quick! can you spot grant cogswell in this cgi melee?

Hello, and welcome to Grey’s Anatomy [abc] ripped from the headlines and made much more horrific! After the jump, a recap of part one (of several) about what happens when a Washington State Ferry and a Cargo Ship meet in a “fog bank”.

We open the episode with Meredith looking distraught in the bath tub. Staring off into space, the voiceover kicks in: “disappearances happen in science. disease can suddenly fade away. tumors go missing. we open someone up to discover the cancer is gone. it’s unexplained. it’s rare. but it happens. we call it misdiagnosis. saying we never saw it in the first place. any explanation but the truth. that life is full of vanishing acts.”

With this, she slips completely under the water’s surface, and the p.o.v. switches to scubavision: “if something that we didn’t know we had disappears. do we miss it?”

Enter Patrick Dempsey, who finds her all the Graduate in the tub. We see him from below the water as he pulls Meredith back up for air. Cut to an empty bedroom scene [George's?] then to Izzie also looking pensive over her morning coffee. Grey and Dempsey argue their way into the kitchen over whether she was actually trying to drown herself and whether everything’s o.k. in the wake of her mother’s brief moments of mean-spirited lucidity. He encourages her to take the day off from “triage exercises” for her mother’s heart surgery, but she refuses to be rescued, saying that he isn’t her knight in shining whatever. He thinks that she’s angry that he saved her life by pulling her out of the tub {this is really melodramatic, no?}. She tells him that he has his own place and he doesn’t need to be with her all the time talking. He says that this is the happily ever part, the guy’s supposed to be there all the time saying things because girls love it, and he is her knight in shining whatever. She rushes him off to work, promising to see him later. He kisses her and walks out.

Meredith assures Izzie that she didn’t try to drown herself. But she’s not judgey, since she was up all night eating everything, including a tub of butter. Meredith asks if Izzie ever feels like she’s disappearing; she replies “all the time”. She can’t understand why she can’t be that happily ever after girl; Izzie doesn’t know what she believes in anymore. {I’ve already sort of forgotten what Izzie is so depressed about? Dead Denny? Married George? all of the above?}

[a big ferry steams toward the city. usual scene, but today = ominous!]

At the hospital Sandra Oh and Burke walk up the steps together. She wants to keep their engagement on the q.t.. Or at least, he’s not allowed to tell anyone until she tells her friends here. He says that he also has friends at the hospital and she looks confused until he mentions Patrick Dempsey. She won’t let him announce it to him first until she tells Meredith. Otherwise it would be a thing. She promises to tell them today, and asks that he just wait.

Elevator of surgical meetings. The Chief and Addison are on the same car. Surprise surprise, enter Dempsey, who notices the Chief’s very noticeable dye job. The salt and pepper has been replaced by an oil slick. He asks what’s different, Addison says to leave him be. Enter Burke and Sloane. Repeat awkward glance, hair question. Sloane states the obvious: he dyed it. Dempsey and Burke ask why. Addison smacks them with a newspaper and tells them to leave him be. Hilarity ensues. The chief confesses that men with grey hair are less noticed. Burke figures out that it’s the ladies. All the guys crack up and tell him that it looks very natural. On this, the longest elevator trip of all time, Addison then has time to line the three of them up against the back wall to point out that the Chief is all alone and that they have no idea what that’s like with their living with Sandra Oh, dating the perfect twelve year old, and being a manwhore. His wife left him after 25 years of marriage and if he wants to dye his hair they should let him be.

In the DDMC, Bailey and Torres wheel in some supplies. Callie talks about her weird situation with George, she being his boss at work, he being her boss in the bedroom. Bailey speaks for us all and cuts her off at that cross into t.m.i. land. She acknowledges their difficulties, but says that their sex life can never be held in her mind. Ever.

Enter Sidney, that super chipper resident who Izzie had to follow around and who took over when Bailey was on her two days of maternity leave. Bailey grimaces at her sunny entrance. She compliments her on the clinic and how it’s a great strategy to making chief resident (the fifth year resident who rules all other residents.) {She correctly points out that maybe learning complicated surgeries instead of hanging out in a free clinic (teaching fourteen-year-old girls about menstruation and not sleeping around might be a better plan of attack, but whatevs.)} Bailey seems to have no idea what she’s talking about, which seems pretty fantastically out of character for someone portrayed, until last week, as someone very ambitious. Sidney says that she’s a competitor and “grrrs” as unthreateningly as one person can growl. To which, Bailey replies that she bites and does the Iceman thing from Top Gun.

Also showing up for work, Meredith glances in on her mother, but since she’s back in Alzheimer’s land she doesn’t need to drop in to say hello.

