he ain’t heavy, that’s his baby!

The show opens with a mega-Seattle montage: Washington State Ferries (“Ferry Boats” to newbies), industrial waterfront scenery, and an jump cuts that zoom from above into the Grey Estate, followed by lots of potentially inconsistent driving to the hospital. It’s all reminiscent of the very first episode. Remember that? Good times.

And, it’s Meredith in bed for voiceover time. As she heads out of her Queen Anne house, gets on 90, we learn all about this episode’s themes “communication, it’s the first thing you really learn in life.”

Throughout the opening montage and voiceover, we see how the rest of the hospital staff is all atwitter with gossip about Meredith and Dempsey’s awkward break up. One woman reveals that “she didn’t even know he was married!” Another thinks that Meredith got what she deserved. The only semi-sympathetic chatter is from a guy who thinks it’s all kind of sad because she has to work here and everyone knows.

“funny thing is once we grow up, learn our words, and really start talking, the harder it becomes to know what to say or how to ask for what we really need.”

After the jump, miracle relationship counseling, a scared heart on fire, a pregnant man, relationships revealed, an actual Seattle exterior scene, and a picture of Meredith’s neighborhood!

approximate location of the Grey house, just northwest of Key Arena.

We cut from the hospital to find Patrick Dempsey and AddiSatan in a counselor’s office. With all of their Seattle-dropping, it would have been really neat if they were at the Gottman lab, but alas their therapist looks a lot like this year’s villain on Alias instead. Anyway. the reunited couple are fighting, not exactly a good sign for their relationship. The voiceover is apparently a cue for the counselor to ask Dempsey what he needs from Addison. He needs her to move to Seattle; She needs him to stop talking to Meredith if she’s going to abandon Manhattan for good and make her stay permanent. He can’t commit to this, because they do work together, and he’s not moving because he’s now a different person. AddiSatan knows, calling him a flannel-wearing wood shopping fisherman. Which is a totally unfair stereotype. Hardly anyone I know fishes.

Back at the hospital, the intern posse is congregating for rounds. Waiting for Meredith to arrive, George busts out a weird analogy about how she has become like a rare panda that everyone stares at. I guess if we ever need a nickname for Meredith, we can always go with “butterstick” [npr]. George, in his first of many tin ear moments asks Sandra Oh how she would feel if everyone knew about her hot and heavy supposedly inappropriate relationship with Chief Wannabe #2. George thinks they should do something to cheer her up, but Oh and Isabel suspiciously say that it’s under control.

When Meredith arrives, she’s in a trance but after a bit of prompting claims not to have gone mental on account of Dempsey not picking her. Isabel and Sandra Oh tell her that after rounds they have something to show her, telling her not to get assigned to a surgery this morning. After all these episodes, who knew that was an option?

Enter Patrick Dempsey and AddiSatan, awkwardly crossing paths with the pack of interns (sans Alex, who Isabel expects is off somewhere not kissing someone. In case you didn’t get it, she’s still really bitter about their bad date). Sandra Oh grabs the still-dazed Meredith and brings her along for rounds.

Case Number One is a sixtysomething woman with heart problems, here for her fifth surgery. As Oh is presenting the case, Alex walks in late. Bailey and Chief Wannabe #2 ask why they’re going to keep her heart beating during surgery, and the three conspiratorial interns pretend not to know. As Alex starts to explain it all, Bailey cuts him off on account of his tardiness and lets George answers something about scar tissue blah blah and looks awfully proud of himself assigned to assist Burke with this patient, whose husband cowers near the closet, trying to pick out a shirt for her to wear.

Outside the patient’s room, Bailey tells Alex that he was being punished for lateness (not the elevator), and sends him off to help Patrick Dempsey. She also yells at the girl power trio for embarrassing her with the non-answering.

But their mission was a success. In the Stairwell of Gossip, Isabel and Sandra Oh try to get Meredith pumped up for their top secret case. It’s the coolest medical mystery oh has ever seen and they stole it from psych. After Sandra Oh’s long speech about how awesome, and secret, and career-risky it is for them Meredith says “hell yeah” and they enter the room to find a blond guy complaining about how he needs to pee all the time. This is the exciting case, frequent urination? But wait . . . there’s more! His frequent bathroom breaks are merely a symptom of his apparent pregnancy. OMG, this would have been ever so shocking if it wasn’t teased on every single commercial for this episode.

