Grey’s Anatomy might have formed most of my beliefs about the world of medicine, but even I can admit that in most respects, it doesn’t mimic real life. Surgeons do not spend most of their time making out in the on-call room, face multiple natural disasters in a year, or violate HIPAA every three minutes. (I hope.) Nevertheless, my favorite soap opera does get one thing absolutely right about the human condition, if not the medical Establishment: Every damn person on this show seems to make the right decision only after trying out all the wrong ones.
We’re just getting back from the midseason hiatus, and already, the questionable choices are piling up. Why is Adams (Niko Terho), who apparently did not get shot during last season’s cliffhanger but still fought a gun-toting robber to the ground, so eager to return to work without a psych eval? Why is Blue Kwan (Harry Shum Jr.) asking his amnesia-ridden ex to end her relationship and get back together with him in a long-distance relationship? Why is Link (Chris Carmack) trying to persuade his OB/GYN wife that he knows better than her how on to handle a pregnancy complication? And why, oh why, is Owen (Kevin McKidd) — the perennial source of my discontent — galavanting down memory lane with an obvious crush while the hospital literally melts down in a heat wave?
Grey Sloan might be the best hospital in Seattle, but it’s also run by some of the messiest humans alive. It’s great to be back!
Let’s start with Adams and his obvious post-shooting trauma. Our midseason finale left us wondering who got shot in the scuffle at the convenience store — him or the guy who held the place up at gunpoint. It turns out, the gunman took the hit from his own gun. Classic. Naturally, we take a moment to recognize how background checks could have prevented this, but, mostly, we’re worried about Adams, who really really wants to go back to work even though we all know he’s more fragile than he cares to admit. With the hospital short-staffed, he does find ways to contribute some unwanted help, but it doesn’t take long for a falling surgical tray to trigger some unwanted panic. This is where all that relationship building between Adams and Ben Warren (Jason Winston George) starts to pay off.
Adams and Warren might’ve gotten off to a shaky start, but they’ve since mended fences, and this week, Warren comes to the rescue with some grounding techniques and reassurance that Adams’s trauma response is perfectly normal. We love an enemies-to-bromance story line, don’t we?
Warren might be scoring points with Adams, but his boss is no longer a fan. Remember how Warren ignored chief of surgery Teddy Altman’s (Kim Raver) orders to close Grey Sloan off from trauma cases as the heat wave overwhelmed them during the midseason finale? Well, she looked about as happy as you’d expect to see a bunch of ambulances pull up this week. And as if that wasn’t enough, Ben had the gall, the gumption, the Y-chromosome-fueled audacity to show up to her office and suggest that she put him in charge of coming up with climate-emergency plans for the hospital. Lest we forget, he’s reentered his residency on a probationary basis — a little detail Teddy makes sure to bring up while ripping him a new one for being so presumptuous. Good for her. He deserves all that smoke and more for disobeying her and during Women’s History Month at that!
Somehow, Ben’s not even the biggest pain in Teddy’s ass this week. Whether she knows it yet or not, that would be Owen, who spends the episode blissfully unaware of all the problems at work because he’s too busy driving his childhood friend and obvious crush, Nora (Floriana Lima), back to her hotel. The No. 1 Infuriating Owen Moment of the Week comes when Nora admits she had a crush on him (shocker!) and he expresses his disbelief by whining, “You were mean to me!” I’m sorry, Owen, but are you new? Did you not learn sometime between now and middle school that negging is the chief flirtation device of emotionally stunted people? Did you forget this from your years cavorting with Cristina Freaking Yang? Give us all a break.
Obtuse comments aside, the painfully predictable Owen-finds-another-woman side plot is bound to hurt Teddy sooner or later. For now, he’s playing the Good Guy by taking himself off Nora’s medical team and asking Teddy to check on her instead, but that was also a very convenient and fake-chivalrous way to tell Nora he likes her, too, after that awkward almost-kiss. I’m too cynical to believe he’ll keep his hands to himself from here on out, so it’s a matter of “when” not “if” Teddy winds up crying in an on-call room. And before you bring up her little fling with Koracick, please remember that the key distinction here is that I like Teddy and despise Owen, so I literally do not care at all what she did. He’s wrong forever and always, and that’s all I have to say on that.
