We’re only three episodes into season 20 of Grey’s Anatomy and still getting our bearings, but admittedly I’ve been wondering what the hell has been up with Winston Ndugu. He’s been so grumpy. I know he and Maggie left things sort of up in the air after their post-breakup sexcapade ahead of the Catherine Fox Awards at the end of last season, but you don’t take that uncertainty out on other people. Picking fights with The Miranda Bailey is not the way, babe.
Part of the problem with Winston is that outside of Maggie, he’s yet to forge any notable relationships on the show. (Maybe Nick, but he’s gone now too, and Winston’s wisely chosen to slowly get to know Amelia better.) So he really doesn’t have anyone to discuss his issues with. Within the show, that’s kind of sad for him; outside of the show looking in, that means we don’t have the clearest picture of what Winston is all about. He is a man of mystery! So, I was happy to see a lot of this addressed in “Walk on the Ocean,†an episode in which Winston takes part in the time-honored Grey Sloan Memorial tradition of doctors taking patient trauma and making it all about them.
Enter Nate Ardilla, a pharmacist with a side hobby that includes building “a self-propelled bubble†(think: a giant pedal boat made out of circular steel ribs) and attempting to cross the Pacific Ocean in order to show up his wife’s tech-billionaire ex-boyfriend. Male insecurity knows no bounds, it seems. A container ship hits his bubble boat and Nate is transferred to Grey Sloan still within the thing — it turns out that if they cut the steel beam currently crushing his abdomen, he could bleed out and die right there in the parking lot. Eventually, our good doctors realize there’s really no other way to do it, they just have to hope they can get him to the OR before it’s too late. There’s a whole back-and-forth in which Nate wants to wait for his wife Jessica to arrive so he can see her in case this is the last time. When there’s no more time to wait, Simone tells Nate to tell her whatever he wants to say to his wife and she’ll relay the message. He wants Jessica to know that this was all for her, because all he wants is for her to be proud of him, for her to never doubt she made the right choice.
Was anybody else flooded with flashbacks to season-two masterpiece “Into You Like a Train� If that episode isn’t branded into your brain like it is mine: After a train crashes, two passengers are impaled together on a steel pole. The beam is keeping them alive, but in the end, the only course of action is to give one of the victims a fighting chance by pulling the other one off the pole — knowing she’ll surely die. A young woman named Bonnie gets the, um, short end of the stick, and before they pull her off she gives Derek a message to give to her fiancée, still making his way to the hospital. It is an absolutely devastating hour of television and remains one of Grey’s best ever, which is really saying something since, by my calculations, we have 423 episodes to choose from at the moment.
This episode’s version of that story doesn’t have quite the level of poignancy as “Into You Like a Train,†but it does pack a punch in the end. Nate inevitably dies, and Winston, who has been treating this guy like an inconvenience rather than a human, isn’t the best equipped to handle his wife once she hears the news. She is beside herself, taking the blame for it all because she should’ve been reassuring him that she only ever wanted him instead of calling him “paranoid and ridiculous.†She should’ve told him how much she loved him and made him believe it. Not wanting to pile on this woman’s suffering, Simone takes some poetic license with Nate’s last words to Jessica: She tells her that Nate said he loved her, that he knew she loved him, and that none of this had anything to do with her. Simone bestows a real kindness here; all Winston can do is walk off with a pained look in his eyes.
Eventually, we get an explanation. Winston tells Owen that he was supposed to be headed to Chicago to visit Maggie so they could figure out what’s next for them. But she canceled. Just like she did the week before, and the week before that. He’s so torn up about it all, so angry and hurt, and he took it all out on his patient and his patient died. “At what point do I stop trying?†Winston asks. Grey Sloan Memorial King of Divorce Owen Hunt tells him that he should instead start by asking himself why he has been trying in the first place, and maybe it will lead to some clarity. If it’s just to save face or because he doesn’t want to fail, well, maybe that’s not the best reason to try to save a dying marriage. By the end of the episode, Winston takes off his wedding ring. I’m glad there wasn’t some sort of “last-ditch run to Chicago to be with the love of my life†thing happening here. We’ve lost too many people! Let Winston live (in Seattle)!
Winston isn’t the only one spiraling and letting it affect his work in this episode: The interns are really in free fall at the moment. There’s still tension between the five of them, all blaming each other for their current predicament (no OR time until they finish Bailey’s procedure logs), and things are even worse now that Lucas and Simone had their big blowout. Lucas is more broody than ever; Simone got a new haircut, which you know is a cry for help. In this episode, however, it’s really the friendship between Mika and Lucas that’s front and center. Mika was the first member of Team Skywalker when Simone’s ex came into town and has generally tried to have Lucas’s back. Not anymore!