– opening credits –

We return from the commercials (Yes, commercials after the credits today. They really can’t seem to settle on a standard teaser-act structure for this show) to find the interns examining Mr. Mom as he explains that everyone thought that he was just sympathetically gaining wait along with his wife’s actual pregnancy. When he got to the hospital, people assumed that he was a psych case, but he claims to be able to prove that his pregnancy is the real thing. Isabel hears something moving around in there. During this exposition, a nurse walks in to question why three strange doctors are surrounding a guy who isn’t their patient in a room that’s supposed to be unoccupied. Sandra Oh dismisses her rudely, saying something about how nurses are for cleaning bedpans and from watching any other hospital drama, we know that she’s in for some unpleasantness in the very near future. Meredith is disappointed to hear that for all of their stealthiness, neither Isabel nor Sandra thought to grab the guy’s chart. This oversight is apparently an excuse for them to engage in more spy-ops. Meredith pretends to flirt/chat-up her “friend” at the Psych Desk O’ Charts. She doesn’t do a very good job of it, but it gives the resident a chance to get in a dig about how he thought that Grey only talked to attendings (ouch!) and for the other two doctors to snag Mr. Mom’s chart.

Next we meet Dempsey’s patient, an Asian girl in a wheelchair. Her parents have brought her in for a pain reducing surgery to treat her “dancing legs” and explain that she’s planning to start at America’s Best College of 1999, Seattle Central. Nice that they’re spreading the higher ed name-dropping; although Dad explains that she’s going there because it’s close to home and mom interjects that “she’s not ready” to be on her own. Instead of just doing the nerve surgery, Dempsey wants to enlarge her bladder to improve her quality of life so that she’ll be more self-sufficient, free of catheters and messy bags, and able to have a more normal sex life. The parents are nervous about it, and the girl (who we’ll call Miss Daisy) is sort of flirting with Alex. In the hallway, Dempsey assigns Alex to nanny duty: he’s to take Miss Daisy for tests to keep her away from Mom and Dad while he uses his “creativity” to convince her to demand the bladder surgery. He calls this “making the decision for herself”, but clearly he’s hoping that Alex’s ability to charm teenage girls will come in handy.

George and Chief Wannabe visit Scarred Heart Lady, who’s complaining nonstop about her room while her husband dotes on her every need, giving her ice and letting the sunlight (!) in. George thanks Chief Wannabe #2 for picking him (and without an embarrassing “pick me, love me” speech!), and Burke tells him, “you’re my guy.” Rather than bask in this little moment of affirmation, George blows it by wondering how that couple can be happy by revealing that he knows all about Burke’s forbidden love affair with Sandra Oh. Only after Chief Wannabe #2 walks away uncomfortably does George recognize his own idiocy. After all of these episodes, you’d think he’d learn to practice what he’s about to say in his head before saying it out loud.

In the hallway, the female intern trio run into Dempsey, but use their girl power to protect trancy Meredith and give him the cold shoulder.

Next, we find Alex wheeling Miss Daisy around the hospital. She asks what he did to get stuck with her, and he tells her about being late for rounds. When he sees the girl power trio across the hallway, he madly chases after them, taking wheelchair chick along for the ride. Isabel stops when he calls her “dollface” (take that however you will) and mumbles something about a favor. Once again, she demonstrates her anger over the bad date by repeatedly telling him no, because he’s “like a broken favor” and she’s saying no to his favor and no to him. Er, by the way, she’s pissed about getting all prettied up and wasting her one night off in two weeks on a date that didn’t even end with a kiss, and calls him a shallow coward. Miss Daisy sums things up by telling Alex that Isabel is really mad at him. The wisdom of children.

Back in Mr. Mom’s room, the interns are waiting for a urine sample to test. We also meet the actually pregnant wife. Meredith takes his history by asking about what precipitated his psychotic event that brought him to the hospital, and again Mr. Mom insists that he isn’t psychotic, just pregnant. While he rustles through his wife’s bag for proof of his delicate condition, the Psych resident busts in to the room to find out what’s going on with the surgical interns stealing his case. Bailey enters, and the interns fight over their territory (distended belly vs male hysterical pregnancy!). Meanwhile, Mr. Mom passes an over the counter pregnancy test and Bailey announces that he’s definitely a surgical patient now!