And speaking of men being wrong, Link. My God, Link. You’d think that Jo Wilson (Camilla Luddington) acquiring a medical degree and specializing in OB for years would be enough to convince her man that she knows how to manage the risk of early labor, but apparently, her brush with death at the convenience store has left Link incapable of rational thought.
After the shooting, Wilson wheels into Grey Sloan’s trauma unit bleeding and in pain. The only OB available to see her is, unfortunately, young enough to be TikTok famous and comes with stereotypical Gen-Z social skills — which is to say, his bedside chatter leaves a lot to be desired. Still, both she and her Doogie Howser figure, Dr. Marcus, agree that a cervical cerclage would be her best bet to stave off early labor. Link, on the other hand, hears about the potential risks and immediately springs into “overbearing ortho god” mode, raising Wilson’s blood pressure until Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), queen of no-nonsense maneuvers, kicks him out of the room.
In the end, and after a quick “come to Jesus” speech from Bailey, Link comes around and tells Wilson she can do whatever she wants. Nevertheless, this is yet further proof that men simply cannot handle disasters — they’ll either turn into know-it-alls, defy their bosses’ logical orders, run off with a cute girl, or, in the case of one other doctor we know, try to rekindle a very fraught relationship with an ex who lives hundreds of miles away.
Kwan, Kwan, Kwan, you in danger, girl. Ever since his ex, Molly (Dianne Doan), showed up at the hospital, he’s been tied up in knots. It’s easy to understand why — they were engaged until she got into a car accident (that he blames himself for) and got amnesia. Their relationship ended, but he never stopped loving her, and now he’s begging her to break things off with her boyfriend, Dave, who just proposed. Bad idea, IMO! World-record-level terrible idea.
Listen, we all harbor these fantasies in our heads: What if the one who got away came crawling back? What if they finally said I was “The One”? What if they told me they also just happened to win the lottery last week and have purchased the yacht from Succession so that we can restage that “Thank you for the chicken” scene just for fun because they know how much I’d love that? But the thing about fantasies is that they can only survive as long as reality cannot encroach, filling in all the hazy gaps with monotonous chores and petty arguments and overly long conversations about what to eat for dinner.
Of course Kwan wants to get back with Molly; they haven’t had to live together in years! Call me a pessimist, but I just don’t see how this works out.
Then again, it’s better to be blinded by optimism than to be isolated by inconsolable grief. The latter spot is exactly where Jules Millin (Adelaide Kane) is now that Mika Yasuda (Midori Francis) has left Grey Sloan. Yasuda’s exit is understandable; I wouldn’t want to work in the hospital where my sister died a sudden and traumatizing death, either! However, given their romantic history, Millin is having some trouble processing Yasuda’s departure — so she pushes all her friends away. At least, she does until the robber’s girlfriend tells her about how he closed himself off after losing his job. That seems to provoke some introspection.
You know things are bad when an armed robber’s girlfriend offers you the most pointed epiphany of the week, but we’ll take it! Millin might not have found a way to talk to her friends this week, but I’m confident she’ll figure it out.
On another positive note, the impossible surgery from last season has apparently proven possible! After railroading Winston Ndugu (Anthony Hill) into joining her quest for a miracle, Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone) managed to save the high-school basketball star Jackie — which is also great for Ndugu because Jackie’s mom happens to be his ex. It seemed at first like Jackie might die on the table, and then she lost control of her feet and legs, but after a quick drain of some spinal fluid, it looks like she’ll be back to sinking free throws in no time. She might not qualify for a scholarship anymore, but at least she’ll be on the court. And really, what more can any of us ask for after receiving a death sentence?
The OR Board
I know the hospital was short-staffed and Teddy wasn’t hearing “no” for an answer, but how the hell did Griffith wind up operating on the guy who shot her boyfriend? Surely, there’s a law against that, right?
Is the “Marcus” in “Dr. Marcus” a last name or a disrespectfully deployed first name? It’s unclear, but I hope we see more of him — we could use a little infusion of Gen-Z irony poisoning to counteract this show’s deep commitment to millennial sincerity.
When do we think Warren will tell Bailey that Altman told him off? Will he ever tell her? He knows she sees and hears everything, right? Surely, he doesn’t think he can keep this a secret. And if he’s still that delulu after this long, well … I guess that would be in character, too, actually!