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 …

Yow! After the jump, here’s the recap for last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy [abc], courtesy of special guest recapper Ellen. Behind the jump, all of the fallout from last week’s proposals, an important lesson about mixing new age and conventional treatments, a Notebook moment for Mother Grey, miraculous leaps through red tape and construction projects, and an eight million dollar sex ed lesson.

Meredith Voice Over: “As surgeons, we live in a world of worst case scenarios. We cut ourselves from hoping for the best, because too many times the best doesn’t happen. But every now and then, the extraordinary occurs.”

(Ferries, neighborhoods, downtown, and that round building {I have never liked} on Pike)

Cristina pondering the rather large diamond Burke has given her, sitting on the bed.

George looks at Callie in the elevator, they both look nervous, and they hold hands. They step off the elevator of meaningful looks and into the hospital together.

“And suddenly, best case scenarios seem possible.”

Izzy and Bailey stand in front of the Denny Duquette Memorial Clinic (DDMC), which seems to be located right across from the emergency room. Izzy: “Eight days, eight million dollars.” {They really opened a clinic in 8 days? That is amazing and also unbelievable}

VO: “And every now and then, something amazing happens.” And something amazing has happened: Mama Grey has woken up and is aware. She’s lucid and remembers everything except the last five years, and of course she doesn’t know that she has Alzheimer’s. They’ve selected lucky Mer to tell her. Also, she’s been anxious to see Mer. VO: “And against our better judgment, we start to have hope.”

Burke and Derek both pounce on the Chief, all wanting something this morning on the surgery floor. Early for them to be in the race? he wonders. Well, they’re all in the race. Addison and Sloane look on, and he asks her why she isn’t fighting she says she’ll fight like a girl, letting them kill each other and being the only one left. He thinks that maybe she’s underestimating him. What about him? She doesn’t think about him at all. But he’s got a couple tricks up his sleeve. He jumps into the Chief Wannabe fray by announcing that Bailey’s clinic opened that morning and he thought he’d go show some support. The Chief thinks that’s a great idea, and goes with him. The other three wannabes are left to marvel at his scheming ability.

Back to the room of the recently lucid. Mama Grey feels bad about the fight she and Mer had, right before Mer left for Europe {apparently the last time she remembers seeing her}. MG feels bad about the fight. She thinks maybe she had a nervous breakdown she can’t remember anything. If Mer doesn’t want to go to med school . . . . more than anything, MG wants to go home. But MG is home. Mer explains about the Alzheimer’s, and MG freaks out {wouldn’t anyone?} and clenches her hands in extreme tension. Then she has some kind of attack.

(Flyover of a marina — this seems to be an increasingly popular Seattle scene)

Burke goes out to meet the ambulance that holds MG Mer tells him she’s having some kind of chest pain. MG can handle it though — she’s diagnosing herself. Mer also tells Burke that she’s lucid. MG realizes that she’s at Seattle Grace. Mer tells her this is where she’s doing her residency. Burke compliments Mer, and she asks about Richard Webber. Burke tells her that he’s the Chief now, and she is impressed.

At the DDMC all the interns are working there for the day {what an odd staffing technique!}. In the empty, fancy clinic. They’re going to be giving flu vaccines, and shouldn’t touch anything, because it’s all brand new and expensive. Cristina wants to get out and assist with a fancy surgery Burke has, but Alex informs her that Burke already asked him to scrub in. Izzy’s a little over excited, and stares at the door like she’s going to burn a hole in it. Someone comes through the door, but it’s just the Chief and Sloane coming to “show support.” Noticing the emptiness, they wonder if the clinic is actually open. Bailey assures them that it is. The Chief asks about Izzy’s staring, and Bailey says that she’s just waiting. Someone else comes through the door! But alas it’s just George and Callie, grinning like idiots. After a beat they announce that they got married in Vegas! Everyone looks shocked, and Alex astutely observes that Callie is now “Callie O’Malley” {from this high point the rest of the hour can only be a disappointment}.

Izzy lectures George about how fast this is while Callie sneaks up. Izzy might be concerned, but they’re incredibly happy. Izzy checks out the ring it’s small and kindly observes that tiny diamonds are good because “no one will ever try to steal it.” {What an awesome thing to say.} Bailey has had enough of everyone standing around, and perhaps to diffuse the awkward ring talk, she assigns the interns elsewhere — Burke needs Cristina, George needs to go to the Pit and see the Chief, and Izzy and Alex are tasked with finding some patients for the clinic {even if they have to steal them?}

George says to the Chief that they’re both married. Except that Chief is getting a divorce. Awkward! That’s life, though. They go in to see this week’s sole Stranger-Patient a woman from whom the Chief removed a large tumor a few months ago. Now she’s undergoing chemo and radiation. Some guy comes in it’s S-P’s boyfriend, but he has no idea that she’s getting treated for cancer {how would you not notice this?}. The Chief sees MG go by in a wheelchair, and tells George to get started.

The Chief sees the Greys and starts talking to Mer but MG remembers him, and he sees she’s lucid. He tells her that yes, he is the Chief, but that he’s stepping down. MG observes that his stepping down must have been Adele’s idea. Mer and the Chief talk. He looks stunned by MG’s lucidity, and gives her a day off. He tells her that this time is a “gift” although Mer clearly doesn’t feel that way. MG is waiting for her in the elevator of significance.

Elsewhere, Burke is going over MG’s chart (he’s her doctor) and tells Cristina that she’s lucid. Although it won’t last. Cristina asks about Mer. Burke says that MG needs the best care now, and she’s the best. But she’s not wearing the ring, and it’s been over a week. Does she not like the ring? She observes that it’s a 3 carat diamond cut platinum it’s THE ring. Then she asks if he’s using the surgery to pressure her? He doesn’t answer, but probably.

Some random guy in the ER lobby gets pounced upon by Izzy and Alex. They’re trying to poach this patient, whose problem is that it hurts when he pees. He probably needs some meds, but they’re surgeons. Does he need surgery? Alex advises that he never knows. And besides, Izzy says, it’s free! But his co-pay is only $10. They point out that a cougher in the lobby also waiting to see a doctor might have TB. Klassy, but this convinces him to go to the DDMC.

Cristina is checking MG. MG can tell she’s good friends with Mer, because Cristina refuses to look at her — afraid she might ask a personal question about Mer, and Cristina might answer. MG then asks if Mer has chosen a specialty, although they agree that this is the most personal question a surgeon can be asked. Cristina says that her mother would ask if she had a boyfriend, and MG says that Cristina’s mother is a frivolous woman {nice}. Cristina asks what it would say about her if she wanted to be a heart surgeon. MG says it would mean she’s incredibly driven. {This is an interesting way of reading tea leaves}. MG understands she is in an experimental Alzheimer’s trial, and wants to see the doctor who put her in it (aka her daughter’s boyfriend).

Cristina finds Mer outside, looking at the clinic and avoiding her mother. Cristina says MG wants to meet Derek– but as a doctor, not as Mer’s boyfriend. She didn’t tell, but she also says that MG will know — she has ways. Also, Cristina kind of loves her. Mer observes that this is a sentiment held among many people who are not her daughter. Izzy comes by, wheeling her stolen patient who hurts when he pees. Izzy asks about MG, and advises that all parental disappointment ends upon obtaining a medical degree {want to bet?}. Izzy says she needs to justify the clinic. She also wonders if Callie is pregnant. Izzy runs off (so as not to lose the peeing patient, who has been sitting in the wheelchair this entire time), and Cristina breaks the news of George and Callie’s nuptials.

Mer goes to find George to say congratulations. She observes that this was an impulsive move, and asks if it was “good” impulsive, or “Meredith” impulsive, and says that if it’s the latter, maybe she can help. George says that it’s good, and she says congrats, and he seems genuinely pleased.

Mer is then ambushed by MG, who has been waiting for her.

Elsewhere in the hospital of inappropriate relationships, Alex walks by with a patient and gets caught in the lascivious gaze of Addision, who seems to be almost licking her lips at the sight of him. Callie catches the whole thing, and comes over to compare Addison to that cartoon bear who is hungry and sees the bare table turn into a turkey with all the trimmings and “waves of deliciousness” coming off of it. Ad says no — Alex is “the help” and she’s not going to sleep with the help. Callie announces that she married the help, and then compares herself to the cartoon bear, spotting the cute intern with his waves of deliciousness. She comments that by getting married in Las Vegas she “embraced the trashy.” Addison admires the ring, which Callie says is small, but Ad pronounces beautiful. And they hug.

Back to the hospital room of reunion. MG is standing at her tray-table, almost as though she’s a teacher at the podium, and Mer is seated in a chair with her legs up, almost in the fetal position. MG asks (interrogates) Mer about her life. She really wants to know. Mer starts by saying that she has a boyfriend, and MG wonders if he understands the demands of being a surgeon. Mer says yes, he does, because he’s a doctor too. She starts to go on, but MG interrupts to ask if she’s chosen a specialty. Mer stammers, and says she’s waiting to be inspired. This is not acceptable — for example, Cristina has already chosen. But Mer is happy, she has a BF and really is in love/is loved, and that is what is important. She is “really happy” but this is completely unacceptable to MG, who starts going on a tirade about how she didn’t raise Mer to be “happy” and “ordinary.” She used to be a “passionate” “force of nature.” She also thinks the fact that Mer’s mother (i.e., her) has Alzheimer’s would be inspiring enough. Besides, anyone can fall in love and be happy, and ordinary. She did not raise Mer to be ordinary. She is furious, and Mer looks really sad.

George is doing something with S-P, and the boyfriend is standing there. He can’t believe he didn’t know about the cancer, but they just met in the laundry room of their building. But does he really know anything about S-P? He doesn’t even know her middle name. It turns out to be “Rose,” which George has learned from S-P’s driver’s license. Also, George, having done something involving being exposed to S-P’s blood, starts shaking and sweating.

Derek is going in for his promised consult with MG. Mer warns him not to get too personal, but he says he can handle it.

George runs into Olivia, who asks if he is okay after his impulsive, secret Vegas elopement. He says he’s not feeling well, and she wonders if it is the marriage. He gives her S-P’s blood to be taken to the lab, and his dirty scrubs. He then runs into Callie, and starts freaking out about how he doesn’t know her middle name, and is shaky and feeling terrible. Callie is frustrated — in Vegas with TV and room service everything was great, but now that they’re back at work and around his “judgey” friends, he’s freaking out {ed: Or is it that they’re back to reality period? Maybe?}

Derek discusses MG’s case with her. She suggests a functional MRI, but he says that no test can help. She marvels that in five years there have been no advances, and wonders how he can work with Alzheimer’s patients day in and out. He tells her that he’s not actually an Alzheimer’s specialist — rather he took a personal interest because of Mer. This sets her off — he’s not there for HER, he’s there because of Mer. Of course — he is the man distracting Mer from being a fighter and a force of nature. And how inappropriate — an attending! Dating an intern! No wonder Mer can’t concentrate. And Derek is just a man who can’t be with a woman of his own stature, and just wants someone to admire him. He stammers that that’s not how it is, but MG concludes that he is damaging Mer and he doesn’t care at all.

George goes to the clinic, feeling flu-ish and needing to lay down. Alex goes to replace him in the OR for S-P’s surgery. He enters just as the Chief is starting. He wonders where George is, and Alex says he isn’t feeling well — he’s married, after all. They start cutting.

Back in the DDMC, there are lots of sick hospital staff but still no patients {what happened to pee guy?}. Izzy is worried — it’s not so much the $8M, although she does keep citing this figure, but the legacy of Denny that’s important. But then! A man comes in with his daughter and a paper bag, which holds tampons! Yes, his daughter is a woman and they need some help with womanly things. What a perfect job for Izzy the surgeon {is she still on candy-striper duty?}.

Also in the DDMC, now both Olivia and the woman from the lab are also feeling flu-like. Bailey says George should go home because he’s contagious. But he quickly acts as diagnostician, and realizes that S-P’s blood is toxic. He calls up to OR 1, but they’re all already passed out on the floor from toxic patient.

S-P’s blood is toxic! Everyone who had been in the OR is on stretchers. Mer comes by to try to help, but Derek (recently chastened by his talking to from MG, most likely) tells her that she should be with her mother. We learn that S-P’s blood is toxic because of an interaction between her chemotherapy and some herbal supplement she’s been taking (they found it by going through her purse). Callie finds George, and he tells her the “good news” that it’s not their marriage that was making him sick. She’s nonplussed by this information.

Cristina comes into see MG — there is something wrong with her heart and they want to do surgery. She asks why they don’t just give her meds, but realizes that it’s because Alzheimer’s patients are notoriously bad about taking their meds. Cristina informs her further that MG is known to be particularly difficult. MG says that she could elect not to have the surgery — even though this heart problem would eventually kill MG. MG asks Cristinia what she would do if the thing that defines her (her mind?) were taken away. MG says she doesn’t want the surgery. It will eventually kill her without treatment. What would Cristina do when the thing that defines who she is was taken away? MG says no surgery. But Mer gets to make all her medical decisions (even in this brief stage of lucidity).

Back at the DDMC Izzy is instructing Daughter in how to be a woman. Everyone involved looks bored. Bailey comes in and allows Izzy to leave, and then asks the Dad to wait outside. Daughter immediately bursts into a tirade, asking whether she can be pregnant if she had sex before her period. Oh dear! And now the guy she slept with is “totally ignoring her.” {ed: Last year my 28 year old friend’s father informed her that “sometimes men will say ‘I love you’ to get you to sleep with them.” She wished he’d dropped this pearl of wisdom about 15 years earlier}. Bailey looks shocked.

Mer isn’t sure what MG should do. But she has to make the decisions. She starts yelling at her — about how she gets phone calls from the home asking if she was planning on giving the nurse who changes her mother’s diapers every morning a Christmas tip. But she does it because she is the only one — because her mother has alienated everyone else, and Mer is the only one left. And if she is unfocused and ordinary, it’s not because of her boyfriend — it’s because of her mother. But she’s not going to allow her mother to die, because that would be one more thing that has happened to her, and she’s not going to let it.

Back in the toxic OR, Burke and Derek are putting on airtight suits to operate on S-P. They’ll have only 30 minutes, but as they’re not quite ready Addison notices S-P coming out from under the anesthesia. Crisis! She runs in to put her back under (she’s open on the table, how horrifying!) without a suit, and stumbles out, into the arms of Mark Sloane. How valiant! {ed: All a part of the race to be Chief?} The other wannabes, Burke and Derek, then rush in to try and close up S-P and end the toxicity.

In MG’s room, she’s having some kind of attack and her heart is beating very fast. Cristina rushes in and asks the nurse to page Burke, but he’s already in with the Toxic One. MG tells Cristina to do some kind of massage to stop the attack, which works. MG says that Cristina is a good doctor, good under pressure, and will make a great surgeon. Cristina asks her if she can have it all — be a great surgeon and have a life? She tells her that a man has asked her to marry him, but she knows it didn’t work out for MG. MG says that she didn’t try hard enough to have it all, and Cristina thanks her.

The Chief is taking oxygen in the gallery and watching the brain surgeon and the heart surgeon trying to finish a bowel surgery. Mer comes in to see how he is. He says he’ll be better once his patient is off the table, and observes that you think you’re irreplaceable, but then people come in, do your surgeries — better than you could. Look at Mer — her mother has been out of the game for five years, and she’s become something. But MG thinks Mer is a disappointment. The Chief says that in a perfect world MG would be able to say that she’s proud of Mer, but it’s not a perfect world, and she’s not a perfect woman. Mer says that the person her mother most wants to see is the Chief. He knows this, but the only thing she wants to hear is that he regrets staying with Adele, and he doesn’t.