– commercial break –
We return to find Mr. Mom being excessively photographed. Who is this photographer? Bailey tells her interns that while she doesn’t condone stealing patients, but congratulates them anyway. AddiSatan enters to assure Mr. Mom that he isn’t pregnant. He’s relieved, and Bailey sends Isabel off to order a whole bunch of labs to check for tumor markers and to clear space in CT. There’s something about the photographers being for medical journals, and banquet highlight reels, as Sandra and Isabel pose by their prize patient. Grey looks on, quietly annoyed.

Despite finding the patient, Oh gets paged away from the action by the wronged nurse, who drops a load of (literally) crappy patients on her. Retribution, like Oh, is sometimes bitch.

Marching Miss Daisy’s parents around the hospital, Dempsey is still trying to sell the bladder enlargement surgery to the patients. Independence! her own apartment! the beach! college! dating! marriage! Dad seems much keener on it that Mom, saying that she’s not a child anymore. Mom, not surprisingly, disagrees.

Mrs. Scarred Heart is still complaining as George wheels her back to her terrible room. Her husband apologizes for her rudeness and explains that people say it’s a miracle that she’s still alive, four surgeries later. George asks what Mr S-H thinks about his miraculous wife, and he responds by saying something about wedding vows, sickness, and health. He’s much politer.

At lunch, we find the interns gathered around a table in the shade of an umbrella! So much for the rainy season — or maybe they’re rubbing our string of rainy days in our faces. George is furious that they got a pregnant guy and didn’t tell him. As a consolation prize, Isabel offers to sell him O.R. floor space for $50. Meredith is disgusted that they’re selling tickets without knowing what’s wrong with him. Or maybe that they’re selling tickets at all. Sandra Oh responds that obviously he has something inside that needs to come out; so why not be a little entrepreneurial about it? George boasts about how he was the new go-to guy for Chief Wannabe #2, until he blew it by talking about his relationship with Sandra Oh (who wants him to keep it on the QT, obvs.). Alex wheels Miss Daisy over to the table and, for the first time in show history [?] joins the foursome for lunch. Quickly, Oh gets paged away for more torture patients. Wheelchair chick is really excited about cafeteria food (homeschoolers, so easily impressed!) and asks if the interns are the cool kids since everyone else seems to be looking at and talking about them. And my them, she means Meredith. Yet another reason not to homeschool your kids — they won’t be able to tell the difference between being at the center of good gossip and being the scorned subject of bad gossip.

After lunch, Isabel, Meredith, and Mr. Mom find their way to the CT scanner. The CT tech is taking bets on what’s inside and won the chance to do the scan by promising to buy her colleagues beer. Meredith seems to be the only one who thinks that all of this wagering and profiteering over a patient might not be the best form, ethics or human decency wise. There’s no time for all of that nonsensical appropriate behavior chatter, because the CT scan reveals that Mr. Mom’s abdominal mass has teeth.

Isabel says that Sandra Oh is going to be really mad about missing the revealing scan. And not only for that. Because we next find her catching up with the nurse guy from two weeks ago. The one who called Patrick Dempsey “McSteamy.” Nice that he got another week’s work out of the show, this time to send Sandra Oh in to take care of an off screen projectile vomiter.

Freaking out about her bad string of assignments, Oh meets up with Chief Wannabe #2 by the big board. She assumes that Bailey knows about her inappropriate love affair and is using Nazi techniques to punish her. He says that George knows, too and thinks that it’s time to come clean to manage the damage themselves. The Chief interrupts and they scatter, complimenting him on his board. Both the Chief and the audience, say “huh?”

At Scarred Heart’s bedside, George is taking her blood pressure while she makes more demands: about taking the tube out post-surgery and complaining about the tightness of the blood pressure cuff. When her husband fails to do her bidding, she’s not happy. And that makes him really unhappy. When she’s unhappy with his vague defense of George, Mr. S-H pretty much flips out. He tells her to “just shut up,” chiding her for complaining all the time, and telling her that “a little silence would be nice.” As he continues to yell at her to shut up, the wife looks dismayed and then her heart monitors start making really bad noises.

