ABC
‘You have no idea how quickly rumors spread around here!’ Amelia nailed that one right on the head! I mean that’s the comedy-not-comedy of this week’s episode. There’s got to be something funny happening back at base-camp as this week’s episode — ‘When I Get To The Border’ — takes a three-way split between Grey-Sloan in Seattle, a clinic in Pullman, ID and of course, Boston.
We don’t actually spend much time at home this week — but that’s okay. The big plot point hitting hard there is this perpetual poop-storm brewing over Lucas Adams letting the other interns think that he and Amelia are sleeping together because that rumor is far better than them knowing he’s a ‘Shepherd’. And while she initially freaks out in that funny ‘your mess, you clean it up’ kind of way, Amelia doubles down by the end of the episode, telling him he’s got three days to clear up the misunderstanding or she will. Totally the correct decision. Also, we’re spending an inordinate amount of time in the Gift Shoppe this season … but the interns and their, ‘Oh, Schmidt!’ responses to pages from Schmidt are hilarious.
Way out east in Boston we’ve got Meredith, Jackson, Tom Koracick, Catherine Avery, and Zola all in one bundle. Zola is shadowing at a STEM-school while Meredith has a mini-meltdown in Jackson’s office over not knowing what to do about being completely helpless when it comes to Zola. The fact that Meredith readily admits she has no idea how to help Zola through all her trauma — losing her birth family, her country, her father dying, Meredith almost dying, and that while they are in therapy she isn’t sure it’s enough — is just amazing and really refreshing to see. The maturity level that Jackson brings to the table is astonishing. He really grew up as a character!
Meanwhile Catherine is bickering non-stop with Tom. Her tumor has grown. Two millimeters but still. That means it isn’t in remission. And while he isn’t necessarily trying to force her into more treatment, he is 100% trying to force her to be honest with Richard and Jackson, who at present believe she is still in remission. You do get a very nice moment with Catherine and Harriet at the end of the episode, and a picture frame on Harriet’s nightstand of Jackson and April together (Guess we couldn’t bring Apes back for this episode. Ah well. Can’t have too many returners all at once.)
You also get the most touching moment with Zola and Meredith at the end of the episode in some diner, where Zola asks what if she’s not a doctor and Meredith tells her point blank that no matter what she is, she will make her mark, and that she is and always has been extraordinary. THAT will give you all the feels, at least the joyous feels.
ABC
Because believe me — ‘all the feels’ you are getting from Addison and Bailey out in Pullman and then Moscow, Idaho are the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, murderous-rage kinda feels.
It’s a terrible shame that the people who desperately need to see this episode — the lawmakers who do not fully understand the ramifications of total abortion bans or ‘heartbeat bills’ — that those people will not watch this episode, and even if they do — they just won’t get it.
Bailey and Addison — who basically decide that they are the new badass medical Thelma & Louise or Bonnie & Clyde without driving off the cliff or getting gunned down — are on a mission to volunteer at a clinic desperately in need of help. They encounter a patient — 39-year-old female, mother of a five-year-old girl, who had an ectopic pregnancy because of her C-section scar. (Ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy in which the fertilized egg implants outside of the uterus, most commonly in the fallopian tube.)
This woman, whose OBGYN refuses to perform a necessary, live-saving procedure on her (terminating the pregnancy despite a heartbeat because ectopic pregnancies are extremely dangerous to the mother, and almost always not viable for the fetus) because he doesn’t want to lose his license or be charged with a felony under the new ‘post-Roe’ laws, ends up in the medical van with Bailey and Addison … when her ectopic pregnancy ruptures.
The horrifying carnage and result is that despite doing the best they could with what they had — this woman bleeds out in their care and dies.
An otherwise healthy woman, whose pregnancy would not have been viable, bled out in the back of a transport van and died because her OBGYN didn’t give her a necessary, life-saving procedure. And you get that tenfold when Addison goes bombastic off-the-charts at the cop who asks her what happens when they finally respond to the distress calls phoned in by Bailey.
Bailey even has this deep confession where she explains to Addison that she was always pro-choice, but never believed that it would be the choice for her personally. And then she got pregnant and miscarried her baby girl and to add insult to injury had to have a DNC (to prevent infection and sepsis) to complete her miscarriage because her miscarriage did not complete itself. She says, quite profoundly, ‘I did not choose an abortion. But I did need a DNC. They are the same procedure.’
It is brutal. But this is the reality that we live in. Women dying needlessly because the men who make the laws have no idea what they’re doing. And Grey’s is doing what it does best by using its platform to spread the word to millions of viewers. (We won’t even get into the pro-lifers rallying outside the clinic in Idaho, that was bad enough.)
The end of the episode leaves us with hope, however. Meredith and Zola (and Ellis and Bailey) are moving to Boston. And Meredith is going to cure Alzheimer’s. Or die trying. And Bailey explains the PRT (the mobile OR from Station 19) to Addison and basically gifts it to her, so that she can drive around the country and serve the underserved — like southern Illinois, where they expect an influx of 14,000 women needing pregnancy and abortion care because of abortion restrictions in neighboring states.
Next week is the fall finale … after just six episodes. (That’s total bull-stuff … but I don’t run the network.) And it’s a crossover. In a lightning strike. And it looks very much like Nick Marsh is the one that gets taken down in the helicopter that gets struck down by lightning. ‘One of their own’ and you see literally everyone else in the preview except Nick — and the victim they pull out (on the Station 19 side) appears to be a white man. Ben even phones it in saying they’re not ready. (I mean, we can’t relocate the man to Boston after we just relocated him from the midwest … so we’ll just kill him off. That’s a pretty standard Grey’s MO.)
Grey’s Anatomy may be fictional but the issues they cover are real. If you want to make a difference but aren’t a medical doctor? Go out and vote.
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.
Share this post
