For an episode that kicks off with five minutes so intense that, yes, admittedly, I did well up (I’ve cried at less — please leave me alone), this sure turned into an unfocused catchall pretty quickly, didn’t it? We get the conclusion to last week’s cliffhanger, in which an abortion protester runs a car into Addison and pregnant OB/GYN fellow Tia, plus Maggie and Winston’s marriage reaches a new low; there are several sporadic scenes of different doctors having their own breakdowns over the trauma they’ve all experienced; two people from Station 19 run around the hospital; interns who are hot for each other make eyes over a preemie; Hot Nurse brings Schmitt coffee (because sure — why not?); Amelia talks about her sisters for a scene or two; and, yeah, a gonorrhea outbreak in a retirement community is tossed in for good measure. This episode is a jumbled mess — but it’s our jumbled mess, you know?
What’s frustrating is that so many of those plot elements are good, but they’re just given little to no development. Such wasted potential! That scene after Tia wakes up and Jo has a breakdown in the elevator with Link after holding in her emotions for so long? That is great! That is compelling. That is the sort of scene and character beat I want for Jo and Link. Lord knows I’m always down for a Grey’s Anatomy elevator moment. And yet there was barely any buildup to it. Aside from Link asking Jo if she was okay when the doctors from the clinic first poured into the ER, they have no scenes together! Jo has almost zero lines in this episode! When Link tells Jo that she doesn’t “have to hold it in anymore†and that he’s “right here,†it should be gutting. Don’t get me wrong — I sobbed. But, like, I had to do a lot of that work. There’s no real development here. Why are we wasting scenes on Ben and Maya running through the hospital to check on their respective spouses and wax poetic about how this is how their wives must feel every day when they go off to work? We do not need to know any of this! We do need to know Jo’s mental state throughout the Tia ordeal, Link’s feelings about Jo’s mental state — literally anything about these two ahead of the emotional peak of their story line. I can’t believe I’m arguing for more Jo time, but here we are!
It’s just frustrating to watch repeated wasted potential. As Tia and Addison are wheeled into the ER, it’s riveting. Tia is only 29 weeks pregnant, and as a doctor, she knows she can’t have this baby yet. She begs them not to deliver. Addison is getting checked out by Amelia and Link, but she swears she’s fine; she wants to get into the room with Tia. She pulls that tried-and-true “I’m a hero†move of yelling at people until someone shoves her dislocated shoulder back into its socket. You know the one. It’s not long before Tia’s vitals start to tank, and everyone knows they need to do an emergency C-section right there in the ER, lest both mother and baby die. Folks, this is great TV. If we had just let Tia’s story be the focus of the episode, instead of trying to cram in 1,000 other minor character beats, we would’ve been in good shape.
Thankfully, both Tia and her son, Connor, survive. It’s touch and go with both of them for a bit. Addison and Simone have to revive Connor more than once, and while Bailey, Jo, and Owen do their best on Tia, at one point they have to pack her up and send her to the ICU just to stop her from dying on the table. In the ICU, she begins to bleed out and Bailey has to perform an emergency surgery right there. She saves her, and eventually Tia wakes up. She’s going to be okay. Although I guess what the episode’s saying is … is anyone really going to be okay? Tia, her baby, her husband, her doctors — they all went through so much violence and trauma. In the end, it only makes their resolve to help women get the health care they need stronger. No, Bailey will not be closing the clinic for a few days. No, Addison will not stop going out on the road in the PRT. They will “sweep up the glass,†and they will keep going; they will continue to fight the good fight. The message here is an emotional one, but the episode itself, I fear, is mostly forgettable.
One bit that sticks out, however, is that “Pick Yourself Up†most likely spells the beginning of the end for Maggie and Winston (especially now that we know her Grey’s days are numbered). In the midst of everything else, Maggie is freaking out because the big article on her partial heart transplant has been published — and in it, she refers to Winston as one of many assistants instead of the brilliant surgeon who played an equal part in pulling off the transplant. She frets as she waits around for Winston to finally read it. She asks Teddy to have the hospital ask for a retraction. She swears she also told them what a huge part Winston played in the surgery. Finally, she has the big confrontation with Winston that she — and we — knew was coming the entire episode.
It all goes back to that moment in Meredith’s house, right before the fire, when Maggie blurted out that she doesn’t respect Winston. Before, that was about his choice to give up cardio in order to prioritize their marriage — this article and the way Maggie talks about him is just more evidence that it wasn’t something said in the heat of the moment, that she really, truly doesn’t respect him. She can deny it. She tries! But she hasn’t even apologized — she hasn’t admitted that maybe she’s gotten a few things wrong — so it all seems rather unconvincing. Next week, it looks as if these two finally get their time in couples counseling, but it seems as though it may be, in the words of the iconic JoJo, too little, too late.
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• The reveal that Jules is living in a retirement community with a med-school friend’s grandmother is great, and I hope they do some more fun things with the whole situation. Not so great: The gonorrhea outbreak that gets turned into commentary about how women are judged for every decision they make and should live life to the fullest. Pick one message, Grey’s!
• Mika, too, has a bit of a breakdown in this episode, freezing with shock after the violence she witnessed. Webber talks her down, and eventually Bailey pulls her into an emergency surgery on Tia right there in the ICU, reminding her of her power as a surgeon. This story line also feels half-baked, but at least it has a clear emotional through-line.
• There’s one moment when Addison and Simone are trying to keep Baby Connor alive that Simone starts to talk about how she was brought to this very NICU when she was born and that she was saved by a doctor just like Addison. It’s nice, and I’m all for more Simone development, but … here? Now? Why? Basically, like, all the questions.
• Similarly, while Amelia worries about Addison, who is working through her pain, she makes a comment about how the universe made up for her three terrible sisters by giving her Addison, Meredith, and Maggie. Again, this is a nice moment, but it feels so out of place. It leads to one scene between Addison and Amelia in which Addison declares that she is, of course, going back out on the road in the PRT. Amelia’s character beats in this episode go nowhere. It’s really par for the course for her this season, isn’t it?