–commercials–

When we get back, the machines are still sounding really unhappy with Mrs. Scarred Heart’s heart. Burke enters to say that she has ST elevations and is she’s having a heart attack. The husband blames himself, perhaps rightfully, and it’s off to surgery for his wife.

Mr. Mom’s room is getting a lot more crowded, as lots of people in scrubs snap pictures of him. Bailey reveals that he as a mesenteric teratoma and everyone is shocked to hear this diagnosis for an adult male. The Chief enters to be amazed by the CT scans, the growth’s mandible, and to look at the patient’s giant belly. Bailey explains that his elevated HCG levels explain pregnancy test results. The Chief says that these test fooling levels probably also mean that his abdomen is home to a malignant tumor. Man, this is the second giant tumor case in this show’s short history! The writers must really like gross growths.

Meredith notices that Mr. Mom is feeling uncomfortable (“looking green”) from all of the attention and suggests that they give him some air. After Isabel explains how rare such a tumor is, Mrs. Mom points out that everyone’s talking not to them, but about them. Since the show’s all about her, Meredith knows how it feels. Sandra Oh enters with rectal jelly on her scrubs — an incidental plot detail, but if I’m to be scarred by it; so are you — and quickly gets re-paged away from the action.

Meredith tells Bailey that all the people and attention is making them panic. As much fun as it is to pick on Meredith for occasionally being self-centered, it’s nice that someone noticed.

We cut to one of the waterfront piers, probably somewhere in the high sixties, where Dempsey is meeting Addison for lunch. She finally found a lunch spot with a view in her best of “Seattle” guide. She complains that it isn’t quite as good as brown-bagging it on top of the Empire State building, but seems pretty happy to find a cute little viewfinder. He complains about her complaining and she asks if there’s anything he likes about her. Dempsey, charmed by “ferry boats” is also charmed by her fondness of little viewfinders and her ability to find them in any city she lives in. This seems like a great foundation for giving marriage a second shot, although AddiSatan asserts that she doesn’t live in “Seattle” yet. She asks if he’s going to stop talking to Meredith. Rather than mentioning that he hasn’t been allowed to talk to her all day, he says that he will stop taking to her when he’s ready. Again, she threatens to leave if he refuses to cut Meredith off. He declares that they’re at an impasse. I’m glad that this scene took place on location, because otherwise it would have been a lot less interesting.

In Seattle Grace, Sandra Oh and Chief Wannabe #2 are at something of an impasse, too. She doesn’t want to tell the Chief about their relationship and she still doesn’t. He speechifies about how it will be better for their reputations to let their boss know rather than have a scandal erupt and wonders if she is simply unwilling to acknowledge their relationship at all. Oh, says “we. are a couple.” He walks away and says “fine” as he and George head off to heart surgery. At this point, we wonder about what sort of heart attack emergency gives doctors a few spare minutes to have love talk on their way to lifesaving.

Back to Miss Daisy, Alex has wheeled her up to the Abandoned Hallway of Intern Hangouts. He wants to know what’s up with her not wanting to have the bladder enlarging procedure. She thinks that things are fine the way they are. He’s fine with this, since he needs to study nuclear somethingfancynameology (to remind us that he failed his big medical tests and has only one chance to make them up, which resulted in him being even more of a jerk to Isabel, etc. etc.). She wants to know if that’s why he was late or if he wants Isabel to be his girlfriends, and lets him know that she’s not a kid. She’s 18, which is obvious foreshadowing, and could go back to her room whenever she wants to. Alex brushes her off, and she rolls away, confirming Isabel’s diagnosis of his assholery. He tries to refute it, but admits that he is a cute ass, right? This stops her in her tracks to find out more about why he didn’t kiss a person that he liked (since she’d be all over that situation.) He counters by saying that he’d lose the bag around his ankle if he had a choice, but that that doesn’t apply since he doesn’t let his mom do all of his talking. They have a cute little play insult fight, which ends with him calling her a two-wheeler, which she deems politically incorrect, but funny.