Downstairs, Burke and Derek can’t get the bowel back in — and they only have 8 minutes of air left!

Back at the DDMC, Daughter’s pregnancy and STD tests are negative. Daughter is angry that Bailey told Dad about the sexual activity, and her father tells her to be polite. Bailey observes that politeness isn’t helping these two at all, and does some counseling. If Daughter keeps going the way she is, she will get an STD, she will get pregnant, and she will increase her chances of getting cervical cancer (way to work in the link between HPV and cervical cancer!). Bailey says Daughter is too young to be having sex, whereupon she breaks down — she thought the boy liked her. Bailey hugs Daughter, then passes her off to Dad.

Callie finds George, still pissed that he thought their marriage was toxic. He thought she’d be proud of his heroics, and asks her to excuse him for thinking he was having an anxiety attack. She says that they were happy in Vegas, but back at SGH, around his judgmental friends, he freaks out {ed: Is it really the judge-y friends, or the fact that they’re back to reality? Just a thought}. She’s angry that he never stands up for her, and storms off.

At the DDMC, Addison is taking oxygen after her heroics, while someone listens to Alex breathe, while lifting up his shirt. Addision seems to be in a toxic blood/Alex Karev admiring stupor.

Izzy, Mer, and Cristina continue to observe the toxic surgery from the gallery. The bowel isn’t fitting — it needs to be decompressed and repacked. But the chief wannabes are running out of air! The Chief tells Burke to milk the bowel, while Izzy observes that you don’t marry the “rebound girl,” thinking of George (Callie was the rebound from Meredith?). Izzy also calls Callie George’s “Vegas Show Wife” {though she doesn’t wear sequins nearly often enough to deserve that title}. Burke and Derek are fading fast but try to keep going (the chief race, and all). They both collapse from lack of oxygen, and Cristina observes that {their both lying on the floor unconscious from lack of oxygen in a toxic-gas OR} is “not good.”

The Chief assigns Sloane and the lady interns to pack and wrap Toxic Patient. Sloane announces he is not going in, as he is the only attending who hasn’t now been exposed to the neurotoxin, and exposing himself would be irresponsible {perhaps this is his elaborate plot to be chief?}. Cristina volunteers to go first as she can hold her breath for a long time underwater. She rushes in, but isn’t able to finish the job. Next up is Izzy, trying to put plastic around the open wound to encapsulate the toxicity, but she can’t finish. Last up is Meredith, who does manage to seal the body up.

Done poisoning the entire hospital staff, Toxic Patient is resting comfortably behind glass and on dialysis, slated to be un-toxic in a few hours. Her BF and George observe her. She wakes up, and says (through the intercom) that she’s sorry about all this — she thought when she met him all the bad stuff was behind her. BF tells her that it is, and George seems to learn a lesson.

The Chief congratulates everyone on their heroic work, then he and Sloane go to check on the patient. They observe that he’s getting all the glory without much risk. Because he’s Mark Sloane, and that’s how it works.

And DDMC, Izzy finds Bailey to apologize for leaving. She crows about her “damage control” on Toxic Patient. Bailey says everything is fine, because she got to help $8 million worth of one patient.

MG is in her room, singing softly (sadly) to herself. The Chief comes in to see her, finally. She asks him if (in her Alzheimer state) she knows who Meredith is. He says she knows Mer is someone important to her. MG wishes she could go back and do things differently — primarily fight harder for him {not be a better mother?}. He says they would have had a great life together — done their fellowship at SGH, she would have fought him for Chief (and probably won). And he would have been at home for her, with their kids, and they would have all been happy. The way Meredith is happy. MG acknowledges that life could have been ordinary, and happy, and good. MG says that her life is unfinished, but the Chief tells her to just close her eyes and think of them, together and happy, with a family, and him to come home to every night.

In the locker room, scrubbed of toxicity, George and Callie enter. Izzy asks rather rudely “you’re not moving in, are you?” This prompts George to freak out as Callie starts to leave. He stands up to his “judge-y” friends. He tells them that if they want to drive Callie away — which they’re good at — then fine, but he’ll be driving away too. He then uses her whole name (according to the Internets it is Calliope Euphegenia Torres) and, as Izzy starts to say something about that, he tells her to shut it. Callie beams.

(Flyover the Space Needle)

Meredith VO: “As doctors, we’re trained to give our patients just the fact= s.” (Addison and Sloane kissing and sweaty) VO: “But what our patients really want to know is: Will the pain ever go away, will I feel better, am I cured?” Sloane says he thought Addison didn’t think of him, and she tells him, at that very moment, that she is actively not thinking of him {I think we all know who she IS thinking of}. VO: “What our patients really want to know is: Is there hope?” At the Burkeatorium, Cristina plunks the ring down on the counter and says she doesn’t do rings. She tells him not to expect her to change — she’s a surgeon, just like him. And that they’ll have money, and they can “hire a wife.” He asks if she’s saying yes. She says “yeah,” he tells her she still can’t scrub in on the surgery, and she tells him she’s still not wearing the ring. Then the hug and celebrate.

VO: “But, inevitably, there are times when you find yourself in the worst case scenario.” Mer walks into her mother’s hospital room to say something Important, though the Chief tries to stop her. She says that she doesn’t want her to die, she wants her to have the surgery, because she hopes that someday there will be a cure for Alzheimer’s, and that then they will have a second chance, and her mother will be able to know her, really. Because then she will see that she is totally not ordinary. But, she leaves it up to her mother about the surgery — it’s her life, after all. MG has been looking a little disheveled throughout this speech, and then says to Meredith that she “reminds [her] of [her] daughter.” Uh oh, Alzheimer’s has returned. The lucidity gift has expired. The Chief says that about an hour ago she was there, and then gone the next minute. He is sorry, and so is Meredith.

VO: “When the patient’s body has betrayed them, when all the science has failed them, when the worst case scenario comes true, clinging to hope is all we’ve got left.”

In last week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy [abc], officially named after a Belle & Sebastian song, Seattle Grace Hospital gets a visit from a dehydrated runner and an escaped Amish. George deals with his dad’s death, the senior doctors scramble upon hearing rumors of the Chief’s retirement, and Bailey has a dream. All of this in the unsurprisingly delayed recap. After the jump.

Meredith’s voice tells us what the episode is about over a busy hospital scene. In the middle of it all, Bailey stands, staring bleakly off into the middle distance, looking awfully distressed. “No one believes their life will turn out just kind of o.k. We all think we’re going to be great. And from the day we decide to be surgeons, we are filled with expectation. Expectations of the trails we will blaze, the people we will help, the difference we will make. Great expectations of who we will be, where we will go. And then we get there.”

Fly past the Space Needle, over downtown, and into the Burkeatorium. In his finest purple shirt & sweater, he’s hosting a dinner party with Grey and Dempsey. In the kitchen, Sandra Oh tosses bites of cereal into her mouth. Despite the silent treatment, they’re still living together. Meredith tries to convince him to talk to her, or at least give her food. Changing the subject, Dempsey brings up a rumor about the Chief’s imminent retirement. Burke plays dumb, but Sandra Oh’s loud scoff reveals the truth. She elaborates, saying that he’s taking himself out of the running, blaming her for being “part of the team”. We can only assume that the offer of dessert does little to diffuse the awkward tension of Dempsey’s surprise.

Back at the Grey House, Meredith wants to talk about the Oh–Burke domestic tension and prospects for a successful relationship. Dempsey just quietly stews about not being asked to be Chief.

Izzie tries to bring a plate of baked goods to George’s room. But her knock is answered by a barely-dressed Callie making her escape. It seems that having a dead dad puts George in the mood for acrobatic sex. Three times tonight and gearing up for a fourth. Callie’s legs are too bent out of shape to continue. She hastily dresses, imploring Izzie to take over GeorgeWatch2007. {Neat how it’s now 2007 even though that doesn’t really fit with the show’s internal chronology. Maybe it was 2007 from the start? Because there’s been only one xmas episode and it seems like they’re all still first year interns.} Callie runs off and Naked!George opens the door looking for her. Mouth agape, Izzie stares at his man parts, smiles, and asks if he’s hungry. {Here, our internal Valerie Cherish begs for an I don’t need to see that!}

Sunrise over the sound brings us back to Seattle Grace. A week has passed and Addison has been weirdly avoiding Alex. She claims otherwise, but this pretty obviously awkward kiss aftermath. Passing Callie on the steps, she confesses about her Alex kiss, but she counters with a “George has become a sex machine.”

Izzie repeats the unexpected phrase of the week in the locker room, but fails to capture the attention of the other interns. Meredith is too tired from being kept awake by Dempsey’s rantings, concern for the Sandra Oh and Burke’s wordless relationship, and Alex’s unknown problems (he insists that he’s all good.). Izzie pulls the “recovering from the death of her fiance, demise of her surgical career, indignity of depositing an 8 million dollar check” card, saying that she could blow at any minute and needs some assistance on the George front. Enter George, on the hunt for Torres.

In a walk and talk, she says that perpetual sex isn’t a form of grief, he claims to have blacked out her seeing him naked (denial!), and they run into Addison. Asking about sex as a form of denial throws her for a loop, but they save her from herself by responding to her “what do you know” with gossip about a case and not her extracurriculars.

Entering the Elevator of Awkward (and otherwise) Meetings, the Chief has abandoned his every day is casual Friday wardrobe and shows up in a suit and tie. Dempsey and Bailey chase after him, jockeying for prime elevator position. He invites them both in, but tells them that they’ll need to keep it short. Since Dempsey’s issue is “epic”, Bailey gets the room to herself. She wants Seattle Grace to open a free clinic. He’s confused. This isn’t even surgical {it’s just a mandatory hospital drama plotline. Hasn’t it come up a few times in the hundred year history of E.R. alone.} and she’ll need to get support from department heads, jump through hoops, and find funding {even the monkeys in the home audience can guess the answer to this hurdle}. He says he’ll consider it, but doesn’t really see why she’s taking it on.

George and Izzie drop in on Addison’s patient. She (with her very protective friend in tow) is in for a pelvic exam. The patient, a young twenty something is incredibly upbeat and accepting of having interns in the room and doing the exam. While Izzie’s warming up the speculum, the patient and her girl friend {not girlfriend} talk about their strong bond. Born two days apart, they’re b.f.f., using the phrase “cradle to grave” repeatedly. The word “grave” on a hospital soap can’t be a good sign at all. Sure enough, Izzie sees something pretty scary down there. {Probably more upsetting than what George showed her last night.} The patient insists that George should also get a look since it’s a teaching hospital. The friend interprets their shock as a sing that her pal might be pregnant, but that’s not it at all. The grim music that takes us to the opening title lets us all know that it’s not a happy discovery.

-[ opening title ]-

Outside the room, George and Izzie talk about the shocking discovery: the largest cervical tumor ever, visible to the naked eye. Friend wants to know if it’s cancer so that she can prepare and not cry. They say that the biopsy will take hours, but she should call in the parents. Now. Not going to happen, the girls left home at 16 and they don’t talk to them anymore. It’s complicated, but they’re each others family now. She’s not contacting her parents and neither are they.

McSteamy assigns Grey and Alex to tend to a patient’s bedsores as a going away present for the nurses. He’s doing one last rhinoplasty before leaving Seattle Grace; it’s his little gift to all of us, leaving the city prettier than he found it.

Bailey chases down Dempsey to try to get his support for her pipe dream free clinic. Like the Chief, he doesn’t see the point and is still bitter about not being chosen to be the replacement Chief {ah, remember the good old days when we just called them Chief Wannabe #1 & #2?}

In yet another hallway, Sandra Oh asks Callie how George is doing. She brings up his sexual appetite and Oh stops to remind her that they aren’t friends and that is Too Much Information. Torres thought she’d care, but whatever. She doesn’t like her either. Patient time: this one’s a runner with a dislocated knee. He blacked out during a race. Callie makes small talk and snaps his leg back into place, leaving S.O. to do some tests to rule out dehydration.

Izzie wonders if George will be O.K. working on the giant tumor girl, on account of his dad having died of cancer a week ago. But he’s cool with it. At the end of the hall, he sees Callie and nearly attacks her. So great is his incredibly manly and heterosexual drive for her. But she escapes, leaving Izzie to confront him about the non-normalness of his grieving. We’re treated to the phrase “your girlfriend’s vagina is broken.” On cue, a couple of Puritans show up.

They rush over and sure enough, two straight-out-of the Crucible puritans! A couple, she in her bonnet and he in his crazy beard. When they ask if they need help, he responds by speaking in his own weird Puritan language before remembering that he’s not in Amish Country anymore. They’re at the hospital to see their daughter. You know, the one with the freaky tumor growing out of her cervix.

-[commercial]-

Just as the girls are talking about how they’ll deal with their restaurant schedules if this big scary tumor thing turns out to be serious, they’re interrupted by a visit from the Old Country. Healthy friend freaks out, angry that they’re there. Izzie says that she didn’t call them, tumor girl says it’s o.k. When the angry one confronts the parents in their native tongue, they won’t respond. Why? Because she’s been shunned. Awesome.

Enter Addison with the test results. Even the Amish can guess the results: the cancer. The Shunned freaks out but the unshunned (let’s just call her Goodie from now on) says it’s O.K. She asks her parents to leave, saying it was a bad idea to have them come.

Elsewhere, Meredith chats up McSteamsalot about his departure. He explains by saying that he hates it here: the weather, the mean unforgiving people. Grey wonders whether he’s talking about the good people of Seattle or Dempsey and Addison. He says that since his contract with the Chief was oral and non-binding, it shouldn’t be a big deal to skip town early. {they’re really running a tight ship over there at SGH, aren’t they?} When Meredith drops the rumor about the Chief stepping down, it piques his interest.

In another hallway of hospital gossip, Patrick Dempsey asks Addison what the Chief promised her to get her to come to Seattle. She trots out the old “foremost neonatal unit west of Manhattan” schtick. He wonders if she was told anything about being Chief. No, but now she’s curious too. {enter Chief Wannabe #4} Leaving, she again brushes off Alex who stops her by yelling that when she gets a minute, he’d like to talk about the kissing.

But before that, he’s back to bedsore watch with Meredith. Sandra Oh drops in to talk about her Running Man case, complaining that she didn’t even get a fracture out of it. Enter Burke, asking if anyone wants to assist on a trunkusarteriosaurus surgery, saying that the first eager intern to describe the condition gets to scrub in. Grey and Alex are stumped, Oh is furious with them for not knowing and exasperated that her vow of silence kept her out of the fancy rare surgery.

Scrubbing in, Burke apologizes to Dempsey about the whole Chief bombshell. It wasn’t the first time. He didn’t know who to trust about his hand. Dempsey snaps that now that he’s all fixed up he could even run for Chief. Burke’s out of the running, he’s looking for answers, and it wouldn’t be right. Not that it matters much in this place, grumps Dempsey.

In the hallway of the Two Union Square photo, Sandra Oh tells the running man that he’s seriously dehydrated, but his bones look o.k. At first all he cares about is the next race {his purpose on this episode is to teach us about winning}. Then he mentions that his legs hurt. Oh peeks under the sheets to find two seriously swollen legs. She calls Callie for the gross-out surgery of the week. They spill betadyne all over him and slice his calves open. While he’s still awake and screaming

-[commercial]-

The Chief wonders why he’s progressing so quickly. Callie figures out that it has something to do with the aspirin and the dehydration. Up to an O.R. stat.

In the waiting room, Izzie tries to get George to grieve a little, but he’s still hot for Callie. They notice that the Amish are still around.

Alex finally confronts Addison, pulling her into a supply closet. Not to make out (does she think he wants to be just another intern sleeping with an attending). He tells her to lay off the avoidance and the assuming that he wants her. He kissed her back because she’s his boss; all of this avoidance is keeping him out of cool surgeries. It doesn’t need to happen again.

