The theme of the day is “seeing things with a different lens†or something like that. It’s mostly a stretch, but we’ll go with it because this season of Grey’s Anatomy desperately needs a little cohesiveness.
The storyline where the theme is most apparent belongs to Jo and Link. Link’s moping around, sad-scrolling through his photos, because even though he and Amelia had sex on Thanksgiving, she isn’t interested in changing her mind on marriage. It doesn’t matter that they love each other and it doesn’t matter that they are still super-attracted to each other or that they have a kid together, Amelia doesn’t want to get married or have more kids and that will never change. This whole situation is infuriating because Amelia should either say she wants to commit even if they don’t get married or say she isn’t interested in any way, shape, or form, and move on. She is so unclear in what she actually wants. And the sex did not help. At the moment, though, mostly I’m mad at Link, who will not stop pining for this woman who does nothing but hurt him. Amelia is trouble and Link deserves better!
Jo sees her best friend being an absolute sad sack and decides to do something about it. It’s their day off and they are taking the kids to see some play in the park. On second thought, this seems like torture, and why do all the women in Link’s life want to hurt him? Their kids aren’t old enough to enjoy outdoor children’s theater even a little bit. Who is this for, Jo? WHO IS THIS FOR?
It might be for Jo, who doesn’t know the story of Rapunzel because, as you’ll recall, she was a street urchin growing up. We get it, Jo. Anyway, Jo is learning a lot through this excursion. She learns that the story of Rapunzel is horrifying and also that her gut reaction to the thought of her and Link as a romantic couple is one of disgust: A woman at the play mistakes Link for Jo’s husband and her knee-jerk response is, “Ew!†She says that out loud. Jo is a mystery.
Anyway, it’s not long before there is a medical emergency at this event. The prince, who has a heart condition, falls while climbing up Rapunzel’s hair and breaks his leg REAL bad. It’s gross. Jo and Link spring into action. While Link works on this nasty fracture, Jo tries to keep the prince alive — he keeps crashing because of his heart condition. They end up using an AED from a first aid kit nearby and also gather up all the EpiPens in the audience — so many EpiPens! — to keep Prince Jeremy alive. It’s not ideal, but Jo and Link are clearly a good team and very good doctors, and they keep Jeremy alive long enough to get him in the ambulance.
At the hospital, Link and Teddy work on Jeremy (who ends up surviving) while Jo hangs around in the waiting room with Jeremy’s best friend, the witch in the Rapunzel play. She goes on and on about how Jeremy is her best friend, her family, and that if he isn’t okay, she won’t be either. We’re obviously drawing parallels between the witch and the prince and Jo and Link, so when Jo starts complaining to Link about how obvious it is that the witch is in love with her best friend, you can guess what’s coming next. Link thinks it’s possible a person could have a crush on someone and then get over it and become friends — that’s what happened with them, he explains, surprising her. He had a huge thing for Jo but it wasn’t reciprocated, and eventually he decided he’d like to be her best friend, and now he’s over it and they have a great friendship. Jo is floored. And you can see in her face the exact moment where she’s like, Wait a second, this makes so much sense, now I’m in love with Link.
That’s a pretty big revelation to have; so big, in fact, that a person might want to have a bit of a think on it before doing anything rash. Not our Jo! At dinner that night, she gets super awkward and then starts cryptically rambling about how maybe all the crap they went through is just the middle of their stories and they can still have their happy endings, because when two people have been there for each other through the worst moments of their lives they deserve to be happy. Link takes this to mean that he should double down on being with Amelia. He doesn’t need to be married right away, they can just be together! Link is an idiot. Now Jo will have to sit around pining for Link until he gets his head out of his ass. Could these two just kiss already?
Speaking of people who need to kiss, let’s talk about the other storyline that involves seeing things from a new perspective: Amelia and Kai’s breakthrough on the Parkinson’s cure. Dr. Hamilton is getting frustrated with how long curing an incurable disease is taking because his Parkinson’s is progressing quickly. He wants the surgery ASAP or he’s kicking Meredith off the case. If he’s angry now, thank goodness he doesn’t know that Meredith is mostly in Minnesota to hump a dreamboat in her hotel room. I mean, have we ever seen her doing work in the lab? And she’s going to get all the credit for this thing once it’s successful??? If I were Amelia or Kai, I’d be annoyed. But Meredith is mad that Hamilton is mad, so she goes off for a day away from the Parkinson’s stuff in order to clear her head. That leaves Amelia and Kai in the lab to continue working on getting the cells they are injecting into the brain to be viable. They’re at 79 percent viability, and to get approved by the FDA so that they can proceed with the surgery, they need to get to 90 percent. There’s a lot of time spent in the lab watching Kai do their thing with the cells and also open up to Amelia. These two are getting close! No wonder those cells aren’t staying cold like they need them to — that lab is hot, hot, hot with all the flirting. I’m sorry, I had to.
After yet another attempt that doesn’t move that viability percentage up, the usually calm and collected Kai goes into a closet and yells in frustration. They need a walk to clear their head. Amelia joins them and the flirting continues. Amelia seems to reveal more of herself to Kai in this short conversation than she ever has to Link. Plus, she is super turned on by the fact that Kai has no idea who Amelia’s brother is. I mean, that seems harsh since the guy is dead, but we all know Amelia’s had a raging inferiority complex for her entire life.
After this little stroll, the two head back to the lab and Amelia has a new idea about how to keep the cells cold enough: The needle they’re using to inject the cells into the brain needs to be cold, too. It’s so simple! It works. They get the viability up to 92 percent. The cure is nigh, people! The cure is nigh. For a moment it looks like Amelia and Kai might celebrate by kissing in the parking lot, but they do not. I just don’t know how many times I need to say it: This show needs more kissing!
The O.R. Board
• Nick ropes Meredith into performing surgery on his best friend and kidney donor and doesn’t tell her about their deep connection until he’s already trying to backseat-operate. Later, he tries to explain that he didn’t want to put “that burden†on her if something went wrong (it didn’t); he didn’t want to make it personal for her. Meredith gets some good lines in about how every surgery is personal and “there’s no such thing as just a body on a table†for her. Lord, these two are so into each other and I am so into them.
• I’m sorry, are we really supposed to believe the Chief of Surgery would be the one going to the medical school fair? Who is running this hospital?!
• Bailey is livid and exhausted after watching all these med students be more wowed by swag (free pizza always wins, come on) than by the quality of a residency program and a hospital’s reputation. I don’t know, Bailey, maybe all those med students do know about Grey Sloan’s reputation and they don’t want to die. Regardless, everything seems to work out when Meredith poaches a resident from the Mayo Clinic to bring back to Grey Sloan as a gift for Bailey: His name is Dr. Jordan Wright, he is extremely talented, and he is Dr. Bailey’s biggest fan. We love him already.
• What is this show doing with Maggie Pierce?! Now she’s back in Seattle and returning to work … but spends the majority of the day having sex with Winston in the on-call room? I love that they are so happy and consistently getting some (obviously, I mean, I just said I want all the kissing), but don’t these two need to work at some point? At the very least, if you’re going to spend the entire day in bed, go home! Don’t have all-day sex in the grungy on-call-room bed! Go to your nice house and do it!
• Who is watching Meredith’s children?