Back at the fifth heart surgery for Mrs. Scarred Heart, everyone is packed into the gallery to watch. When Patrick Dempsey returns from his picnic lunch to join them, the interns and other spectators look shocked to see him in the same place as Meredith; so he waits in the doorway looking awkward.

Just as Sandra Oh is admiring the perfectly exposed beating heart (the patient’s, not Meredith or Dempsey’s), it catches on fire. Yes. The patient’s heart bursts into flames, for no apparent reason except that it might make interesting television to have a code red and evacuates all unnecessary personnel. Once they shut down the oxygen, George starts manual respiration and Chief Wannabe #2 says that they might just have a chance.

– commercials –

On a stairway, Isabel, Sandra Oh, and Meredith are still coming to terms with the O.R. fire. repeating over and over that “she was on fire.” It was freak accident, and both George and Chief Wannabe #2 are fine (Oh asked), although George is part of the “she was on fire” repetition cult until Burke sweeps him away.

Oh gets paged again and decides to confront Bailey about being best intern she’s got and being wasted on puke and boils. Although she gets it and probably deserves it, she earned/stole the tumor surgery and wants the punishment to end. Bailey has no idea what she’s talking about. The scorned nurse reveals that with a little respect she could have have saved her self a long day of painful pages. Bailey summarized the common knowledge that pissing off the nurses == stupid, and Oh begs to be allowed to scrub in.

In a surgical gallery, AddiSatan complains to the Chief about Dempsey wanting her to move here. The Chief does too (which everyone but AddiSatan probably remembers from the last six episodes), telling her that if she stays in “Seattle” she’ll be front page news. He’s willing to pair that fame with fortune by paying her a lot of money and making Seattle Grace into one of the foremost neonatal hospitals west of Manhattan. She likes the sound of him putting his money where his mouth is.

Dempsey finally thinks that he has a chance to talk to Meredith alone, but Bailey cuts him off as he approaches, telling him that “she’s a human traffic accident and everyone’ slowing down to look at the wreckage.” Bailey insists that he leave her alone to mend. Even though he wants to find out if she’s O.K., she shoos him away because he’s unable to recognize that talking to her will only make things worse.

In yet another abandoned hospital hallway, Miss Daisy is explaining that she wants the operation, but isn’t sure if she’s ready to take care of herself with all of the sex, drugs, love, and being on her own. After all, she’s never had a boyfriend and has never been kissed. She wonders if she’s the oldest living college freshmen not to have gone to first base. Aside from the age range of college freshmen making this a not particularly meaningful statistic, it seems like her self-opinion might benefit from a Steve Carrel – Drew Barrymore double feature. Instead she has Alex to assure her that there are older losers than out there. In yet another situation required to be covered on every hospital drama, the young patient pleads with her somewhat attractive physician to kiss her. Because the writers made sure to let us know that she was legal and the show isn’t always the keenest on doctor-patient ethics, it seems possible that he might give in to her request. Instead, he leans in and givers her a little speech about the power of love. He tells her, “for a kiss to be really good it needs to mean something. You want it to be with someone you can’t get out of your head. So that when your lips finally touch, you feel it everywhere. A kiss so hot, so deep, you never want to come up for air. You can’t cheat your first kiss . . . because when you find that right person to first kiss it’s everything.” I present all of this sap because it might be important later in the episode, and to justify the decommissioning of the Brash Young Guy nickname.

In the waiting area, George and Chief Wannabe #2 explain the burning heart situation to the patient’s husband. They let him know that heart fires are a very unusual situation meriting an investigation, his wife will be fine. As they’re debriefing him, the husband appears to burst into tears. But this hands steepled over the bridge of his nose gesture is really cover for hysterical laughter. He can’t believe that Mrs. Scarred Heart was able to survive a fifth surgery that included having her heart catch on fire. Her survival suggests that she’s some sort of mythical monster who’s never going to die. The doctors are speechless as Mr. S-H hands off his wife’s suitcase, telling them that he’s not waiting any longer. He asks that they let his wife know that she’ll survive without him and laughs his way all the way to the door, exiting with a salute.