McDempsey and McSteamy in the hallway: each has heard good news about imminent departures. Good news travels fast. Except that McSteamy isn’t leaving now that he’s heard about the race for Chief from a certain “chatty girlfriend”.

In the O.R. with cut up Running Man, Sandra Oh and Callie express their admiration for each other and the leg slicing. Not that they’re friends. But still, Oh asks about George. Callie says that they don’t talk about anything (Oh: talking’s overrated). The last thing they talked about was Burke and Oh’s not talking to each other. (Torres: Silence is overrated).

Izzie talks to the cancer-ridden good Amish girl. The Shunned is out of the room. Izzie tells her that her parents are still waiting and that she knows who called them. Goodie confesses that she called after her tumor was discovered in at an E.R. visit a few weeks prior. She didn’t have the money to pay the bills, got scared, and called home. And now for the backstory on the shunning: her friend decided to leave the community after she was baptized. She followed her out into the world, but because she hadn’t been baptized, she remains unshunned. {I need to brush up on my Rumspriga rulebook, but this doesn’t make much sense. If they’re the same age, wouldn’t they have had coincident wild times and baptisms?} Basically, she can still go back. She thinks about it. It’s her home, and if she’s dying she wants an Amish funeral with the white dress and everyone there. But she made a promise (cradle to grave!) to the Shunned.

In her surgery, Addison bemoans the preventability of giant tumors. If only they’re caught in time. This is a perfect reason for Bailey to bring up her crazy free clinic scheme. No one’s really sold on it. When they open her, she’s all full of cancer and they have to closer her up. Here, George quietly loses it. Since, you know, his dad died last week. And they didn’t close him up even though he was full of cancer.

-[commercial]-

Izzie looks for George. In the background, the Amish Parents hug.

In Running Man’s surgery, the Chief thinks that you have to be crazy to have run 12 miles before passing out. Callie says that he should have sat down when he felt dizzy. Sandra Oh defends him, saying that he couldn’t have expected that a head cold and a couple of aspiring would do him in. She sympathizes with his determination: he was in it to win it and she gets that. Surgery is the most competitive field in medicine, they should all understand. Time for a Chiefly lesson: “it’s a long road. When you get to the end of it you’re not going to care about winning. You’re just going to be relieved you made it to the finish line.”

Patrick Dempsey angrily comes into some sort of little office where Meredith is working on paperwork to yell at her about telling McSteamy about the Chief’s resignation. Now he’s staying, and Dempsey is pissed. So angry at her for giving him an excuse to stay that he slams the door and leaves.

Bailey tries to get Burke to sign off on her clinic, guilt tripping him about keeping her out of surgeries and filling her with self-doubt while he was hiding his tremor. He says that she needs someone who can provide direction and leadership; he’s not that man. She replies: Not anymore; if that’s what he wants to believe.

Post-Op. Goodie is still asleep; so Izzie briefs the Shunned friend on her prognosis. It’s not good and no amount of talking to doctors and experts will prepare her to deal with this all by herself. She tells her that Goodie called home because she wants to go back, but won’t do it without her friend’s blessing. Izzie says she’s dying and that if she loves her it’s possible that the best thing to do for her is to let her go.

All of the Chief Wannabes find themselves hanging around outside the Chief’s office to squabble. They mob him until he asks for an explanation. McSteamy says that they all want to be Chief. He shuts them up, telling them that he’s had a perfect day, retiring, saving a life, and now he’s off to see his wife. Now they’ve ruined the possibility of a happy day of retirement with all of them acting like fools and hovering around like vultures trying to pick his bones. Bailey interrupts, surprised to hear that he’s stepping down. He explains that his agreement was to stay on until he finds a replacement.

-[commercial]-

Later. Bailey confronts the Chief about his omitting the part about retiring when she was hitting him up about the free clinic. He explains that she needs one of those fools to sign-off on it since one of them might be Chief of Surgery in the next month. He admits that it’s hard for him to imagine, but since she’s not ready for the job, one of them will need to do it for the next few years. She’s surprised. He says that it will eventually be her, that’s who she is. {It seems highly unlikely that one of them would happily hand over the job after a couple years, but what do I know about hospital power dynamics}. He wasn’t sending her on a wild goose chase, he was trying to get her into the habit of doing things without him.

The four wannabes are still camped out on the skybridge to the Chief’s office, stunned at the reality of his retirement and the possibility that one of them could soon take his place. The thought of McSteamy as Chief of Surgery makes Addison throw up a little in her mouth. Bailey attacks with letters of support for them to sign. Burke and Dempsey ask why she wants it so much — she’s a surgeon. She explains that she needs something more. They all have their messy love lives and their secrets and their silliness. She needs something to hold on to; a reason to believe that medicine can not only save lives, but change lives. She needs to believe in something the way she used to believe in them. {I hate to harp on the timeline again, but the only one of them who’s been around with her for more than a year is Burke. And when did she ever “believe” in McSteamy?}. She yells at them to sign and they comply. Dempsey reminds her that she still needs funding {I wonder where she’ll find that…}

As she leaves, Dempsey says something about the Nazi being back. {Whatever. A little gruffness in support of a sappy cause isn’t particularly convincing, is it?}

Back in Amish land, the Shunned tells her friend to go home to her parents who love her {and presumably don’t believe in chemo- or radiation-therapy}. Goodie says that she can’t leave her. Shunned says not to worry, she’ll be living it up in the 21st century while she’s back home getting baptized and dying Amish style. Goodie says that she can’t shun her; but Shunnie says that she will and she won’t take no for an answer. Amish parents come in, and Shunnie slowly backs away. Amish mom breaks the shun: saying that she will tell Shunnie’s parents that she’s well and has grown into a fine woman. They hug, and Shunnie exits while Izzie listens to pick up a lesson for later.

Seattle at night from the waterfront brings us to the Chief’s house. He knocks on the door with flowers to find his surprised wife. He tells her that he has finally retired and now he feels relieved. She breaks the bad news: when she told him that she didn’t have any more time to wait, she meant it. That was months ago and she’s moved on. In fact, there’s another man in his house right now. Klassy. She’s so sorry, but what did he expect? {Probably not being left out in the cold while his wife entertains another gentleman caller. Just a guess.}

In a dark conference room, Izzie finds George and sits down to say that she’s sorry. She asks if having a lot of sex makes him feel better. and says that maybe you’re not supposed to feel better. He says that she can’t help him and she realizes that {just like the Amish drama that conveniently played out only moments ago} she has to let him go. {They’ve been friends for almost a year, and he’s not dying, or being shunned, but it’s totally the same thing.} She hugs him, saying that life is short and it sucks a lot of the time. If being with Callie makes him happy, he should go for it.

Just as he leaves, Bailey arrives and Izzie asks her about the clinic. She says that she has her signatures; so the Seattle Grace Free Clinic will exist. Izzie smiles, and the lightbulb we saw going off an hour ago finally lights up. She corrects Bailey, “the Denny Duquette Memorial Clinic.” She has eight million dollars. Bailey just replies with a surprised “Izzie Stevens”.

Back at the Grey House, Dempsey walks into Meredith’s bedroom and says that she left without him and now she isn’t talking to him. He admits that he was a jerk, but that doesn’t mean you stop talking to him. He asks if he gets that she’s saying he’s sorry. She says that he yelled at her for no reason and walked away and now he shows up. He explains that of course he showed up: you fight sometimes and somebody apologizes. She wonders how she was supposed to know that and he realizes that she’s never done this before. He walks closer and tells her to expect that he will show up no matter what. She says O.K. and they kiss. She says that he’ll make an excellent Chief.

And, it’s voiceover time: “. . . we all think we’re going to be great. And we feel a little bit robbed when our expectations aren’t met . . .”

Addison invites Alex to scrub in for an emergency surgery. He agrees.

“. . . but sometimes our expectations sell us short . . . ”

At the Burkeatorium. Sandra Oh tells Burke that she was right. She really believed that what she did was right, but she doesn’t want him to forgive her. She’d find it patronizing because he thinks she was wrong. It doesn’t matter. She’s in this for the long haul, to finish the race {thank goodness for patients who bring lessons with their swollen legs!}, so it’s fine if she doesn’t win this one. He wins; she’s talking first.

“… sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the unexpected ..”

Burke asks her to marry him.

At Callie’s. George says that he can’t wait another minute. She says no more sex. He says that ever since his dad died, his stomach feels full of asphalt and he laughs whenever he remembers that he’s not going to talk to him again because it sounds so stupid. Every time he looks at her, he feel better. He’d be happy to look at her from across the room. Any piece of her, hopefully all of her would be the best thing. He loves her. A wide eyed, “George” is all she can say before he gets down on his knee and asks her to marry him.

“. . . you’ve gotta wonder why we cling to our expectations. Because the expected is just what keeps us steady, standing, still. The expected’s just the beginning. The unexpected is what changes our lives.”

Scenes of proposals alternate with neither woman responding and both guys repeating their pleas.

The conclusion of last week’s Grey’s Anatomy [abc] episode, in which our favorite interns {as if we have a choice} from Seattle Grace Hospital deal with the aftermath of the O’Malley surgery, the constant presence of Mr. Katimsky / Grey in the nursery, ongoing silent treatments, near kisses, and important milestones. All of this to the tune of indie songwriters on the soundtrack, after the jump.

The episode opens with more snoring on red satin, despite the prominent nosestrip. The alarm sounds, Dempsey snaps. He didn’t sleep much, on account of all of the shoving / nudging. As a reprisal for his grumpy tone, Meredith won’t let him kiss her until he shaves.

In the kitchen, George opens the refrigerator and panics because the check isn’t there. Izzie, cooking a leisurely breakfast, nonchalantly says that she deposited it, not in the garbage disposal as George feared, but in the bank. He spazzes out, gleeful about the interest it’s earning and the things it could buy, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. Really, doesn’t want to talk about it. This point doesn’t really make it through his money happy skull and he continues yammering about all the rosebuds she could buy even after she yells at him to drop it. For good measure, he smacks her with the newspaper several times, causing her to burn her french toast. Which, he reminds her, she could buy new.

Addison rides the ferry boat to work {is she still living in dempsey’s trailer?} looking weepy along the way. At the hospital, she freezes and turns in avoidance of McSteambath, happily colliding with Alex instead. Thatcher [Katimsky] Grey fumbingly interrupts their pleasant romantic awkwardness to inquire about the health of his grandchild. More concerned with their own drama, they tell him that yes, Baby Grey has made it out of the woods and yes, he should tell his wife and daughter. {Why this isn’t their responsibility is unclear} A & A run into each other a few more times before turning and striding off in opposite directions, while he cell phones the rest of the family.

Grey, Izzie, and Sandra Oh watch his comedically clumsy phone call from the nurses’ station. Meredith can’t believe that she’s related to this stammering, mumbling, clumsy, disaster with whom she has nothing in common. They hate to break it to her, but she has a lot in common with him: nervous talking, messy [covered in food, et c.]. She doesn’t take this well. Before storming off, she points out that Oh is a woman in a relationship with no words and Izzie is a millionaire in $20 shoes. So there.

Izzie get’s paged. It seems that Ann’s spine straightening surgery is back on. No one in the home viewing audience should be surprised to find that the insurance company didn’t change their mind. Instead, an “anonymous” donor decided to pay the entire bill. Izzie pretends to be surprised, telling Ann that she’s a “very lucky girl.” Bailey stares Izzie out into the hall, confronting her about spending $300 grand so that she could get into the surgery. Izzie denies it, confessing that she spent it because it’s a good thing (“otherwise, she’ll never have a date or wear high heels”). This wasn’t the answer Bailey wanted to hear; now she’s off the case. She needs to decide whether she’s a surgeon. It’s lovely and generous, but once again she’s overly involved and can’t scrub it. Izzie huffs and stares at the ceiling as we pull back to the title card.

[ main title, slow Space Needle flyover, Regina Spektor sings "I Never Loved Nobody Fully" in the background ]

Out on the cafeteria patio {I’ve lost track of what time of year it’s meant to be in Grey’s“Seattle”, but sunbrellas induce fond summer memories for all of us in real Seattle.} Callie joins Addison at a table and sighs that George kissed her after seeing his dad produce urine. V. romantic, no? Addison silently fidgets with her laptop, despite the heart pouring out. Callie gives her shit of it all being about her and it turns out that it is. About eight months ago, Addison aborted McSteamy’s spawn. She peed on a stick. She wasn’t going to tell him, but she did. He bought the McSteamZygote a Yankees onesie and a calendar marked with the due date. Addision wanted to Dempsey back. She wanted his baby. Now it’s that due date and she’s “ended up” alone, unexpectedly. Callie tries to cheer her up, but this is one of the weeks that it feel that way. {This also gives us an upper limit on the number of months that have passed in Grey time since the show’s first episode}

In the O.R., Dempsey works on Ann’s shiny new spine. The interns watch. Alex asks about Papa O’Malley and George is pretty optimistic. Sandra Oh wonders whether George has been hanging out with Burke. He says that even if he liked her, he wouldn’t tell her. Izzie inquires about his hypocrisy, and he explains that her career wasn’t on the line when she lied to him. {Smug George is pretty much the least sympathetic character on the show right now; which makes for an odd juxtaposition given that this episode is all about his impending sorrow}. Oh refuses to talk to him because he owes her something. Alex is impressed and jealous of their non-verbal relationship. When Meredith asks how things are going with Addison, he gets all nervous until she clarifies that she’s talking about her NotNiece, Baby Grey. Alex says that the baby’s doing fine. Izzie sees through his game and Oh wants in on whatever he’s plotting. Meredith and George gets paged to George’s dad with a 911. Callie asks to leave the surgery when she sees them scurrying off.

In the family conference room, Bailey explains that she needs to do a procedure to help him breathe. George explains the medical jargon. The Brothers O’Malley are confused because Dad’s been making buckets of pee. She’s asking permission to re-intubate because the tube is kinked and with all of the swelling, it’s a complicated procedure so they need to prepare themselves. The Family O’Malley plus Callie wait, police lineup style, against a blinded window. One of the O’Malley brothers spews noxious odors as a result of over-nervousness. They all crack up; George and Callie holding hands.

Sandra Oh goes to Burke’s room and plays telephone with the nurse to convey Papa O’Malley’s deteriorating health.

In the room, the Chief defers to Bailey, reminding her that there’s no room for nerves. She snaps her neck a little and gets to work. Meredith hands her tubes, she encounters trouble [loud beepy sounds], and then she’s got it. The chief compliments her on her beautiful work. Her son is names after his son; she just needs a minute. {Lest we forget that she is now a mother, and possible of compassion and involvement with her patients. Wait! Isn’t this what she lectured Izzie about mere minutes ago?}

[commercials]

It’s another morning. Grey and McDempsey awake on the satiny red sheets {from the threesome dream?}, she’s wearing two breatheright strips and he’s recommending surgery. She rejects the idea unless he goes in for halitosis and stubble cures. He’s too tired to shave!

[Alki flyover]

Alex tracks down McSteamy in the hallway, bearing a “bone dry cappuccino” as a measure of his goodwill. He wants in on a rhinoplasty; Sloane wants intel on Addison’s state of misery. After stammering through his coverstory {remember when he used to be an ace liar?} Alex gives him what he wants, with embellishments, but it doesn’t get him into the O.R.

In the bunks, Oh and Grey chat. Neither of them have been sleeping and now is no exception. Sandra Oh is mad that Burke disappeared; Grey reminds her that he’s in the hospital and she could just ask. Oh wants him to tell her. Meredith muses that George’s dad is going into renal failure, while her healthy dad is at the hospital all the time and she has nothing to say to him. If Thatcher died, her life wouldn’t be any different. She asks if it’s weird that she’s jealous of George. Oh says yes.