Mika and Lucas get assigned to monitor Dorian, the John Doe fisherman who came in with gunshot wounds in the last episode, but Lucas, the saddest, angriest Sad Boy Surgeon currently roaming the halls of Grey Sloan (his uncle was a real Sad Boy Surgeon, so this is perhaps hereditary), refuses to follow Bailey’s orders and instead goes trolling for procedures to check off his list and leaves Mika alone. This means that when Dorian’s blood pressure plummets, it’s up to Mika to figure out what’s wrong and try and save this kid. Just as Lucas rushes in, Mika realizes it’s abdominal compartment syndrome and they need to open him up. She runs out to find the tray they’ll need. This is exactly when Bailey arrives and finds Lucas alone with Dorian. Lucas gives her Mika’s diagnosis but acts as if it was his own. He doesn’t even mention Mika. Bailey has Lucas assist with the emergency procedure and chastises Mika for not being around, and all Mika can do is stand in the sidelines, seething with anger.
Oh, baby, she lets him have it later in the locker room. “He sharked me,†she yells in front of everyone. She goes off on him stealing that diagnosis from her and openly blames him for the OR ban. She is done trying to be nice to him. She is done trying to be his friend. Surprisingly, it’s Simone who comes to Lucas’s defense — the two haven’t said two words to each other since their huge fight — and she reminds everyone that they all played a part in their current situation; they all made mistakes. Mika doesn’t want to hear it and she winds up drinking her face off with Jules and Kwan. Simone heads back to the house to check on Lucas, but she finds his room completely empty. Lucas is gone. There is a rift amongst our baby surgeons, and it doesn’t look like it’ll be repaired any time soon.
But, hey, our baby surgeons aren’t the newest kids on the block anymore. We get a new doc to add to the mix: Dr. Monica Beltran (played by Natalie Morales), the new peds attending, arrives on the scene. It seems pretty clear she’s being set up to become a love interest for Amelia. The two have what could eventually be a little meet-cute when Amelia steals Dr. Beltran’s parking spot. Then, they butt heads over a tricky case concerning an 8-year-old with chronic hydrocephalus. Dr. Beltran pushes Amelia to think outside the box for a way to help her and, begrudgingly, Amelia does just that. I’m less interested in the Amelia of it all and more intrigued by the new energy Monica is bringing. She seems to be no-nonsense, here to advocate for her patients, and has great bedside manner with both kids and their parents. She doesn’t seem interested in ego or where people did or did not go to school. She also seems to take a liking to Benson Kwan, and if this is the beginning of Kwan’s journey on the Alex Karev Prickly Man to Endearing Pediatric Surgeon pipeline, I’m into it. We do currently have about 7,000 characters on this show to keep track of, so honestly, why not toss a new one in and see if it sticks?
The O.R. Board
• It was kind of nice to see Meredith helping Teddy out at PT since Teddy spent so much time bringing Meredith back from the COVID Death Beach, wasn’t it? It also means that Teddy got to learn about Meredith and Amelia’s secret mission to carry on Mer’s Alzheimer’s research and in the end offer Meredith some much-needed funding out of the Grey Sloan discretionary fund. Oh, Catherine will be thrilled once she inevitably finds out what’s going on behind her back.
• Did they really have to have Teddy fall off the treadmill to get her and Meredith to a point where Meredith would spill on what she’s working on? Hasn’t this woman suffered enough?!
• Never in a million years did I think we’d get a glimpse of Nico Kim again, and yet here he is! He shows up with his partner Jason because of some complications with their surrogate and Jo happens to be their OB/GYN. If you are someone who was holding out for some Schmitt/Nico closure, (1) congratulations, you got it, and (2) what will you do with all of your free time now? It’s been so long!
• Jo is kind of a terrible friend, no? When Schmitt asks her why she didn’t tell him that his ex-boyfriend would be showing up, she either pretends she doesn’t remember Schmitt’s long-term relationship with Nico or actually doesn’t remember. I don’t know which is worse. Sure, she can’t tell him about her patient, but she could have been like, 10 percent more empathetic to his anxiety. Her tough-love speech about him “losing at life†and “getting in the game†does work in the end — Schmitt finally follows up on pursuing a peds fellowship — but did she have to be so harsh? Why is anyone friends with this woman?! Last season, I was coming around on her, but I have a feeling she might still be a menace to society.