Locker room. Sandra Oh does a cute thing where she steels up her courage to tell Meredith about her engagement, peeking out from behind the door and smiling. But Grey keeps pouring on the cranky “what!?s” and she doesn’t get a chance to break the news. Izzie smiles her way into George and inquires about life in a hotel, reminding him that his old room is still there, next to hers, and he can move right back in anytime. He says that her offer would be sweet if it wasn’t so condescending. He’s not a boy who needs rescuing.

Next its off to triage practice. Izzie assesses a fake broken bone on Sidney incorrectly, dooming her to certain death, which she acts out. Bailey lectures them about the importance of being quick and thorough in an emergent situation. How convenient, because in comes the Chief to announce that there’s an unspecified mass casualty event nearby. He needs to assemble a team to send into the field immediately. It’s not part of the drill. All hands on deck, etc. Bizarrely, he doesn’t have details, just orders. {And here, the believability of the episode takes a further turn to the unlikely. I admit that I know nothing about emergencies that I didn’t learn by watching E.R., but it seems pretty stupid that they don’t know what happened and that they’d choose this batch of first-years who rarely seem competent to assist in surgery or to successfully make it through the triage drill out into a huge emergency situation.}

They all suit up and grab their bags o’ emergency supplies. Sandra Oh tries to tell Meredith about her engagement, but she interrupts to say that she better not be pregnant because she can’t deal with the extra months of bitchiness {oh, remember that funny aborted by miscarriage abortion plotline from s1? good times.} They head out to the firetruck, but there’s not room for everyone; so Sandra Oh gets left behind. {Best to leave the most competent one at home.} Meredith asks what her news was, but she says to forget it. And off they go, with Bailey giving them a little pep talk and providing rules that they’re very likely to break (e.g., triage, stay calm, get the patients to ambulances). Still, no one’s told them what the situation is.

This works only for the dramatic tension. When they get out of the windowless truck we see their shocked faces before OMG the camera cuts to a CGI Washington State Ferry with billowing black smoke being being hosed down.

[ main title ]

Scenes of disaster. They all ask where to start. But Bailey has no time for directions, helpfully telling them to wander around and help people. George runs off to find an EMP and a dead person. He asks what happened. Something about a fog bank which causes a container ship to hit the ferry. Meredith gets distracted from helping sick people by a crying little girl with long blonde braids who won’t talk. She’s peed in her pants, won’t talk and latches on to her hand.

(Helicopter flies past the Space Needle to land on the fake hospital. Looks like they blew the CGI budget on the hulking boat and bluescreen effects since the pretend Seattle Grace Hospital aerial exterior doesn’t have a helipad and the wall on Fisher Pavilion still reads “America’s Best Newspaper”. To which all local viewers ask, which one and by what standard?}

Patrick Dempsey scribbles on a chart, muttering “this doesn’t make sense. ‘Ferry Boats’ don’t get in accidents. They’re safe and reliable. The moment you take one for granted, along comes a container ship.” {How much do you want to be that WSF made them put in this line to allow the Ferry disaster storyline?} Burke, standing nearby, looks puzzled. Dempsey just replies that he has at thing for ‘ferry boats’. Burke tells a nurse to reschedule all of the surgeries to free up the O.R.s; Dempsey tells him about finding Meredith trying to “drown” herself in the bathtub. Burke looks surprised. Not about the “drowning”, about the confiding. So thrilled is he with their new girlfriend gossipy bond, he tells Dempsey that he and Sandra Oh are engaged (and that he was supposed to keep it a secret until Meredith found out). As they’re chatting about congratulations and how they’ll never understand these women who are different from all other women, Sloane walks up to hear about the engagement. Burke looks horrified and tells him to be prepared for burn victims.

In the DDMC, Callie tries to take a few patients off Sidney’s hands. She makes a Callie O’Malley joke and gets over-protective of the clinic (which she has under control with the non emergency e.r. patients.) Torres reminds her that it’s Bailey’s clinic and to quit with the smug because she’s going to get to do all sorts of gnarly surgeries while she’s dealing with tummy aches.

Ferry Dock. Izzie wanders around looking useless until a gruff bald guy grabs her to tell her that his buddy is trapped under a car. She says that he needs search and rescue, but he drags her onto the boat.

Surgery wing. The Chief dispatches Dempsey to the scene to look at the closed head injuries and asks Sloane if he’s heard any news. He tells him about Dempsey & Grey’s fight, Burke & Oh’s engagement, and that he needs highlights to make it look more natural. And then he’s off to save lives.

Ferry dock again. Alex notices a {of course} pregnant woman crushed beneath a pylon. He misdiagnoses her as dead, but then she starts whimpering, cluing him in to her non-death status. {it’s kind of weird that he’d just walk away without checking on the baby’s status, too}. Seeing that she’s alive, he hauls the concrete pylon off of her and calls for help.

On the ferry. Izzie and Baldie find {maybe} Dixon from Alias trapped under a car, as advertised. He looks pretty messed up.