At Burke’s room, George shares his dad’s chart with him. Burke explains that his father’s organs are shutting down and there’s no one to blame. George asks for encouraging words, but Burke doesn’t have any medicine for him. They’re men of science says George, but Burke says that sometimes that isn’t enough. He’s willing to hope with him or send up a prayer.

In the waiting for bad news room, George and his mom wait with Ann’s mother. {Who? her? BTW, her surgery went well.} They share stories of their sickly relatives. This is mostly an occasion for George to quietly realize that it’s kind of weird that they went through with his father’s cancer surgery. In typical fashion, he throws a temper tantrum, confronting the Chief and Bailey in the hallway about the months that they could have had with him had they ignored his father’s wishes and closed the surgery when they saw all of the spreading cancer. He cries and yells that his father didn’t know any better and they did. He stomps his feet and angrily pouts that they shouldn’t have done it.

[commercial, an evening northbound I-5 flyover]

Addison finds McSteamy snifling over tea in the lounge. He’s miserable. She blames it on the rain, telling him that it takes some time for the body to adjust to the constant dampness. {she’s already forgotten yesterday’s sunny afternoon lunch. you need to hold on to those.} He doesn’t want to adjust; reminding her that if she’d kept the baby they’d be together in New York and it wouldn’t be raining. Even if it was, they wouldn’t care because they’d be together. He’d have a family instead of walking pneumonia and an ex-best friend who hates him {which reminds me, whatever happened to SPIDeRBITeS, Ryan Davidson’s post- eXBeSTFRIeNDS band?}. She explains that he didn’t want to raise a child, he wanted to trump Dempsey, he wanted to win. He accuses her of not wanting a baby, she reminds him of all of the affairs that he had while they were together, the non-goodness of their relationship, and his likelihood of being a terrible father. She wanted a baby, just not with him. On the verge of tears, she walks out.

Ingrid Michaelson pops onto the soundtrack as Sandra Oh drops into Burke’s room carrying his lunch. Neither says a word. She steps back when he reaches for the plate. Rather than break the silent treatment, he calls the nurse.

Addison checks on Baby Grey. Alex drops in, explaining his absence by his chaotic life. She apologizes for what happened, reminding him that she’s his attending {since when has that stopped anyone in this hospital?}. They small talk about the baby.

[Pan of the waterfront at night. The viaduct actually doesn't look so hideous from this perspective.]

George shaves his dad’s face and confesses to lying about beating up a kid with a stick when he was a kid. The lie set off a chain of escalating violence, but George justifies the savage beating because the kid was bigger and he couldn’t reach his face without the stick.{His passive aggressive withholding of the truth has always caused problems for George, hasn’t it?} He whispers for his dad to fight just a little bit harder, kissing him on the forehead as we cut to commercials.

[ commercials ]

ANOTHER day in paradise. The red sheets are empty. Grey walks into the kitchen to find Izzie awake, drinking coffee over a counter full of cobbler. Dempsey slept at his place to get some sleep. Izzie confirms that Grey snores, but that it doesn’t bother her because she grew up next to a highway. She didn’t sleep either. She stayed up baking and cleaning the bathroom floor in case George wants to lay on it. Her money is useless, but cobbler is good.

A flyover the sound from Harbor Island brings us back to the hospital, where McSteamy guesses that Addison told Callie about the abortion. He asks whether she thinks he’s be a bad father. She quizzes him: does he like kids? (depends on how loud they are) does he like his family? (doesn’t have one, just Dempsey, pre-sleeping with his wife and breaking up his family.) does he remember birthdays and anniversaries? (no and no). He thinks that that’s the way with all men; she tells him that it’s not. She knows one for whom family is everything. He agrees, he would have made a terrible father. Exit Sloane.

In the conference room someone girlishly and quietly covers Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” while the Chief tells the O’Malleys that Papa O’Malley isn’t going to get any better. All of his organs are failing and he’s dependent on machines. They need to decide whether to let nature take its course (days to weeks) or take him off life support. The family, shaken by this news, turn to George for advice. Stuck in a terrible position, George explains that their father is in pain and medication can only do so much. Mother O’Malley asks if it’s time to let him go. Meredith looks up sadly and Bailey regretfully says that they can’t tell him what to do. George says that it’s not like his dad like this, and he won’t wake up.

[commercials, sped up southbound traffic races down I-5]

Meredith finds Mr. Katimsky in the nursery, with his new granddaughter. She asks if there’s a drawer of unopened cards anywhere. When he’s unsurprisingly baffled by her question, she explains that she’s only heard her mother’s version of events and wonders if he has a side to tell. Dumbstruck momentarily, he eventually stammers that she moved to Boston and told him not to come around, jumping to the part where he eventually remarried and is sorry. She asks if he snores. As she tells him to forget it, he really opens up telling her that he does, like a trucker, and that the wax earplugs work.

In Burke’s room. Sandra Oh quietly reads a chart. Enter Dempsey. Burke asks about Mr. O’Malley {because clearly he couldn’t talk to his girlfriend [?] about it without breaking radio silence} He tells him that they’re letting him go, eliciting a “hmm” from Burke. Who then turns to Oh and then back to Dempsey to reveal that he hasn’t had any more tremors all week. How about that?

Bailey unhooks Papa O’Malley while the family looks on. The machines make the bad sounds, Gary Jules sings “Falling Awake”, and they lovingly hold his hands. Mother O’M gives him a kiss; the other interns wait worriedly in the hallway. George walks out in a trance. S.O. follows him outside, wordlessly.

Izzie leaves to find Ann {who? her?} walking [!] down the hallway happily. She joins Bailey in the hallway of intern hangouts to tell her that she’s both: a surgeon and a person who becomes emotionally involved. She won’t give up either part, but she won’t cross the line again. As she walks away, Bailey lets out a quiet sob.

S.O. finds George outside. She welcomes George to the Dead Dad club (she was inducted at age 9). She’s really sorry that he had to join the club. He says that he doesn’t know how to exist in a world where his dad doesn’t. She breaks the bad news that that feeling never changes.

We swirl around the space needle, the Slip sing “Life in Disguise”, Alex joins Addison at Joe’s Bar. He tells Joe about George’s dad. Addison asks if he has a dad (not really, not anymore). They look into each other’s eyes, she pulls him in for a long kiss. {And now we’re at 80% of the interns dating their supervisors, we just need to find someone nice for Izzie.}

At the Grey House, Meredith snores. Dempsey climbs into bed and finds a fresh pair of wax earplugs. He puts them in, smiles and the silence, and spoons Grey to sleep.

(many thanks to beloblog, whose listing of the music featured on the episode [beboblog] I found halfway through typing this)

Downstairs, Izzy and George are getting ready for work, having breakfast and eating the paper [ed: what time do these people have to be at work? What time do they get up? Aren't they exhausted interns who shouldn't have time to linger over the morning paper?]. George gets something out of the fridge and Denny’s $8.7 million check drops on the floor. George picks it up – so annoying! $8.7 million on the floor! He tells Izzy she should deposit the check in a bank, do him a favor and deposit the check in the bank! She refuses, and wonders if he is misplacing the anxiety about his father’s surgery on her check. George retorts that she deserves $8.7 million. She’s not so sure — and she won’t deposit it, but she will give him a ride to work, if he’s nice to her for the next seven minutes.

{lovely shot of ferry boats}

On morning rounds, Izzy asks Sandra Oh how Burke’s doing but she doesn’t know – they’re not speaking. They made up, but they’re not speaking to each other. SO asks Meredith to ask Derek about Burke’s hand [ed: kind of like a game of telephone?]. Meredith doesn’t want to get in the middle of it – things with McDreamy are going well, and she doesn’t want to mess it up. Izzy suggests SO just swallow her pride, but Alex notes that her gut isn’t big enough for that.

In O’Malley land, there’s a part-ay going on – party hats and noise makers and everything. They’re celebrating Papa O’s successful heart surgery (the one that outed Burke as a tremorring surgeon). George does get to present the patient, and having finally won the respect of his dopey family his medical jargon that they don’t understand is met with cheers. The interns do look proud. But the celebration will have to stop – there’s serious stuff to discuss. The Chief and the Nazi are both there – the prognosis is not wonderful. Papa O asks about chemo, but they’re sketchy on it. He might be so cancerous that there’s nothing they can do. But it’s hard to say, especially in front of George. The bottom line is that the party has to go home – doesn’t it just suck when cancer ruins your party?

In front of Burke’s room, SO corners Derek to ask about tremors. He suggests she ask him herself. Burke looks druggy. SO tries to get Meredith to ask about his hand, but no one will. They exchange meaningful looks. He calls back George – and wishes him well. They seem to have made up after the whole tremor/lying thing.

Finally, we meet the only new patient of the day, who is hunched over at ninety degrees. Her name is Heather, but she’s also Mae Whitman who played Ann on Arrested Development (“Oh Ann!” George Michael’s sometime girlfriend, when he wasn’t trying to date his cousin Maeby), so I’m going to call her Ann [ed: don't like it? do your own recap]. Ann has some crazy scoliosis — it’s actually vater syndrome, as Izzy informs us. ” Looks like hell,” observes Alex helpfully. Ann has a punk haircut and a punk attitude – she’s not the brave and heartwarming crippled girl. Being crippled sucks! Izzy suggests the surgery will improve Ann’s quality of life, and she asks if it’s going to get her laid. Because, although Izzy looks shocked, sex IS the most important thing in life, after all (right?). Atti-tude. She’s there to have kidney stones and some ribs removed but Callie (there for the ribs) is scheming for more. She asks if there have been more radical surgeries — and of course there have. This girl has had a steel rod inserted in her spine, but it didn’t work. Callie continues to scheme.

Rounds moves on to Meredith’s niece, Baby Grey – she had some surgery and as Meredith is presenting, her erstwhile father Thatcher (and grandfather to the baby, and Mr. Katimski) comes in. There are meaningful looks exchanged between the Greys and Meredith can’t continue once he leaves. SO does her once-a-month nice deed, and takes over for her.

[short credits]

Back from the first round of commercials, a shot of the marina on Lake Union.

The Nazi makes assignments: Grey with Papa O, Sandra O in the pit, Karev with Sloane, Stevens with Ann. George takes the day off. George asks Dr. Bailey about his dad, and asks her to be straight with him as “things progress.”

Izzy asks Bailey if she can scrub in on Ann’s surgery. She’s ready, but her psychiatrist hasn’t given her the all clear. And why not? That pesky little $8.7 million check. Izzy thinks it’s irrational, but Bailey informs her that it’s irrational not to deposit the check — think of the thousands of dollars in interest she’s wasting every single day. No scrubbing in until the check is off the fridge and in the bank.

Meredith goes to pharmacy. Sandra Oh comes in and needs something ASAP – the pharma guy observes that everyone needs everything ASAP. Christina reminds him that there are people dying while he’s complaining. Christina asks Meredith if she’s okay after seeing her dad. She says she just wishes the baby would get better so they would all leave. That’s not wrong — what would be wrong would be her wanting the baby to not get better. Christina moves on from this moment to ask her again if Meredith will ask Derek about Burke’s tremor. Christina can’t talk to him, because if she does, he “wins.” Meredith asks what he would win, and Christina, unsurprisingly, doesn’t have an answer. Meredith then asks if Christina has a father — she has a step father, who she sees for Yom Kippur. And that is that.

Sloane is extra cranky today – Alex didn’t do his charts correctly and gets berated. Addison comes in, and asks if McSteamy likes abusing the interns. He says yes. And he reminds her that this is a bad week for him — she doesn’t get to be on the high horse this week (yes, he actually says “high horse”) although he doesn’t say why, and then storms off.

Callie asks Bailey what she knows about McD – too many women, lots of hair, elevators, likes long walks on the beach (wtf?) — the typical neurosurgeon. But what Callie really wants to know is how she can get him to do a consult that the patient hasn’t requested and he doesn’t want to do? The Stare Down. Bailey is good at this, as though we didn’t know. She demonstrates for Callie on Callie. Callie runs off, and Bailey giggles.\

Izzy is prepping Ann. Ann observes that Izzy is way “too hot” to be a doctor [ed: because, it's true, pretty people are only actresses and singers and models - only the unattractive use their brains]. Ann declares that pretty people are dumb! Izzy admits that she won’t be in on Ann’s surgery – although she’s a doctor, when her fiancé dropped dead a short while ago she went a little nuts. Ann is amazed that something crappy happened to a pretty person! [ed: Of course this is actually a lie -- people who are more attractive than you have zero problems, obviously.] She’s now sorry she was bitchy. Izzy forgives her – Ann is in pain, and I is a bitch sometimes for no reason at all. This gets a laugh.

On the bridge of confrontation, Callie Stares Down McD about Ann. Although he is at first skeptical of her medical opinion that being hunched over at a 90 degree angle “sucks,” the Stare Down works. He’ll come by for a consult in the morning.

Papa O talks to the Chief and Bailey about what the oncologist said: If the cancer has spread too much, they’d just close him up. It’s true. They’d close him up, send him home, and it’s weeks or months to live. He doesn’t want that – they must take the tumor out! Everyone needs him. He can’t be closed up when he knows he can fight it. He asks for their word – take the tumor out! The Chief says he must do the best he can – but closing him up to die isn’t the best thing. But Papa M insists. [ed: the first time I watched this I thought he was asking them to kill him on the table if the cancer had spread, but I guess not?]. Bailey looks surprised that the Chief is agreeing to this, but he and Papa O shake on it. She then asks if this falls under confidentiality — the Chief tells her that no, she cannot tell George.

[commercial break]

McD is once again watching Meredith snore/sleep, but this time he looks more tired and less enamored. She wakes up – he’s watching her again. Why doesn’t he sleep? Something woke him up – her snoring! He loves her snoring, it’s charming. She is offended. And she tells him that his morning breath isn’t charming. Since he’s up first he should brush his teeth!

Downstairs in the Grey household again. [ed: Izzy has quite possibly the most ridiculous morning hair ever - ringlets? Really? And an oversized pink shirt? Poor choices.] The Papa O surgery is today, and George is okay. Izzy didn’t even bake anything because she knows it will go well. She looks at the food stained check.

[Shot of space needle and a rainy seattle day at SGH.]

McSteamy comes in all wet [and in a leather jacket - there's his problem, where's his north face? This isn't NYC anymore. No umbrellas! Only camping gear!]. Alex hands him his “bone dry cappuccino, and he observes that “at least something is dry around here – does it ever stop raining?” [ha ha ha, it rains a lot in Seattle!] But the drink is — horror of horrors! — a VANILLA LATTE! Apparently Alex is trying to poison Sloane [with vanilla syrup! death!]. This is the final straw for Sloane, who tells Alex to head back to the gyne squad, with all its squishy pinkness. Addison does have a good surgery for Alex, if he wants in.

Burke is in his room watching rain and Olivia comes in. She’s all chatty and asks about the tremors, and he tells her that Christina can ask him herself! She’s at the door — how subtle. George then comes in, and asks Burke if he knows Christina is stalking his room. George also brings Burke his dad’s file – the surgery does have a 50% morbidity rate? But 50% do survive – so George shouldn’t pay too much attention to statistics.

McD is doing the consult for Ann like he promised. He knows she’s been through many painful and unsuccessful surgeries, but he thinks some radical stuff can help her. Callie is beaming. He can get her standing up straight. They would take out the curved part of her spine, and replace it with a titanium mesh cage around her vertebrae. There have been successes, but an unsuccessful surgery would result in paralysis or death. But that’s not as bad as being bent over at 90 degrees, Ann observes. Death is not the worst thing. Izzy is so excited – can she be in? Bailey tells her only if she deposits the check! She gets a 5% return on 6 month cd, and in the time they’ve been talking, Izzy could have made $400. Deposit the check, and get in on the surgery.

