ABC
Hold the phone — shut the front door — or whatever it is the kids say these days. (Who knows because I definitely do not speak meme, TikTok, and reels…) But — as we say on Grey’s Anatomy — SERIOUSLY!?
Yes. They finally did it. An episode that — while not wholly in depth — totally gets to the heart of important things about sex — how to safely and effectively prevent pregnancy, how to understand consent, and all those other oh so important things. And they had Teddy and Owen all up in the mix too!
And while this episode was wild and crazy and fun (and so very informative), it was definitely using that wild, crazy funness to balance out the severity of three huge overarching topics that are super heavy, super serious, and handled on this show in such an impressive way.
Addison Montgomery — a ‘recurring-when-she-feels-like-it’ character who we all loved to hate while hating that we loved her from the first seasons a billion years ago — is BACK. AGAIN. And almost had her giveaway moment with Lucas … she called him Shep? But whatever, that’s less important. She is spiraling out of control because she feels erased — and rightly so — after the real-life overturning of Roe v Wade. That’s the catalyst for this episode.
Bailey is BACK working with Addison to get some real, knowledgeable sex-ed videos (reels/TikToks) filmed so that kids can safely prevent pregnancy as so many states across America have now outlawed it completely. She makes the statement that many 18 year olds are turning up at her private practice, asking for prophylactic tubal ligation for fear of becoming pregnant in a hostile state while away at college. It’s a devastating state of affairs (both on the show and in real life) but she’s doing what she can, fighting the good fight every day.
And while the interns (they’ve officially been dubbed interns) do end up letting loose and having a whole lot of informative fun (which eventually turns into an excuse to have 2/3 of the cast just shaking their butts in front of a screen for reels/TikTok) the bigger takeaway is the two girls (high schoolers from Tuck’s school that Bailey organized as a practice audience) both have encounters that result in them becoming patients.
The teenager about to be a senior who realizes her period is late, gets a blood test, only to discover she’s pregnant and completely freaks out over how she isn’t ready — because she hasn’t fed her fish since Tuesday and all it takes is a handful of flakes and she still hasn’t done it and human kids need real, actual food, every day. And she’ll forget to feed her kid and go to jail and being the pregnant girl senior year will be awful because she’ll get made fun of because kids are mean. It’s stunning how intelligent she is, and horrifying that she could be forced to raise a child she knows she’s not ready to raise. Montgomery and Schmidt explain that she’s eligible for a medical abortion — and they do a phenomenal job of explaining exactly what happens and exactly how safe it is and how extremely rare complications are. STELLAR TEACHING MOMENT.
Another girl student has sudden horrific cramps, which turns out to be a huge ovarian cyst, causing ovarian torsion, for which she ends up undergoing emergency surgery with Jo, Addison, and Bailey. The poor mother is beating herself up saying she always just told her daughter to tough it up and that rough periods ran in the family. But Bailey reminds her it isn’t her fault that if you aren’t adequately taught what to look for, how can you ever know what’s out of the ordinary?
Teddy (who by the way has the most amazing butt to showoff during ‘dancing for TikTok’ at the end) totally gets a burn-down on Owen during their segment of Sex-Ed, which is the ‘consent is consent and it’s not consent if’ section. And she goes off on a perfectly informative tangent about erogenous zones — wherein he looks baffled and says ‘really? the armpit?’ and she rolls him right under that bus. ‘Yeah, because like most men — you go straight for’ and she grabs at her breasts. BRILLIANT. By the end of the episode they (along with just about every coupled-up couple, including a few new couplings) are having wild, intense sex … including some new erogenous zone stimulation (throwbacks to Mark Sloan and the chocolate) and the conclusion is that Owen definitely should have had sex-ed sooner.
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The other two super-heavies in this episode are Simone’s grandmother, who has advanced Alzheimer’s, showing up at the hospital, looking for her daughter — Denise — (who she can’t remember died in childbirth years ago, giving birth to Simone) and has an episode in the lobby, which Meredith-the-Alzheimer’s-Whisperer happens to be standing nearby to diffuse. And she discloses flat-out to Simone about how in her intern year her mom came in with Diverticulitis and kept fleeing her patient room thinking she was late for surgery. So now Meredith — and Lucas-the-Shepherd knows. (He got the grandma handed off to him — and clued in on the ‘something’s not right’ when she called the place Seattle Grace.)
Of course now that he knows Simone’s secret, and she knows his (she looked him up and learned he’s a Shepherd) there are two sets of secret-keeping going on.
Zola’s panic attack at the end of Episode 2 has repeated itself, so Meredith lets her skip school, if she stays in the chief’s office and does her homework. Which of course … she does not. And Nick catches her out, being the surgery junkie she is, looking for an OR gallery to observe in. It isn’t until they’re messing around in the skills lab (Zola and Nick) that Zola picks up one of Kai’s cognitive puzzle testers and solves it instantaneously that they realize Zola is neuro-gifted. Oh yeah — Kai’s in Seattle. Snuck in to surprise Amelia. They’re still a thing. Hooray.
Maggie’s blaming herself for not seeing the signs in Zola sooner because they were the exact same things she went through when she was that age. Meredith is a little upset that they ended up cognitively testing Zola without informing her, but that fury fades into frustration over not knowing what to do to help, which Nick, Amelia, and the rest ensure that they are going to do everything to challenge and nurture Zola’s gift.
All in all it was a pretty solid, and entertaining episode. Blue and Jules are that new-coupling couple. Link and Amelia were having some kind of platonic foot-rub thing. And even Simone and Lucas were having human intimacy, of the very platonic and very fun variety — in the tunnels (where interns belong!). Next week looks like a Halloween-palooza of sorts. Should be fun!
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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