten feet to the rough stage. ‘Is anybody here a doctor?’ (Just like Jo & Alex’s wedding or that time that Cristina and Burke were out on a date … or when the aerial artist took a tumble at the Grey-Sloan fundraiser … take your pick — it’s all been done.)

The back and forth of that is the actor playing the witch. Who is the prince’s best friend (and he ends up being fine after nearly dying, but Altman and Link get it under control in the end) and Jo blatantly calls her out (behind her back, of course, to Link) for claiming to be just his best friend when clearly she’s in love with him. Which leads to Link confessing that he had a huge crush on Jo but then he dated Bronwyn, she ended up with Paul and they’re best friends because of it. THIS leads to the most awkward — see it coming for a mile — failure of a confession of feelings. (Like this is worse then when George slept with Meredith …) But Jo starts in on this ‘don’t we deserve a happily ever after?’ and you can see her grasping at the straws of his confession of ‘I loved you once’ and he’s like ‘you’re right’ except EVERYONE BUT JO knows he’s talking about Amelia. And WHAM. Just like that — Jo buries those feelings and goes right back to her personal circle of hell. (She’s a trainwreck waiting to happen. She never properly processed Alex leaving her for Izzie and their babies, and that Jackson FWB nonsense was just NONSENSE.)

And Meredith, being Meredith, saves the day for her patient (who turns out to be Nick’s best friend AND kidney donor) and it doesn’t even start a blowup between them that she had to put him out of the OR. And his little confession over why he didn’t want to burden her is cute, but she takes it in stride, and reaffirms our belief in how utterly amazing she is. ‘It’s never just a body on a table with me.’ She even brings back a student who worships Bailey so that everyone gets their HEA where Mer is involved.

The winter finale is swooping in on us. (Once again Owen’s out retrieving an important patient … remember golden blood boy?), and it looks like a cliff-hanger … literally. As somehow he ends up in a car with — what I can only assume is the donation coordinator/transplant surgeon (as it’s a heart that’s being donated) wiped off the road hanging on the side of the cliff. Looks like only eight episodes for this half of the season — but hopefully that means 20 more on the back side!

What did you think of this episode? Start a conversation in the comments section below.

Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 9:00 PM on ABC.