George is in O’Malley central, playing cards with Dad. Papa O tells him that he’s sorry about running over George’s dog Bucky when he was a kid. He ran him over – not on purpose – but he told George that Bucky ran away. George was kind and loved animals, and he just couldn’t tell him that he killed his dog. So sad! Also, George is crazy for letting Callie go. She gets him in a way his family never has – George grew up feeling different, and Papa O is sorry about that. But George tells him he can’t be saying his goodbyes – everything is going to be just fine! And f-ing discard already. George discards: “Dog murderer!” And they both laugh loudly.

[commercial break]

Back at SGH, Meredith, George, and Mrs. O are wheeling Papa O down the hall and Mr Katimski comes up to say a really awkward hello to Meredith. Um, she’s a little busy for a family reunion right now. He is super awkward. The O’Malleys ask if that is her ex-boyfriend — she corrects them — that’s her ex father [ex boyfriend? that's just a little creepy]

In Papa O’s surgery things are going well until they open up the abdominal cavity and see that the cancer has spread (and apparently cancer is black? who knew). It’s everywhere — throughout the stomach, lymph nodes, and liver. But they’re not going to close him up – they’re going to proceed. Meredith doesn’t understand, but they tell her that Papa O asked them to proceed. He asked for a chance to fight – and the request was private. Ok, she says.

Addison goes in to see Burke. He’s feeling better, and looking forward to going home. Addison is sure Christina is excited for that. But they’re not speaking. It’s not over – it’s just silent. Addison had heard this but thought it was gossip, and asks why they’re not speaking. Burke explains: Did you ever play “say uncle?” Someone pins your arm harder and harder until you say uncle. Then they have all the power. So, he is not saying uncle, and neither is she. “That’s pathetic,” Addison observes. If you do something wrong you apologize. He didn’t do anything wrong, and she doesn’t think she did either. It’s pathetic! He sits there thinking.

[Space needle skyline]

George is pacing, and Callie comes in. He’s all alone – the fam is eating. He’s nervous – but someone would have told him if there were complications. Callie tells him that it’s okay to be scared. But he’s not. She tries the Stare Down, but it doesn’t work on him. He’s just scared of her! This worked on McD, but it’s not working on George. He’s just wide eyed and scared. They giggle. But then Meredith and Bailey are at the door, and things seem serious.

The entire O’Malley clan goes to see Papa O – and find major scars and organs taken out, and on breathing tubes. They all go in, and George totally freaks. Half of his stomach and his esophagus are gone. George can’t even be in the room. Papa O has a big, huge scar down his whole abdomen, a “cool scar” according to the Bros O’M. George escapes to the hallway, and Meredith comes out for a hug.

[commercial break]

Again, Meredith is sleeping and snoring. But when she wakes up, there’s no McD in her bed. He’s in George’s bed [ed: don't freak out, George is at the hospital tonight!], because he cannot sleep with the snoring! She thinks that he has got to be kidding, but he’s not. He waited until she fell asleep and then left. He actually does this all the time – Izzy announces that he sleeps on the couch, sets an alarm, and gets back in bed before she wakes up. They then have a pillow fight — in George’s bed — and he exposes her to his morning breath.

In the kitchen, Izzy stares at the check, and rips it off the fridge. Then she’s at the bank, weeping hysterically with her silly hair (actually the same hair and outfit from the previous morning – continuity problems!). She begs the banker to take it. He notes it’s covered in food. Is it a joke? Kind of – a really cruel joke. And she doesn’t really want to deposit it, because she wouldn’t look like that if she did. She’s supposed to do something good, and then she yells: “Can he just deposit the damn thing already?” Apparently, he does.

Back at SGH, Burke is surprised they proceeded with the surgery, but George says that his dad has a strong constitution. But he’s not conscious. Burke looks worried. He says that the main concern now is multi-system organ failure. He advises him to watch the kidneys. If they fail, everything else is starting to go. George asks about Burke’s hand — he says he doesn’t mind telling George about the hand, but he will mind if George tells Christina. George observes that they have a strange relationship.

Thatcher is cooing to the baby Grey – when baby Grey gets home she’ll have her own room (more than Meredith has!) while Meredith watches like a stalker from the hall. Alex walks by and asks what she’s up to — and she’s “fine” she announces. Alex actually goes in, like a normal person, and finds that the baby has a distended abdomen. Mr. Katimski is flummoxed, and they page Addison.

Meredith finds McD. She tells him that her father is at the hospital — but he’s not here for her, he’s with his other family. McDreamy is sorry. On the topic of her snoring – she asks him about when they sleep at the trailer: Where does he sleep? Apparently he sleeps in the hammock outside. [ed: This probably doesn't work out that well in the winter. Or any months aside from July, August, and September, really.] Meredith tells Derek that she has abandonment issues (no s—). He has to sleep with her from now on (even though he will likely get no actual sleep if he does this). He says ok.

Izzy presents Bailey with a note form the shrink – she deposited the check. But Ann’s mom is just downstairs screaming at the bastard insurance company. I can’t even remember all the expletive-substitutes she used. Apparently the surgery is too experimental and the insurance co. won’t pay for it. She can’t pay for it on her own — the surgery alone is $200k, plus all the other hospital costs. Bailey hadn’t told Izzy she could scrub in, but now there’s no surgery. (A little foreshadowing — clearly Izzy will or will contemplate paying for the surgery herself).

Addison comes in to see the baby, and decides baby Grey must go to surgery right now! Another surgery because her bowel is perforated. Addison and Alex ask Mr. Katimski to sign the consent form. Oh, blundering Thatcher. His granddaughter doesn’t have time for him to waffle in his Mr. Katimski waffling manner. He reluctantly, and bumblingly, agrees.

[commercial break]

In baby surgery – Alex observes that all the organs are so tiny (even baby-sized?)! But Ad says the baby is tougher than he thinks. Oh no, baby’s monitors are beeping! But then she’s okay again. Addison is very relieved — this is Meredith Grey’s niece, and if something happened to her, people might think Ad did it on purpose (I really hope this is a joke). The Chief comes in to see Meredith watching the surgery. He says that Mr. Katimski is pacing the halls, and suggests she go give him an update. She suggests that he does. But Thatcher isn’t a “fan” of the Chief’s. Meredith suggests he is not a big fan of hers, either. The Chief doesn’t think that’s true — he observes that Mama Grey was a force, and if she wanted things a certain way that was how they’d be. Thatcher is a good man (although that didn’t stop the Chief from having an affair with his wife). He may have a side that Meredith doesn’t know about. Meredith doubts that he tried to send her cards every year that were intercepted by her mother, because that’s just not how her life works.

The Bros O’Malley are looking at daddy while George looks at his urine. Callie comes in. George is obsessed with the pee — he’s excited about it! He finds that he has a certain amount of the pee — 130 cc’s of pee! This is great news, and George and Callie, much to the bewilderment of the rest of the clan, start jumping around and then making out! [Gross. And WTF.]

Ad runs into Sloane. She’s sorry he’s hurting. He asks: Is she sorry he’s hurting, or is she sorry? He stomps off.

She goes into the nursery to find Alex with the baby. He says he’s just checking up, and Addison observes that everyone needs human contact. He says that it sucks to be a baby who needs surgery, when she “hasn’t had a chance to deserve this.” Addison asks if Alex really wants to do plastics? In that field at least people sign up for their pain there. Addison says that he’s right that it sucks watching a baby struggle. But when you see them heal and go home and imagine their life, that’s great! But if Alex wants to do plastics, she understands. He confesses he gave Sloane the vanilla latte on purpose. Why? Because he was rude to Ad. They almost kiss but a nurse comes in. Oops! Yeah, yeah. They’re sorry, they’re not sorry? Unclear.

Izzy checks on Ann. She can walk to the bathroom by herself, bent over at 90 degrees, and she’s back to bitter mode.

Meredith sees Thatcher watching the baby and walks on. He comes out and calls her name, but she keeps on going.

[Freeways, space needle, SGH -- and then a bunch of quick shots -->]

George is at the hospital, looking at a magazine. Bailey looks sad. Christina sleeping on the couch in Burke’s room, while he watches her. Alex in the elevator, Ad in another elevator. Sloane looking pensive. The Chief and Bailey look at each other, sad. Christina and Burke stare at each other. Callie sits on the stairs, and Izzy comforts George. Meredith is sleeping with a breathe-right strip, but she’s still snoring. McD wakes up, frustrated.

And: TO BE CONTINUED!
Next week:
Thatcher and Meredith actually have a conversation.
Ad didn’t want a baby with Sloane.
Izzy gets personally involved — again, and in trouble for it with Bailey.
And maybe they’re going to take George’s dad off life support?

Week after week, Snellville United Methodist Church pastor Dr. Richard Hunter will provide character studies, do some role-playing, and provide advice for the conflicted characters of Grey’s Anatomy. The article describing the show to non-viewers and outlining the schedule of clip-enhanced services is so entertaining that I almost wish that I had a trip to the Southeast planned. We can only hope that the package of sermons runs long enough to merit a syndication order. [ajc]

(via popwatch [ew], who propose a few extra grey’s anatomy-inspired commandments)

Another week, another Grey’s Anatomy [abc] recap. After the jump, catch up on the aftermath of Sandra Oh & Chief Wannabe #2′s deception, a brand new set of conjoined twins, and more family drama of the O’Malley (and Grey, too) variety.

Wow. Everyone’s cranky at the beginning of this episode. So much so that there’s no one willing to to the voiceover as the cameras sweep over West Seattle and into the Home for Forgetful and Overbearing Mothers. There, Mother Grey is having a world-class freakout about the Chief tossing her to the curb (again). Meredith tries to bring her back to the present, to little avail. The real point of this scene is to remind us that Mother Grey is not well, harbors a lot of anger, and resents ever having a kid.

At Seattle Grace, Bailey is back in Nazi form. She, Dempsey, Sandra Oh, and Burke have been called to the Principal’s office. And she’s ranting about how unfair it is Burke and rOhbot are evading even a detention or a note on their permanent record for their coverup antics. She wants justice, but the Chief says that there’s no such thing within the four walls of a hospital, which, honestly seems like a rather odd comment. His main argument is “no harm, no foul” since they didn’t kill anyone and so far there haven’t been any malpractice suits. She doesn’t even pretend to be happy that Oh’s heading back out onto the floor, but off they go.

The Chief insists that Burke fix have his $2 million hand fixed, stat. Burke’s in the stage of grief where he’s blaming Dempsey for not miraculously healing him and sulks about not wanting another surgery, saying that the first one caused enough trouble. Like keeping his arm functioning. Fucker.

Paddy O’Malley asks his son to be the responsible one if he kicks it during surgery: the insurance papers are in the nightstand and “his magazines” are in the garage. If he dies, George’s first order of business is to infiltrate the porn locker before his mom gets a look at her husband’s kinks. George doesn’t have much time to be appalled by this revelation of his dad’s masturbatory aids since Torres stops in to be nice/check on his collar bone. Obviously George has to storm off in a huff, despite his father’s pleas for more polite behavior.

Back in the locker room, with the exception of Our Heroine, the interns are all mad at the rOhbot. Meredith tries to defend her, but no one else is buying it. After the trio of anger steps out to rounds, Grey tries to find out how it’s going. She and Burke are existing in silence, but she asks Meredith not to make an effort to be nice. This brief conversation causes them to be 30 seconds late; so Bailey threatens a world of hurt / expulsion if Oh doesn’t mind her manners.

As they’re heading off, Addison nabs Meredith. Her NotSister is having an emergency c-section. She thanks her for the heads-up, but says that she really doesn’t need to know about them. Good luck, her ridiculously nice stepmother is just around the corner, sucking Grey into her NotFamily’s drama.

As the rest of the interns beg to scrub in for Special Guest Surgeon’s replacement of Father O’Malley’s heart valve, Bailey assigns the case to Sandra Oh. They all whine like spoiled children about the unfairness of it all until the Nazi plays a little Let’s Make A Deal, promising to show them what’s behind Door #1 only if they agree to shut up. They comply, and she reveals tonight’s extra special weird medicine case: adult conjoined twins. The twins fight about one brother having a small bladder. As they shuffle off to the toilet, the mouths of the trio of unforgiveness hang agape.

-main title-

We get the backstory on Brothers of the Head {Ed: or is it Twin Falls Idaho?}. The guys are attached at the lumbar-sacral junction. They were in six months ago, but decided that the separation surgery was too risky. As they bicker about one being overcautious vs. the other being over risky, Alex brownoses a bit to flatter New York’s top plastic surgeon. Although Steambtath tries to make nice with Dempsey, he’s not to keen on being called part of a team. George wonders why they’ve changed their mind. On cue, the answer enters. It’s about a girl. She insists that she doesn’t want them to have the risky surgery for her benefit. The girl is dating the twin with glasses, the other one (Squinty, I guess) pouts about not wanting to be attached to someone who doesn’t want to be attached to me. All the interns want in on the case, but Steambath takes Izzie because he thinks she’ll be fun to look at and because she’s not allowed to help. He does want a blueberry scone and his trademark “bone dry cappucino”, but she tells doesn’t do coffee. {I guess that with a freezer full of Denny Money she can be picky about lackeydom.)

In the X-Ray Viewing Chamber, the Chief drools over the surgery, imagining the press and fame for the hospital. Dempsey isn’t keen on the it because of the high risk. The Chief says that unless there’s overwhelming evidence to stop it, the show will go on.

While Sandra Oh is explaining the surgery to Paddy O’Malley, George storms in and gets all pushy about and cause trouble. Dr. Han tries to kick him out, and he says that he can do whatever he wants because he “hired her”. Whatevs. This makes no sense, but it’s all about George continuing his ususal childish assholery.

For maximum dramatic tension, Meredith decided to volunteer to help out with her NotSister and the c-section. Her NotMother says that it’s nice to have a familiar face in the hospital. She’s stoked to be a grandmother and tells Grey that her NotSister doesn’t know about Mr. Katimsky’s neglected daugher. Later, she helps with the C-section by cutting the umbilical cord. But her NotNiece isn’t doing well, and needs to be whisked off to surgery. Addision leaves Meredith in charge of explaining the situation to her NotMother and NotSister, but she panics and isn’t very helpful.

-commercials-

Addison realizes that it was a mistake to let Grey volunteer for this case; so she’s banned from the very exciting newborn surgery (Jejunal etrisia). Instead, she’s tasked with keeping her NotFamily updated.

The Nazi is back, lecturing Geroge abou this bad behavior and demanding that he stay 50ft away from his father at all times. George glares at Burke, across the hall as he strolls up to Dr. Han to check on the status of O’Malley Senior. She says that everything’s O.K. George is a pain in the ass, Sandra Oh is an asset. He awkwardly agrees, calling her very “professional”.

Having survived the tension of dealing with his girlfriend/partner in crime/betrayer and his cross-town rival, Burke fires up his laptop to research neurosurgeons. The Chief is all, “WTF? You know that McDempsey is god’s gift to neurosurgery!”. When he says that he wants someone else, the Chief finally decides to bust out the yelling and scolding. He wants to retire so that he can get his wife back, but Burke spoiled all of that by having a tremor and keeping it on the Q.T. {Again, the Chief’s logic seems to be slipping. Is there no one else at the hospital to take over. Nevermind.} He’s tired of “you men acting ike boys”, saying that if Bruke doesn’t Dempsey fix his hand, he’ll be letting himself down.

