ABC
Seriously!? Well, it’s about time that we had another one of those ‘not-in-the-hospital-ever’ episodes. (That micro-moment with Amelia & Kai in the Minnesota hospital-lab does not count.) And it wasn’t just a ‘follow-one-couple off the reservation’ this week. We had a three-way split going as the episode tracked Meredith and Nick out at a cabin in the woods, Amelia and Kai at a bar/concert and then Kai’s apartment, and Maggie & Winston back home in the house that Grey’s Anatomy built with all three (count them- THREE) Grey-Shepherd children.
Let’s start with the home-base. Maggie is down with some sort of sinus infection? They’re never clear on that — she’s not feeling well, she’s muscling through because she’s supposed to be taking care of Zola, Bailey, and Ellis, and her sinuses are vice-gripping her head. (Muscle through, remember when we all used to do that?) Winston keeps insisting that she should go to bed, he’ll watch the kids, he’s qualified — blah-blah-blah and then Ellis ‘goes missing’. They’re playing hide and seek and she’s just a really good hider. Cut to ‘THE LETTER’.
Zola finds this letter addressed to ‘Margaret’ in an old box of Ellis Grey’s (Kate Burton, not the cute munchkin grandkid) stuff and it is inevitably that ‘Dear Baby I Put up for Adoption’ letter. WHICH BRINGS BACK KATE BURTON TO GHOST READ AS ELLIS! AAAAAH! That was brilliant. It’s some sort of internal hallucination brought on by Maggie’s fever/cold-meds, but we take it and we love it because — KATE BURTON! And the letter is as expected — ‘I gave you up, I do not regret giving you up’ except so much more powerful and blasting and screamy and true Ellis Grey. Which sends Maggie into this spiral of ‘I wish I didn’t need her approval.’ There’s even a hot-dream moment where Maggie’s mom Diane shows up. That was sweet and a good way to pull Maggie out of her own head. But all the yes to the Kate Burton guest appearance!
It was also great to see the kids. Zola being Zola and talking about how she *DOES* wonder about her birth mother but doesn’t want to upset her real mother, Meredith, by talking about it. (When she came from Africa — wasn’t she with an orphanage and they said she’d lost her parents in an accident/sickness or something? That sticks for some reason.) Plus Ellis being cute and Bailey being obnoxious. And Winston and Zola had a great bonding moment. Nice to see Winston finally figuring out how/where he fits into this equation.
Cut to — Amelia in Kai’s world. Which was basically them just exploring their foundling, fledgling relationship but it seemed like a pretty big deal for primetime television. Grey’s normalized Kai and Amelia being in bed together just like you would expect any other character on this show who had gotten to that point with their love interest. And it was beautiful. But they may be headed for rocky roads — (A) Amelia is Amelia. (B) Kai does not want to be anybody’s parent/does not want kids. (C) Amelia booked it out of there the next morning because every second she’s gone from Seattle she misses her son Scout with every fiber of her being and she even said she hopes the ‘mother’ part of her life doesn’t scare Kai off. I think the bigger issue is now that the project in Minnesota is wrapping up — the long-distance thing might scare Kai off. Because Amelia is not going to take Scout away from Link and move to Minnesota, especially when Kai expressed very clearly their anti-interest in being a parent, and because there isn’t a plausible research reason for Kai to come to Seattle. Yet. Was very cool getting to see Kai playing in a band, though.
ABC
And lastly Mer & Nick. Off to a great start, romantic cabin in the woods — sex on the couch — BAM. Interrupted! That niece of his? Charlotte? Who was only ever referenced? Shows up — with apparently the same idea for a weekend getaway — with her — nature-man Silver. And the bomb-dropping announcement that she’s dropping out of college to go live in Costa Rica with Silver for a while. Surprisingly, Mer is on her side, as she says she sees herself in Charlotte. And when Mer tries to offer her opinion suggestion to Nick — he literally fires back ‘You have no idea — you grew up with a brilliant surgeon for a mother and her mother didn’t recognize her nine times out of ten, she’s genetically programed to screw up!’ And anyone who has been with Meredith from the start — which is obviously not Nick — WHAM. GUTPUNCH. But grown-up-whole-and-healed Meredith just kept quiet, nodded, and later they talked about how they weren’t used to having someone to take advice from and they both struggle with trusting others. In years prior, that would have resulted in a running, screaming, tequila-binging Meredith. Charlotte patches up with Nick, explaining that because of how great he was being a surrogate father, she WILL go back to college, and she’ll only do plant-based drugs if she does drugs at all.
We all wrap back in Seattle, with the looming hint that Nick is questioning career choices (to move him to Seattle?) and Maggie, Amelia, Scout, Mer, and Zola on the couch as Maggie burns the Ellis letter and the world seems in balance once more. Next week brings us back to Grey-Sloan and it looks like a whopper — there’s a big old snake (literally code for SNAKE) and Meredith making (what we know will be) the decision to NOT move permanently to Minnesota. Buckle up — or wrap up in a python — for next week!
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.
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