[ commercial ]

At the hospital. Oh watches KOMO coverage of the accident. The Chief tells her about crashcarts and stuff. And congratulates her on her engagement. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

At the scene. George sorts out the dead from the living. A mother with glass in her guts is freaking out looking for her son. {Conveniently, she planned ahead for the disaster by keeping a large glossy photo of her son with her at all times.} George promises that he’ll find the kid if she goes to triage.

On the boat. Dixon lies under the car shaking. His buddies explain the situation — something about helping. Izzie can’t do much except to send them after search and rescue with a special tag.

Dempsey’s on scene telling people to go see Krychek {probably not the weasel from the X-Files}. He asks Meredith for help with a bandage. She still has mute Blondie clinging to her. He asks if she wants to get married. She doesn’t. Neither does he. She ditches him for some more triage and hand-holding.

SGH. Addison has cleared up the board for the Chief. She tells him that she dyed her hair blonde the day after Dempsey left her. Change is good, they’re starting over and pointing at their hair.

Oh yells at Burke for telling Dempsey about the news before she told Meredith. He points out that she delayed forty-five minutes. Minor fight.

Alex takes the crushed pregnant woman to the hospital. She has a bad case of the monsterface. He coaches her on not freaking out.

[ commercial ]

Everyone waits by the E.R. doors. {Are there no Emergency Medicine doctors at all of Seattle Grace?}

{O.K. all of this cutting back and forth is getting old; so I’m just going to tell you what happens character by character.}

Meredith tries to ditch Blondie with an EMT, BECAUSE a guy just crawl up the seawall and out of the water. She runs over to him, and the EMT ditches the kid. // Aquaman’s leg is sliced open and squirting blood. Gross! and Blondie’s back. Meredith tells her to look away and stay still. // Meredith yells for help, but no one shows up; so she enlists Blondie to be her assistant. She tells her that she also goes mute when bad things happen, which convinces her to turn around and help. The girl is pretty freaked out, yet she takes direction well and eventually they get his spurty leg all stitched up.

Bailey and Dempsey pack someone into an ambulance. She goes back to SGH and he seems vaguely worried that she hasn’t seen Meredith.

At the hosptial, Alex wheels in Monsterface but doesn’t know what to do with her. Sandra Oh is ready with a plan; so she eventuallygets to follow the patient while Alex gets sent to the clinic to talk to the families. Even though he was manly, pulled her out of the water, is looking out for her unborn child, and she keeps grasping at his hand. // at the CT room, Burke kicks Oh off the Monsterface case to watch his service. She’s peeved about missing the surgery, but he sternly sends her off to help people. // In the locker room, Alex snipes at Oh for stealing his patient. She wants details of the gory scene and looks disappointed about missing the chaos. She tells him that she lost the surgery and is now headed for suture duty, which is better than his sucky job of talking to people about their dead relatives. He still thinks that he’s more awesome for being a big action hero. // On the way, he checks in on Monsterface to give her a pep talk. Addison overhears/sees and tells him that she’s stable and that he did good. She won’t tell him that everything’s going to be O.K. though. // Snow Patrol croons desperately on the soundtrack // Alex gets to the clinic to read a list of names. The mob hasn’t been calmed by Sidney’s orange juice and a woman yells at him to just let them all flood the E.R. to look for their families. {This doesn’t seem very Seattle Scando-Japanese Reserve [times] at all. That’s probably why angry lady had a pronounced midwesterny accent.}

George wheels in GlassGut. She refuses to go into surgery until George finds her son. // He spends a lot of time on the phone trying to find the kid. Callie can’t help him. She can’t be his wife at work, she has surgery. // They still haven’t found the boy, but Bailey needs to start the procedures before her bowels die. Enter George with a grim look on his face.

Izzie’s doing her best for shaky Dixon, but it’s not doing much. She’s out of pain meds and bandages search and rescue still isn’t there. She decides to set his arm to see if it helps. While she’s reminding herself of how this works, Buddy holds his hand to help with the impending world of hurt. // the guys tell Izzie how awesome Dixon is, with his heroism and the five kids at home. She shuts them up, telling them that she’s already committed to the project without all of the backstory. One of the friends return without S&R, who are buried {no pun intended, we hope} under fifteen other red tags. {Er, why don’t these four huge guys try to lift the car a little bit so that they can pull him out?} // Dixon has a seizure and the

LAST SCENE: Snow Patrol still wailing along plaintively on the soundtrack.

With Aquaman seemingly stabilized, Meredith breathes a sigh of relief and tells Blondie that she helped save him. Now they just need to get him an ambulance and they can look for her mother. She covers him with her jacket, which freaks him out. He starts shaking like crazy from the pain KNOCKING MEREDITH OVER THE EDGE AND INTO THE WATER . Blondie just stares stupidly at Elliott Bay for a second until Aquaman stops twitching. She turns, walks quietly away.

The water ripples darkly. No sign of Meredith. Just like the opening scene

to be continued …

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