In the O.R., Izzie raves about how it will take the impending surgeonpalooza required to separate the twins. Steambath is optimistic, Dempsey isn’t. Doing a practice run on a mock-up twins, he makes a mistake, saying that it will be even trickier with real live humans. He thinks that the Brothers are fine, and that the de-conjoining isn’t worth the risk. Tantrum hour continues, as he storms ooff the practice field.

In between, we get a quick scene of Meredith explaining the situation to her NotMother and NotSister. NotSister isn’t sure about calling her perfect husband in Iraq to come up with a name for the baby. Mostly, this is so that she can see what she missed out on by not having a supportive mother.

As if the coinjoined twin surgery wasn’t medical intrigue enough, we get to find out more about why they’ve decided to get separated. The rules don’t work. (it’s about the girl.) As Glasses explains it all, the doctors all watch with interest, exchanging glances and surprised looks like there’s an enthralling tennis match happening before their eyes. The boys have rules for when theys’re with someone: no looking, no touching. But the plot thickens, when the girlfriend assures Glasses that she’s completely fine with Squinty touching her while she’s naked. She didn’t think it was such a big deal and thought it was kind of sweet. When she re-iterates that it wasn’t a big deal, Glasses recognizes that she enjoyed having his brother in on the action. She stresses that she’s completely in love with him and really enjoys their conjoined lovemaking. But … it’s just that after he falls asleep, Squinty takes care of her needs. {By talking, sickos.} She loves it too. Glasses freaks out and demands that she choose a brother. Because after they’re separated, she can’t have both of them. Surprise, she goes for the sensitive, chatty brother. Squinty smirks, gets an elbow to the face from his brother.

For some reason {cafeteria repairs? temporary closure of the Hallway of Intern Hangouts?} The trio of resentment bring their lunches into a room with a sedated / possibly dead old man. It’s clearly the place to be, Sandra Oh’s there, and Meredith is on her way. The trio are all atwitter over the bizarre love triangle until they notice Oh sitting there. Alex feigns surprise that she hasn’t been kicked out of the program yet, claiming to want the inside track on how to get ahead. George makes a snide comment about whether she’s kept a headcount of how many patients she endangered during her reign of deception. Izzie gripes that since her patients lived she avoided candystriper duty. Meredith plays defense, but Oh doesn’t appreciate it, retreating with her hospital food for friendlier shores.

Still awaiting surgery, Paddy O’Malley pleads with his son to make nice with his crazy ex-girlfriend. He says that all of this anger isn’t like him {clearly, he’s missed the past couple seasons}. Still, Dad wants to play rage counselor before going under the knife. He suspects that George isn’t really mad at everyone, just at good old dad. For eating unhealthy foods, not exercising, smoking, drinking, and getting cancer. He gnaws on the scenery a bit, saying that he’s mad at himself, too. George assures him that he doesn’t mind taking care of him, and promises that he isn’t going to die. Enter the Brothers O’Malley, being more annoying than six-year-olds. They call their brother “Georgie” and he flips out saying the Georgie doesn’t work here. Meanwhile, his dad starts choking.

-commercials-

“Dr. O’Malley” to the rescue. Except not really, because Burke comes in to tell him that his choice of drugs for the atrial fibrillation would have done more harm than good. So it’s Burke to the rescue. Except not really, because the tremor is back. So Geroge to the rescue again, by injecting the correct meds. Nevermind, Dr. Han comes in to fix things up and get all of the other jerks out of the room.

Steambath finally gets Izzie to fetch him his bone dry cappucino {a good choice, but from a hospital coffee cart, kind of likely to turn out shitty.}

Elsewhere, Addison is still slaving away on the intestines of Meredith’s NotNiece’s intestines. She tells Grey to keep them on the up and up about her progress.

Bailey and Dempsey cheer each other up about their own personal crises of confience. He’s feeling skittish about having not worked a miracle on Burke; she’s still plagued buy guilt over the death of the Tin Man. Being shut out of Burke’s surgeries only compounded her angst.

Paddy O’Malley is rolls off to surgery, Bailey agrees to let George skips the unconjoining to be with his family.

As the twenty-two surgeons are gearing up to take Glasses and Squinty apart, Steambath requests that Izzie gets to scrub in. The Chief reminds him that she’s still without hospital privileges, but Bailey sticks up for her and calls her down to the O.R.

As they get ready to cut the twins apart, Dempsey does one last assessment. The Chief says that it’s his call as to whether they proceed. The music swells, and newly confident Dempsey says that it’s on.

-commerce-

George & Burke illegally watch Paddy O’Malley’s surgery from the scrub room. George can’t look; so Burke quietly narrates.

There’s all sorts of medical intrigue, cutting, reattaching, Steambath suggestions, and Bailey on nerve stiumlators, but eventually Dempsey announces that the separation was a success and that they have four functioning legs. There’s applause all around, and the doctors take sides to pull the brothers apart. Happy music plays. Dempsey says that it would be nice if every love triangle could be solved with a scalpel. Steambath smiles, saying that if they could, Dempsey would have stabbed him with a ten blade a long time ago. Relieved, they both laugh a little beneath their surgical masks. {Maybe they can be pals again}

Meredith tells her NotMother that Addsion will be around to explain everything. Although the baby will need recovery time, she’ll be just fine. NotMom is very relieved and says that the new baby is Meredith’s niece. Meredith says that she’s sorry, they’re very nice, but she doesn’t know them and they aren’t her family.

In Paddy O’Malley’s valve replacement, Dr. Han says that Sandra Oh reminds her of herself as an interns. She’s focused, intense, cold (in a good way). Suddenly, there are the bad noises, and too much bleeding. Han says that it doesn’t look good. But Oh to the rescue! She can put Mr. O’Malley back together again. All by herself! She re-inserts the aortic canula and does a running whip stitch. Burke assures George that she’s done it before. Han compliments Oh’s beautiful work. With the crisis averted, Burke tells George that Dr. Han’s work was impeccable, that he would have done the same thing himself. He pauses, reflectively, saying that you never know how the body’s going to respond and that every surgery is different. He concludes his narration, leaving once they’re in the home stretch. George thanks him, and it seems to mean a lot to both of them.

Alone on the overlook/hallway with the Chief, Bailey says that it undermines everything for Oh and Burke to go unpunished. He asks her to take a step back and asks what she would you have him do: fire them? end their careers? He says that they made a bad judgement call and reminds her that nobody died. This brings back the ghost of Denny, which still hangs over her. She feels responsible for killing him, but the Chief insists that it wasn’t her fault.

She’s not so sure. Thinking about Isabel and Oh’s transgressions, Bailey worries that she is the common thread. She faults herself for losing control of them. He tells her that she raised them like children, some make mistakes, some disappoint. He asks if she knows the kind of strength it must have taken for Sandra Oh to report on an attending, let alone her boyfriend. He sees this as evidence of growth. Reminding her that she raised them like children, he says that some turn out exactly like you. {But which one?}

The girl who split up the twins finally gets some alone time with Squinty. He says that it’s been a long day, and she leaves with a quick kiss saying that she’ll see him in the morning.

And then our much-missed Meredith voiceover finally makes its return: “At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, is to be close to somebody.”

The other brother is rolled into the room with his bed pressed against his twin. They crack a quick joke, and hold hands before drifting off to sleep and out of the storyline.

“So this thing where we all keep our distance and pretend not to care about each other? It’s usually a load of bull.”

Meredith’s NotMom invites her in to see the beautiful baby. She offers to be be her family if she wants them to. Grey looks pained, but doesn’t turn back. She walks away.

“So we pick and choose who we want to remain close to.”

In the locker room, Izzie, George, and Alex are still giving Sandra Oh a hard time. Meredith stands up and yells at them saying that she can’t take this anymore. She pleads with them to let her off the hook, reminding Izzie that Oh helped out after she cut Denny’s LVAD wire, helped Alex study for the boards even after he slept with SyphiNurse, and that when everyone was calling Geroge 007 … George point out that that it was Oh who started the 007 business and stomps off. The speech worked on the other two, Alex and Izzie apologize before leaving. Sandra asks why Meredith can’t mind her own business. Grey responds that she’s her sister, her family, all she’s got. Oh sighs, saying that she’s so tired and leans on Meredith’s shoulder.

“… and once we’ve chosen those people, we tend to stick close by.”

Torres runs into George in the hallway to check on his dad. Apparently he’s doing O.K. That’s the extent of their convo. {But Dad sitll has cancer; so we can expect more O’Malley family drama … le sigh}

“… no matter how much we hurt them …”

As Meredith and Sandra Oh are exiting the Elevator of Convenient Encounters, Dempsey and Burke are entering. They’re going upstairs to check Burke’s shoulder. Oh follows them, to stand my her man.

“The people that are still with you at the end of the day, those are the ones worth keeping. And, sure, Sometimes close can be too close …”

Back at the Home for Forgetful and Overbearing Mothers , Mother Grey is ranting again about how she just couldn’t stay with Mr. Katimsky even though he as Meredith’s father. And then Richard left her a a throbbing bundle of anger. Meredith, emotionally wrecked, stands up and hugs her without saying anything. This calms her down and ushers in a worried moment of the Notebook-esque clarity. She recognizes her daughter with a quiet “Meredith”, and Grey responds with a sad “Mommy.”

“But sometimes, that invasion of personal space, it can be exactly what you need.”

—previous episode [mb]

While you were recovering from your Thanksgiving-induced coma, there was an extra long, super explosive, and blood soaked episode of Grey’s Anatomy [abc]. In case you missed it, a recap is waiting for you after the jump.

White screen. Over a montage of Sandra Oh, covered in blood and stumble running out of an O.R. cross cut with scenes of Sandra Oh and Chief Wannabe #2 sexing each other up in a dimly lit room, Sandra Oh gets the voiceover. {Just like that time when Danielle got the voiceover on that episode of My So-Called Life! The one where the parents go out of town and Rayanne ends up handcuffed to their bed.} Anyway, over all of the blood and sex, today’s episode overview: “As doctors, we know everybody’s secrets. Their medical histories, sexual histories. Confidential information that is as essential to a surgeon as a ten blade. And every bit as dangerous. We keep secrets. We have to. But not all secrets can be kept.”

The cross cuts get faster and faster and then head into reverse over the sounds of machines telling the doctors that their patient is dying. If you paid attention to the previouslies and the voiceover, you pretty much know what’s going to happen on this episode, but let’s recap it just for fun, shall we? Bang. The white light again with all of the time reversal and we’re floating over Seattle, high above I-5 looking southat Lake Union on a sunny day.

In the Grey House, Meredith helps McDempsey work through a crossword on their bed. Still no sex. Enter Sandra Oh, breathless in Standford hoodie and scarf. Not interrupting the non-sex; so Dempsey’s kicked out of the room to allow the urgent b.f.f. desperate heart to heart. She crawls under the covers looking panicked, explaining her sweatiness on a morning jog. Meredith goes through this whole “we don’t jog” routine. {Except for that one time, last season [mb]}. It’s convoluted-yet-transparent hypothetical time: if Dempsey robbed a bank and he got caught and she was driving the getaway car would she turn herself in. Meredith wants to know whose idea it was and tells her that maybe if she drops the harebrained scenario maybe she could help her out. To no avail, Oh is back on her way out and Grey is still confused about the jogging. Once she finds out that George hasn’t said anything about anything, she exits with a dramatic “I jog sometimes. Without you.” and heads down the steps to face down George. She tells him that he has nothing to worry about. He’s not worried. Not anymore. Isabel stops in to be jealous of Oh and Grey’s secret b.f.f. secret time, cranky from the candystriping. She should be grateful to miss out on some of the drama. And Meredith and Dempsey return to their gleeful romantic cackling, George refuses to tell Izzie anything. Tossing a used newspaper in her direction instead.

At Seattle Grace, the Chief walks in looking all glum and casual Friday. He spies Burke and Oh making conspiratorial conversation across the hall. The camera switches so that we can hear her telling him that the sky has already fallen: George Knows. Which, I’m pretty sure she told him the night before. He’s playing it cool — no tremors in a week and fourteen hours of surgery without a hitch. She takes credit, saying that he could only manage because she was by his side the whole time. All of this is wearing her thin, she’s worried that George will say something, on account of his dad going under the knife. She has been working her ass off, running the board surgical procedures she shouldn’t know, and covering for him. He takes offense at this; he’s been covering for her to and they’re a strong team and she shouldn’t sweat the O’malley stuff.

But their little scheming can’t go on forever. Everyone’s getting paged because someone drove a car into the “fish market”. All hands except for Izzie, that is. She’s prepping Father O’Malley, much to Sandra Oh’s dismay. George is also off for the day, further worrying her. Bailey is annoyed when she insists that she’ll need to leave at a moment’s notice to help “her” attending.

As the doctors swirl around the accident victims, an elderly woman explains that the drive-thru wasn’t her husband’s fault. The car, it seems, has a Christine complex. Bailey tries to get her to talk to the cops, but she goes back into the blame game and demands to stay with her husband. Across the way, Burke loses a patient as his old nemesis from Seattle Presbyterian enters with a wisecrack. As if that isn’t enough drama for one intro, a bloody woman staggers into the E.R., collapsing in Addison’s arms.

= title card =

Alex is on glass picking duty, plucking shards out of the bloody woman’s skin. Her day of produce sales at the fish market ended abruptly when she was thrown through a window. I’m trying to figure out the geography of how a car could throw her through a window at the Pike Place market without her ending up falling several stories, but that’s neither here nor there. Old Lady McExcuses drops in to see if she can help her young vegetable-selling friend out, further passing the buck on the demon car. Addison leaves Dr. Plastics to take over until the patient mentions that she hopes that her baby isn’t dead. In her plate-glass induced euphoria, she asks Addision to confirm that the doctors are man candy. She complies.

Izzie drops in to chat with the O’Malley’s about their non-sexual co-ed housing situation. George freaks out as his mother pries into the sexual dynamics. George gets paged, Isabel smiles.

Dr. Rival (Han) banters with Burke about how his getting shot was karma’s revenge on his heart theft (way back in the last season where Izzie killed her fiance to get him a higher ranking on the transplant list.). She’s there for a consult. I wonder who called in the second best cardio-thorassic surgeon in the city to operate on his father… Meredith gossips-up Sandra Oh to contemplate her chances of getting in on Dr. Han’s surgery, wondering who the VIP patient is. As Oh sees Geroge chatting up the rival doctor, her perma-panicked expression gets even more worried and she sprints off.

The Chief is pleasantly surprised to see Dr. Han and lays on the recruitment. George is upset by Callie’s politely asking about his dad. He drops the bomb that he knows about her adventures with Dr. Plastics. Who, by the way is stitching-up Veggie Girl’s forehead. She talks about how she’s keeping the father in the dark. Torres storms in to confront Meredith, but she’s rebuked by all of the medicine going on. Addison sympathizes with Alex’s relegation to scut work, but it turns out the patient has more serious problems than needing a chest tube. Yep, one of those shards of glass managed to find its way into her heart and Bailey has the X-ray to prove it.

Grey tries to catch-up with Callie, but finds Dempsey instead. He shows her the scans of Mr. Driver. His spine has narrowed, meaning that he probably couldn’t feel his legs and definitely shouldn’t have been driving. Preston stops in and Dempsey grills him about what’s going on with Sandra Oh busting up his morning pre-sex romp and skipping out on CT duty. Meredith and Preston provide a cheery cover story. Grey refuses to divulge the content of their morning chat, charming him off of the hunt. She finds the rOhbot spying on the O’Malleys, Dr. Han, and the Chief. Spotting her, the Chief asks that she send Burke to his office A.S.A.P., mentioning that Father O’Malley has elected to have a the cross-town rival take care of his valve replacement.