An enormous crowd of disgusting people have inappropriately gathered in Mr. Mom’s room, likely making him feel like the climactic “I am not an animal!” scene from the Elephant Man. But instead of a dramatic speech from the patient, Meredith chases the gawkers away (after all, it is her show), telling them that this isn’t a zoo. And if they want to stare at someone, why not stare at sad and pathetic and heartbroken Meredith, who might have gone mad. Pushing everyone out of the room she tells them that they should be ashamed of themselves (they don’t look particularly remorseful) She’s on a roll, because as she catches Dempsey’s eye in the hallway she asks him what he’s looking at.

– commercial —

George and Chief Wannabe #2 are still in shock from Mr. Scarred Heart’s dramatic wife-shedding. George wonders which one of them is responsible for tell the wife. Burke totally cracks up. When he recovers his composure, he thanks George for helping out in surgery the high pressure surgery. In response, George puts his hand on Burke’s shoulder and apologizes for bringing up the thing about Sandra Oh. Another scene, another inappropriate George moment. Chief Wannabe #2 walks off, and George does his Charlie Brown dejection look, until he turns around and says, “You’re still my guy, O’Malley.” Maybe the Chief Wannabe was once a hapless intern, just like George? Or being in love with Sandra Oh really puts rose tinted glasses on the whole worldview?

There’s a new pretty night flyover shot of the head of the penis building, and we return to Mrs. Mom holding her husband’s hand as he heads off to surgery. Mr. Mom requests that Grey protect his little teratoma from the unkind spectation and an eternity in a jar full of preservatives.

And then the voiceover montage returns to close out the episode “At the end of the day, there are some things you just can’t help but talk about.”
(cut to a crowded gallery of spectators watching the teratomectomy. Meredith takes the giant growth off to dispose of it. Which seems unlikely given the reputation of pathologists for not ever wanting to get rid of specimens, but let’s just go with it for emotional value.)
(Sandra Oh rushes to the pretty bridge in the middle of the hospital to try to stop Chief Wannabe #2 from going into the Chief’s office to disclose their relationship. He pauses to hear that she’s worried about her career and refuses to be the next Meredith Grey. She busted her ass to get there and people won’t make allowances. He doesn’t quite believe that’s what it’s about. He says that everyone knowing is the point, but she really just doesn’t want to tell the Chief.)
“There are some things we just don’t want to hear.”
(Burke continues to the Chief’s office)
“And some things we say because we can’t be silent any longer.”
Miss Daisy, followed by Alex, wheels her way back to her room. She tells her parents that she’s getting the operation. Mom objects, but dad sticks up for her. She’s not cheating any more by giving up control, because she’s ready to take care of herself. Dempsey and Alex look proud of their little two wheeler.)
“. . . some things are more than what you say, they’re what you do . . .”
(The Chief appreciates his wannabe’s candor. Although Burke is ready to take whatever punishment was doled out to Dempsey, the Chief says that it’s all good since he’s not married, not hiding it, and values the relationship. He understands it. Again, to this naive viewer, it really seems like there should be more to this, but it’s only television right? Sandra Oh is looking through the Chief’s big office windows the whole time. At the end of the speech, he turns around to give her an approving look.)
“. . . some things you say because there’s no other choice . . .”
(At their second counseling appointment of the day [!] AddiSatan reveals that she’s decided to move to Seattle. Dempsey says that Meredith is now out of his life. The counselor is pleased with their remarkable progress, saying that it’s quite a leap. AddiSatan cutes that this is what marriage is, right? She tries to get Dempsey to take her hand, but he is either is, or pretends to be, oblivious to the gesture. The plot thickens? OR does it?)
“. . . some things you keep to yourself.”
(The fab four are at the only bar in Seattle, where Izzie is is splitting up a pile of cash. The sold $485 in surgery tickets. And a final bit of disbelief is suspended. Sandra Oh reveals that she made even more cash for them to share. Meredith enters and says hi to Joe the Bartender, surprised by their awkward silence to find that her friends really don’t have anything other than her love life to talk about. She’s in good spirits about it though.)
“. . . and not to often, but every now and then . . . )
(Alex enters, stares down Isabel, throws her on the bar, and gives her the kiss that he described to Miss Daisy earlier in the episode)
“some things speak for themselves.”
(Alex, comes up for air. Says good night. Isabel looks happy. Wows, seriouslys, and high fives all around)

–

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