-commercials-

In the stairwell of frequent confrontations, Oh is still freaking out as she tells Burke about the surgical switcheroo. She’s sure that the Chief knows about Dr. Shakyhands and suspects that Dr. Han is going to be the new head of Cardio. {Surgery, not aerobics class.} She wants to align their story before he talks to the Chief. But that’s not his style and he skips out.

Isabel’s playing detective in the O’Malley room, wondering why they changed surgeons. This just gives meddling Mrs. O’Malley a chance to dig into George’s love life. Is he sleeping with Dr. Han? Why did Torres break up with him? Izzie spills the dirt about Callie’s naked thing, and mentions the whole “Meredith” thing that the parents obviously didn’t know about. Mom wonders why they’d switch; Izzie says that Dr. Burke is the best, which makes them want him back on the case.

In ye olde locker room, Callie enters in crazy mode, throwing Meredith against the wall and ranting about panties. It takes an Isabel intervention to sort out it wasn’t Grey who told George about her sleeping with “McSteamy”. Izzie suggests that maybe it was, um, the jerk that she had sex with? This cools off Torres, who insists that she didn’t betray George since they’d broken up. As she rushes out to find her weasely beloved, Meredith and Isabel have a cute laughing moment about how Callie went all cage match on her.

George and Izzie meet up at the nurse’s station to chat about his parents and their confusion over his last-minute surgeon trade. He demands that Sandra Oh explain it all, but she just says all that matters is that Dr. Han is a great surgeon, his father is in good hands, and nothing else matters. He tells her that there are a lot of other people’s fathers in the hospital who care about who their doctor is. His little self-righteous crusade is getting old fast. If he really thinks that Burke is such a menace, he needs to say something instead of just being all sneaky and insinuating. She tries to comfort him, but he throws her candystriper status back in his face.

Veggie Girl is hoping to use the excuse of surviving her shard-to-the-heart as a reason to keep her bastard child. Alex encourages her to bring the cheating father back into her life for the sake of the unborn kid. Then she crashes.

As Dempsey tells Old Lady McCrazyExcuses about her husband’s numb legs and all of the surgery that he’s going to need, she continues to blame the family car.

Yet again. Sandra Oh is spying. This time on the Chief and Burke. He exits the office with a handshake and a smile. Again, anyone who watch the previously montage knows what happened, but Oh was too busy prepping excuses, cover stories, and contingency plans to know that the Chief called him into the office because it’s retirement time. He wants Dr. Han to be head of cardio- and Burke to ascend from wannabe to actual Chief of Surgery.

-commercials-

Back in the dorm room of doctor hookups, Oh and Burke continue to process the Big News. He’s worried about ascending to Cheifdom with a lie in his heart and blood on his shaky hands. She’s all plotting and scheming, seeing this as a way out and a road to more procedures for her. Then he turns, saying that she dragged him across the ethical line, lying to Dempsey, and making them a team. She says that he’s still mad at her for leaving when he got shot. They’re both scared when they go into surgery. He’s worried about his patients and her career. He says that there’s no team, just him making up for her emotional shortcomings. They’re both freaked out by the outburst and decide not to say anything else. He picks up his pager and she takes a nap.

George goes back to his father’s room. They’ve switched back to Dr. Burke because of Izzie’s advice. He explodes. He tells her to get out and revealing that Isabel’s on probation because someone died the last time she was allowed to interact with a patient. She politely exits and George kicks something. Because he’s a jerk.

Dempsey invites Burke to scrub in on NumbLegs just as Alex summons him to extract shard of glass. Burke takes the more glamorous glass removal and requests that Sandra Oh scrub in with him.

In the stairwell, Callie tries to apologize to George, but he’s too busy being crumpled against the rails to talk.

As they wheel of NumbLegs and Veggie Girl off to surgery, Mrs. Excuses makes a confession to Bailey. She knew about his problem, her daughter even took away the keys, but she gave them back because he really loves to drive. Bailey takes her hand and leads her to the cops.

Oh and Burke mask-up and scrub in in silence. Burke extracts the glass and sidelines his girlfriend to prove a point. Sure, he occasionally flexes his fingers to add to the drama, but everything goes well. Not that it comforts Sandra Oh.

Aside from Dr. Han’s flattery of McDempsey’s genius, the other surgery is going less well. Dr. Rival discovers an aortic tear and calls in the calvary. She needs extra hands; so Meredith runs off to fetch Burke (who has just finished Veggie Girl’s heart). While the heart is getting ready to come off bypass, Burke goes to help. Sandra Oh tries to follow, but he tells her to wait. Meredith sees the light when she asks, “do you think Burke can’t operate without you?” and Oh won’t respond. She pleads for Grey to keep her mouth shut and get back to the O.R.

-commecials-

Oh watches over Veggie Girl’s heart for signs of life, worried that Burke isn’t back now that the heart is ready to come off bypass. Meredith eyes Preston’s hands as he stitches up NumbLegs’s aorta. Just in time, Burke returns and they shut down the bypass machines. More finger flexing as the heart starts beating. The patient blows a stitch and squirts all of that blood from the intro all over Sandra Oh. {And you thought that Burke was going to kill George’s dad this episode episode, didn’t you.} While she’s trying to save the day with options, Burke dismisses with an “I don’t need you for this.” Bailey responds to a page, and sticks around to help with the next attempt to come off bypass.

Damien Rice sings a duet in the background and Sandra Oh pulls off her mask and stumbles into the hallway soaked in blood. It’s almost a repeat of the intro, except that this time, there are more lights and other people around.

After the surgery, Burke stops at the Chief’s office to talk. And we see just where Oh went after she cleaned up a little. She’s perched in the back of the room as Preston glares at her.

-commercials-

She watches from the skybridge as the chief makes an impassioned speech. As Dr. Han exits she tells her how lucky she is (to be studying under Burke).

Alex checks in on Veggie Girl, who made it through the surgery. Addison doesn’t think that she will take his advice about calling the unborn (but still healthy) fetus’s father. She expresses surprise that Alex a protegee / lackey of Dr. Plastics would have such a supportive opinion. {I don’t actually see how telling a woman to go back to her scumbag boyfriend is such an enlightened opinion, but the point of this scene is just for Alex and Addision to have a nice little (kind of flirtatious) moment. So I guess it doesn’t need to make sense. }

In the Elevator of Convenient Meetings, Dempsey runs into Burke. He says that he would have helped him. Burke can’t deal. Dempsey says that he thought that Burke was his friend. Burke responds with an “I thought you were my surgeon.” The rest of the ride is in silence.

As real Sandra Oh leaves the hospital, her concluding voiceover kicks in along with some Bjork violins: “In some ways betrayal is inevitable. When our bodies betray us, surgery is often the key to recovery. When we betray each other … the path to recovery is less clear.”

The Chief looks at the busy big board, likely contemplating the new difficulty of retirement. Oh sits outside the hospital and George walks past. Meredith stops to sit down. Oh says that it was both of their idea to rob the bank, but she couldn’t do it anymore. Grey says that she did the right thing. Oh doesn’t know where to go now that she can’t go home.

Izzie arrives at the Grey House finding George sulking on the couch. He explains that it’s his dad and he’s scared. He tries playing the Denny card, but she shuts him down and tells him that it’s too early to apologize. She joins him on the couch, steals his spaghetti, and tells him maybe tomorrow.

The aftermath of the shakyhanded situation has made it to the master bedroom. Dempsey grumps to Meredith about how she watched Preston’s hands throughout the surgery and didn’t tell him. She says that can’t say anything because Sandra Oh is her friend. Dempsey angrily asks how she could suspect and not even tell her. She reminds him that he cleared him for surgery and asks how he didn’t know. Oh is her best friend, and right or wrong, she was there when he wasn’t. You’d think this would ruin their evening, but it seems to work. He turns to her, they give each other loving half smiles, and it looks like their little prohibition on sex is about to end.

“And then there are some wounds, some betrayals, that are so deep, so profound that there’s no way to repair what was lost. And when that happens … there’s nothing left to do but wait.”

Oh enters the Burkeatorium. She sees Preston getting ready for bed. They exchange a long soulless look at each other until he breaks it by slowly closing the frosted french door in her face.

—previous episode [mb | next episode [mb]

Hi! I’m back prematurely, but not to worry, the recapping duty (heh-heh, I said, “duty.”) will be back upon Josh’s shoulders soon. In the meantime, please turn a blind eye to CRo’s drunken snark that follows. Unless, of course, you like that sort of thing. I mean, if you do, you have Anna from the Swell to thank since she makes a rockin’ Manhattan. But I babble (I’m prone to that). Full recap after the jump.

Love,
CRo

The show opens with Meredith and Derek (see how I did that?) in the bath together. The voiceover is talking about how the human eye has a blind spot. I’m guessing the first application to this is that Meredith keeps insisting that they take it slow. Hello? Already in the bath? Unless you’re taking a bubble bath with your swimsuit on, you’re already not taking it slow. I don’t know who they’re trying to fool with this one.

The next day, I’m assuming, Meredith visits her mother. She’s having no luck conversing with her when the Chief swoops in with some sort of pastry. Good things come in those pink boxes, perhaps if this were really filmed in Seattle, it’d be Cupcake Royale. Mmm, cupcakes. Meredith leaves the Chief there to hang with her mom and she heads off to work and we get our first Seattle establishing shot. Hi, Puget Sound!

In the locker room, Meredith doesn’t see everyone else is concerned about something and talks about herself – shocker – until she is told that George’s dad was admitted to the hospital. Word is he passed out and fractured his clavicle. I should mention that somewhere in that monologue she claims she’s going to be “bright and shiny Meredith” soon. I’m sure we all know better than to believe her. So anyway, Team Intern is looking over George’s dad’s charts when Bailey walks in demanding them – the charts – back. She assigns George to “scut” since apparently one does not treat family in this show, but let’s see how that pans out. Christina goes to scrub in with Burke, to Bailey’s dismay, and Izzie is to shadow Alex who is shadowing Mark. Wow! It’s a conga line!

Over in Derek’s part of the hospital, he greets his ex-wife cheerfully. They’re going to be civil he announces and, boy, I guess Meredith has infected him with her false sense of bright and shiny. And now that I think about it, maybe he’s just on a I-finally-had-sex-after-a-long-drought high. Not that I would know anything about that, because I totally wouldn’t. Anyway, there’s mention of their wedding rings that Addison is still wearing.

The O’Malley’s descend upon the hospital and can I say that I resent the fact that George’s brothers are portrayed as not knowing anything but cars. People who are mechanics can be smart, you know. How else do they manage to outsmart and cheat all of the rest of us when we need our cars fixed? They’ve got to be geniuses, so portray them as such, show! Anyway, seems that George’s dad needs an endoscopy. They make light of this procedure but I’ve been with a friend that had to get one of those and it’s not just pie. Anyway, Callie is talking up George and the family all talks cute, except, of course, George.

Back in shadow-land, Izzie and Alex are sent on the very important dry-cleaning and lunch run. I’m impressed that Alex hasn’t complained to anyone yet about his “shadowing” duties. If it were anyone else in this show, I’m sure we’d hear about this non-stop. As a result, Alex is now my favorite character. Way not to whine, doll face. Anyway, I love the “is it take a hot-blonde to work day” line that Mark uses. Hilarious. Even the coughing “sexual harassment” part.

Back in the hall, George is harassing Bailey. She relents and he gets to pick an intern other than himself to assist with the endoscopy. He chooses Christina and walks in on the surgery she and Burke are doing. He gets suspicious when Christina is pretty much doing it by herself.

And…Case A of the week ambulances up (like how I verbize nouns? No? Too bad.) Anyway seems that a kid has been run over by its mom’s SUV…but the twist is the nanny was doing the driving. Oooh, she’s getting canned, I can feel it. I mean one of the main rules of nannying has got to be “Do not run over the children.” Probably right after, “Don’t put the kids in the oven.” Seriously, top 5 at the very least.

After the break we come back in on Case A. Dad has shown up and we get the parents arguing about how the mom is a bad mom. Bailey tries to shut them up, but it doesn’t really work. Nanny gets run off and the kid goes to surgery.

Over in the other surgery room, George is grilling Christina and Burke. Burke lets Christina go assist with George’s dad.

Shadows: Addison scolds Mark for making Alex his slave, but he does not repent. Addison then tries to tattle on Mark to the Chief and Chief ignores her.

Case B. They say his name is Frank, but I assume it’s Jimmy because it’s just like that guy from Seinfeld who speaks in the third person. Jimmy (Frank ) has had complications with his pec enhancement surgery. He got a boob job! Awesome.

Back with George and he’s still grilling Christina. What’s this? He’s showing signs of observancy? Who knew interns could do that? In response, she blows him off because what else can she do?

Mia (aka Case A) is getting x-rays and they’re running us over with the SUV and by SUV I mean the fact that the child loves the nanny and that the nanny spends more time with the kid than the mom and dad.

In the O’Malley room, Callie is making George’s brothers all het-up by knowing about cars. George is pissed and tells her to back off. Guilt, it works so well. I know. My mother is a guilt genius. And then George is looking on while Chief and Christina perform the endoscopy. More guilt ensues, this time it’s George on himself.

Bailey and Meredith are working on Mia. Meredith is oh so shockingly trying to make this kid’s life about her own and manages to alienate Dr. Bailey about working mothers and how they don’t give kids enough love and attention because their careers are so important. Who knew this show was so 1950s? Bailey tells her, and rightly so, to shut her pie hole.

After commercials we’re on the board and George continues his quest to find out what’s up with Burke and instead of being subtle, even though he tries, basically grills Burke. And guess what? Burke blows him off.

Addison enlists Derek in her quest to help Chief. That’s going to go well, for sure.
In Jimmy’s room, Jimmy is admiring his breasts. Jimmy gets Izzie to compare Jimmy’s breasts to Alex’s. Jimmy has issues, but we knew that already because he refers to himself in the third person. How people like that even get other people to be their significant others is amazing to CRo. CRo thinks Jimmy must be good in bed. Or something to that effect.

Over in Case A world, Meredith pseudo-scolds Mia’s mom for not being a good mom. Wait, no, she actually scolds. She apparently can’t divorce her own experience from Case A’s. What a great bedside manner! The point of this scene though is for us to find out the nanny is fired and that they want to pretend to be okay about working mothers, but not really.

In Team Intern stairway, George grills (again) Christina. Izzie and Alex start talking in the third person. CRo approves.

Derek and Addison approach the Chief about his “depression.” After one sentence it, of course, becomes about them instead of the Chief. While they’re talking over each other, we find out that the Chief visits Meredith’s mom once a week but he misses his wife and that he doesn’t want his marriage to be over. Christina comes in with bad news but about who? Uh-oh. Down the hall, Chief tells George something about his dad’s test results and George takes Christina in to his dad’s room to pass on the news. George really can’t do it, so Christina steps up. George’s dad has cancer of the esophagus (damn, I can’t believe I spelled that right on the first try!) and they need to operate. Eek. No good. And we break.

After commercials we get to see more Seattle! Yay! Hi, Elliot Bay and Space Needle.

Meredith comes upon Izzie and George in the stairway. George is melting down about all the stress and realizes he’s been grilling Christina and Burke in order to not face his own many issues. And here comes the phrase I hate most in this episode: “us with the boobs…we make a lot of bad decisions.” What?! What?! Why does this show hate women so much? Why? Why? Okay, I’ll calm down.

Out in plastics-land, Jimmy counsels Alex to make a grand gesture towards Izzie. Okay, I agree with the grand gesture idea and all, but taking advice from a dude in the hospital because his boob job went bad? Probably not a good idea.

Derek and Meredith talk about Mia. They agree today is not so bright and shiny since Mia needs another surgery. Getting run over is apparently as bad as one would imagine.

Christina is in George’s dad’s room. They’re checking out his heart to make sure he can do the cancer surgery. George’s dad informs Christina that George thinks she’s the best in the hospital and then there’s something wrong. She looks at the results and doesn’t say much but it’s apparent there’s something not so good. Outside we learn that his aortic valve is leaking. George insists that Burke will do the surgery because Burke is the best. Christina starts to get nervous. I know this means she’s going to fuck up George’s dad’s surgery and the drama is going into overdrive. I know it! Bailey overhears and let’s hope she saves that ER type drama. I mean, seriously.

In Chief’s office, Meredith comes in. Chief wants to break up with Meredith’s mother, but that’s hard since she’s not all there. He basically puts it on Meredith because he wants to make a go at it with his wife, Adele.

In Jimmy’s room, Alex makes the grand gesture by allowing Izzie to take Jimmy’s boob tube out.

In surgery, everyone is watching Derek operate on Mia. Addison is contemplating her rings. Callie decides she’s not ready to give up on George and leaves. Bailey is continuing to feel guilty about not being home enough for her kid because you know a woman’s life is not real unless it’s about the freaking baby. Argh.

George confronts Christina. He tells her she’s a robot and insults her sort of and then asks if she will be honest about Burke. Hasn’t he ever heard that honey and vinegar quote? Apparently not.

In the stairway, Izzie is happy about taking out the boob tube and Alex decides that he doesn’t want to be my favorite anymore and tries to kiss her. How long has it been since she killed someone? The someone that she was going to marry? A little too soon, dude! Reminds me of a friend of mine who broke up with her boyfriend and three days later was confused that he wasn’t over it yet. Why aren’t people ready when I am? It’s so weird!

Anyway, over in Mia’s room, we’re still being bludgeoned by the fact that the kid loves the nanny more than mom and dad, those terrible people who make money so this kid can have every advantage that she could possibly have. Evil, evil parents.

In George’s dad’s room, George condescends to his brothers until Callie shows up and makes a cancer-car metaphor for their lowly minds to understand. It’s sad in a lot of ways, too many to mention even.

In Mia’s room, the nanny’s back. And then we’re with Meredith and her mom. Meredith has to tell her mom that the Chief is breaking up with her. Mom is lucid enough to realize that he’s gone back to his wife but that’s about it.

Christina tells George’s dad that George is the best in the hospital, which is nice of her. She is the best in the hospital. Smart, better bedside manner, and can kick ass with a motorcycle helmet. I like her. Alex, you’ve been demoted.

End time montage! At the bar, Izzie forgives Alex for being insensitive. Bailey sings to her son via cellphone. Addison throws her rings into the bay (Wait, isn’t that polluting?). Christina tells Burke that George knows. George is in bed not sleeping. And then we close on Meredith and Derek back in her awesome tub. They bond over not being bright and shiny. And then we’re out. And next time is really the time that Josh takes back over. I’m sure you’re all happy. I’ve gotta get back to my beverage, this show’s driving me to drink…or back to drink…or something.

—previous episode [mb | next episode [mb]

Josh and I had a slapfight at the meet-up this Thursday to see who would recap that night’s show.

No, not really. If that really happened, he would have won and I wouldn’t be doing this now, would I? I’m serious, he could totally take me. I really don’t have any slap fight skills or any other fighting-type skills. I’m more of a laminiator, not a fighter. In any case, I was really at the meet-up and thus missed the original airing, but did you know they re-run the episode on Friday nights? Or at least they did last night, which was nice of ABC to do for me. Thanks! But I’m rambling. What you’re really after, the full recap, is after the jump. Enjoy!

After the previouslies, we see Burke packing to go camping with McDreamy. You know what? This is the most Seattle I’ve seen in this show. I hope they start filming more here especially if there’s going to be actor fights around town. How exciting! So what do we have? Looks like Burke lives in Pioneer Square and Chief is staying in a hotel next to the monorail. Is that the round Westin? Over at House Intern, Izzy mothers George as he gets ready to go and we find out that although George was invited by Preston, Chief and Alex and Joe, the bartender, and his boyfriend, Walter, are tagging along. Damn that’s a lot of dudes camping. Oh and lest I forget Meredith passive-agressives to McDreamy about his space. And we’re off in the wilderness. Sort-of. I love that the Chief has brought a rolly-bag and pic-a-nic basket camping, that’s so me. Seriously, I went hiking on the peninsula in a skirt this summer.

Back in Seattle (HI!) at the hospital, McSteamy – shit, I’m calling him Mark – Mark walks in on Addison and Callie…having breakfast. What? What did you think I was going to say? Behind his back, Addison queries with her eyes and Callie does the best little gesture that pretty much says it all about her “relationship” with Mark. At the board, Izzie, Sandra Oh, and Meredith are studying the board and dishing on the camping party. Sandra Oh has a great line about guys named Preston not camping and getting beat up by a squirrel. I bet that wouldn’t be hard though, squirrels are tough. I once saw one fall 15 feet out of a tree onto a wooden deck, get up, shake itself off and continue to run around. Tough mofo. I wouldn’t be too ashamed if he beat me up. Anyway, Mark comes up looking for Alex, whom he calls “what’s his face.” Since Alex is camping Mark asks if Meredith would like to shadow him. She squirms and tries to bail out but Bailey shows up just in time to sell her down the river. Izzie is ordered into peer counseling and now Bailey is alone with Sandra Oh just as she planned. Sandra has no idea that she’s going to be ambushed and gets excited about the prospect of getting into surgery today. But nope. Bailey has saved the cruelest assignment for her: Case A – Monopoly Boy has swallowed all the pieces from the monopoly game because his mean older brother won’t let him play. Little punk. Sandra Oh literally gets the shit duty this week since she has to make sure all the pieces pass through. When Oh protests the assignment, saying it’s a nurse’s job, Bailey springs the trap and tells her that unless she cops to why she erased Bailey’s name from the “humpty dumpty” surgery, she’s out of the OR. For the moment, Oh stays strong.

In the elevator we catch back up with Mark and Meredith. She’s giving him friendship rules. He calls her a dirty mistress. I kind of like that. The rules are: “Number 1. No flirting. Second, no talking about Derek. C, no giving me the face.” The “McSteamy face” she calls it and claims she’s immune, I’m not so sure. And neither is he. He says, cheekily, “You know, if I had gone into the woods, I would have taken you to keep me warm.” She refs that he’s broken all three rules. Okay, I’m going to admit something that might get me stoned. I like Mark. He’s cute and funny and pretty unflappable. I can see why all McDreamy’s women cheat on him with Mark. McDreamy’s a drag a lot of the time, but I’ll stop the blasphemy there. Sorry.

Ahem. Quick jump to Izzie, who walks into a conference room and is greeted by super perky scary lady, Sidney. Sidney previously subbed for Bailey as Intern Wrangler.

And back to Mark and Meredith. He’s quizzing her on the state of her relationship with McDreamy. He asks if they are taking space or if McDreamy is taking space from her. Ooohh. Not nice. Totally true and awesome, but not nice. She non-answers until then they walk into Case B’s room. Case B is Donna Gibson, formerly Daniel, who is in to have her sexual reassignment surgery. Donna’s wife Nicki is there as well. Mark immediately makes me regret saying nice things about him because he lets Meredith drown in her awkward exposition forever. But he’s good with the patient. I guess that means something.

Out in the woods, McDreamy is not relishing the non-peace and quiet that he’s brought with him. As he surveys the scene, Alex makes fun of Chief for bringing silverware, which why not? He’s got a rolly-bag and a chair and I don’t see anything wrong with that. He didn’t ask anyone else to carry it for him. Pfff! George who is inexplicably moving rocks around camp-snobs that Alex is wearing the wrong clothes. Chief tries to get in the sweet tent that Joe and Walter are setting up, not noticing at all that they’re a couple. More awkwardness abounds including the phrase “man love” and “one of my cousins is gay” until Burke herds everyone off to go fishing. Yikes.

Civilization: Oh is looking at the x-ray of Monopoly Boy when Meredith comes by to gloat. Someone’s always gloating about procedures around this show. Sandra Oh is upset until Izzie shows up and announces that she has to hide from Sidney. Sandra Oh gets her to look through MB’s poop, which is a good idea, no one’s going to want to find her there.

Case C – Jamie Carr is a pregnant woman who slipped and fell in the shower. She broke her arm and Addison is looking at the ultra-sound to check on the baby. Callie comes in to set the arm and in the professional OB/Gyn move of the year, Addison takes off with no explanation.

In the waiting room, Nicki and Meredith have a pow-wow about forms. Nicki admits to having left Donna when she first found out that Daniel wanted to be Donna. She claims she’s going to miss the penis. Somehow they’re going to tie this relationship into Meredith’s.

In the bathroom, Callie finds Addison crying in a stall and we find out that Case C’s baby is indeed dead.

Out fishing, Chief and Joe have a relationship talk. We find out that Joe is a better husband than the Chief which is no surprise to me. A few paces away, George and Burke also talk relationships and okay, pause. Boys don’t do this, they don’t sit around and talk about their relationships. Or do they? Anyway, Alex overhears George babbling about Callie and you can tell is toying with the idea of telling George about what he spied last week. And speaking of spying, George notices Burke’s shakes and questions him about it. Not liking what George is cooking, Burke escapes downstream.

Back from commercial and Hi, Space Needle!

Uh-oh. Donna has breast cancer, they make it seem due to the hormone treatment and I guess I can see that, although it’s still something that might headline the evening news. You know those “Are the seemingly harmless peas you’re feeding your children going to kill them?!” leaders they run almost every day? I hate those. Anyway, Mark tells Donna that they have to kill the hormone treatment and start her up on a cancer treatment. She wants to know if she can still go through with the surgery and Mark counsels against it. Not to go all women’s film study on you, but I don’t know if I like this underlying, changing your gender is unnatural theme that’s being worked here. Unintentional or not, “You will DIE, transsexuals!” seems a little extreme to me.

Over at Case C, Addison and Callie are looking in on formerly pregnant even though she doesn’t know it yet (FPETSDKIY) lady. Callie asks Addison to give the couple a few more minutes to be happy before Addison breaks the news.

Down at the stream, Alex asks George about Callie and tries to hint that he shouldn’t try to get back together with her. George tries to make him say why but Alex doesn’t…yet. Across the way, McDreamy gets pissy with Burke about all the extra guests. Burke makes fun of him and says that McDreamy doesn’t have any guy friends. Another reason why McDreamy’s a drag, he’s got no friends other than his wife and the guy who has sex with his wife. That’s gotta suck.

In poop-ville, Sidney, the scary peer, finds Izzie and instead of going away, she waits so that Izzie and she can “dialogue.” Just get it over with Izzie! It can’t be that bad, and I’m sure you need it.

Meredith and Mark have a little exposition time about Donna and not surprisingly Derek. Mark calls Derek damaged and asks Meredith out. Oohh, so slick! Nicki comes out and asks Mark to talk Donna out of going through with the surgery.

Out fishing, Chief says that Joe and Walter went for a “hike.” Oh, that part of camping I like. “Hiking” in the woods is the only reason I really go, but that’s probably too much information, isn’t it? Chief wants to know why no one has caught any fish and McDreamy is all passive aggressive about fish not liking a lot of noise. That’s totally not cool. The guy’s been kicked out of his house, is living in a hotel and is trying to get out and meet people and McDreamy has to be mean about him tagging along. Jerk. George asks Alex about Burke but gets side-tracked by Alex’s bad fishing technique. Alex is sick of being camp-condescended to and breaks out that Callie is sleeping with Mark. George decides that fighting (why not a dance-off?) is the way to get to the truth of the matter.

After the break, Chief plays the referee and says that in order to not injure their hands, Alex and George have to fight with what he calls “open handed blows.” I think he’s trying to shame them into not fighting, but no, they insist on having a slap fight. I immediately get excited. This is going to be the awesomest thing I’ve ever seen on this show. So manly! McDreamy and Burke spectate which includes more pissing and moaning from McDreamy. Shocker.

In the hospital, Donna is insisting on the surgery. Her reasoning is that her chance of a good life with risk of death is better than the sure thing miserable life without the risk. I’m totally with her, but her wife is not and storms out after calling her Daniel. Meanwhile, Callie is setting FPETSDKIY lady’s arm. When she’s done, Addison tells them that the baby is dead. Over in Monopoly Boy’s room, Oh and Izzie are dissecting more poop. What did they do, give the kid laxative? So gross. And Sidney is still waiting. Oh makes Izzie go with Sidney and as Izzie goes they exchange evil glances. Monopoly Boy comes over and has words with Oh. Oh, I see, this is the maturity episode.

Slap fight!! As an aside, Burke lets McDreamy know that Mark slept with Callie. There will be repercussions there. But again, slap fight! It’s totally hilarious and dumb for a few minutes until Walter says, “Next time, we’re not going camping with straight guys.” and then gets knocked down and slams his head on a rock. Okay, this is not a good night for alternative lifestyles! All the doctors converge and commercial.

When we come back, Oh is coveting Meredith’s surgery and they chat about it. The real reason she’s searched Meredith out though is she’s having doubts about keeping Burke’s secret. After Oh asks a bunch of questions about Meredith’s mother, Meredith finally notices something is amiss. Before they can get into it though, Oh gets paged and runs into the room to find Monopoly Boy getting sick. He’s not so clever after all, is he?

Outside, Walter is getting stitches on his head which Joe calls a “MacGuyver surgery.” I always love a Mac reference. George watches Burke pretty closely and I don’t see why one of the other doctors – not interns couldn’t have done the sew-up. Uh, Chief? McDreamy? But whatever. I guess they need a plot device to get others to notice that Burke is having problems.

Back at the hospital, it’s the surgery portion of the show. Bailey is scrubbing up to get the pieces out of Monopoly Boy’s, uh, out of Monopoly Boy. Oh wants in, but Bailey is all hard ass and won’t let her in until she tells her why she was erased from the board. Oh again refuses to answer. Up in the gallery, Izzie and Sidney look on. Sidney asks her to share about Denny and Izzie goes off on her. In OR 2, Meredith and Mark are doing Donna. After a little I’m-so-great-speech, Mark manages to get a “taking space” dig in. He’s quite the multi-tasker, that one.

At camp, the boys are all paired up. Alex and Chief talk about trying to get away. Chief admits that he misses his wife. Burke lectures George about being hyper-critical. He says that he and Sandra Oh are part of a team and that if George isn’t on a team he has to play alone for most of his life. It’s all very deep.

At the hospital, the pregnant lady delivers her dead baby.

On the river, Burke pushes McDreamy to talk about Mark. And now we see the purpose of this camping trip, McDreamy was trying to escape Mark and yet didn’t. “There is no wisdom here,” Burke says. Truest line in the show. And then they go home.

Hi, Seattle ferry dock!

And it’s wrap up time:
In the locker room, Sidney tracks down Izzie again and tells her about how she lost a kid her first year. That’s why she’s Izzie’s peer and finally she stops being a jerk and lets her.

In Donna’s recovery room, Nicki’s there. She and Meredith talk about relationships.

In the hall, Addison and Callie bond over Mark and decide to get drinks sometime.

Burke and Oh share a moment in the hall.

Callie and George see each other and instead of talking about all the crap between them, she tells George that his dad is in the hospital.

Commercial and Seattle fly over!

At the bar, Mark is hitting on Meredith. He conveniently gets a page so she’s alone at the bar when McDreamy walks in. McDreamy fantasizes that they can start fresh. And…she lets him. Sort of, since we close on them kissing in the bar.

And that’s it for this week. Next week, Josh retakes over the recap helm. See you in three weeks, everyone!

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