Episode Report Card Lauren S: B | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Smells Like Team Spirit
By Lauren S | Season 8 | Episode 7 | Aired on 10.27.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Hunt has decided that in order to make Seattle Grace a better place to work, he's going to take all of the most valuable surgeons in the city out of the OR and put them on a baseball field so they can risk being injured in a battle with a rival hospital instead of working on the ground-breaking surgeries and trials that will actual assist the hospital's ranking. He's so desperate to beat the other team that he even hires ringer Henry as his administrative assistant for a day in order to win. Meredith and Cristina take the opportunity to get drunk in the outfield, which is genius, but not so genius is the way Mere decides to attack Bailey for not letting her on her trial. The two fight on the outfield, even though Meredith totally found the problem with the trial. Chief (Richard, not Hunt) sets them straight. Chief (Hunt, not Richard) gives everyone a pep talk when he realizes that the game is a hopeless case but they are actually good at their jobs. And then Lexie gets so jealous of the sexy ophthalmologist from the opposing team who is making out with Mark that she beams her in the boob with a fastball.
At the actual hospital, Shepherd wants to do a risky surgery and makes a mother feel guilty for not wanting to put her child at risk just so he doesn't have to be bored and think about his daughter. To prove that he can do it (after Hunt yells at him for turning away patients who came all the way to Seattle to be treated by the great and powerful Derek), he plays a computerized version of Operation… and he's terrible at it. But after getting batting advice from Lexie, he realizes what he's doing wrong (yes, it was a very softball-heavy episode).
Alex doesn't want to sign off on a hospital transfer for Zola and gets all uppity about that. So much so that he goes down to family services to get some answers. He even tracks the judge down to a hospital where he's getting a chemo treatment. You'd think this would screw everything up, but it doesn't. He gets Mere and Der a hearing with the judge, and doesn't even take credit for it.
Cristina is stuck doing an angioplasty on an extremely overweight fast food manager who doesn't seem at all bothered by the fact that he's enormously overweight. And while Cristina grumbles, and Meredith sticks her nose in where it doesn't belong, Teddy insists that Cristina go back to basics. April needs OR time so she begs to help a guy with a hand injury, the same patient who freaks Callie out with his etching tools. His surgery goes awry with a cardio complication and Cristina acts like a human being with feelings for a change and allows April do a lot of the work. Teddy plays genie in the bottle and grants Cristina her dream surgeries as a reward. Callie manages to save the hand of the garbage man/artist. Everyone wins… well, except the ophthalmologist who got nailed in the boob. -- Angel Cohn
Want more? The full recap starts right below!It's a relief to know that Mere thinks that surgeons can't be lazy. Of course, as she VOs this, she and Cristina are lying in the grass, looking at clouds like little girls. She continues that when surgeons stop pushing themselves, something terrible happens. Cristina gripes that Teddy has sucked out all of her imagination, but Meredith tells her that the new gameplan she is implementing is to just keep the faith and believe everything is going to be okay. Cristina tries it out by pointing out that Teddy told her she has something great for her today. She's disgusted to hear that Mere is working in OB again but Meredith likes it because she has a lot of downtime to secretly work on Bailey's trial; even though Bailey told to stay away, she feels like she's really close to figuring it out. A ball then flies at them and it turns out that they are lying in the outfield during a softball practice since Owen has put together a hospital softball team. Alex runs after the ball and mocks them for not playing but when he hears Cristina mention Zola (specifically, how she thinks Meredith is focusing on the trial to keep from thinking about Zola) he stops to ask if there's been any news and neglects to actually throw the ball back to the infield. Mere tells him that now they are just waiting for a court date, and so Alex throws the ball back to the catcher, Arizona, who happens to actually be afraid of the ball.
Basically, they are the Bad News Bears. Mark is busy making out with an ophthalmologist from Seattle Presbyterian who has shown up at the field before her own practice, and it turns out that he's been seeing her for a week. Lexie tries to kill her with a glare, proving that Mama Avery's warnings to Jackson were wise. Richard is reading on the bench and insists to Callie that he's just saving his energy for the game. Teddy keeps begging Owen to pitch but he wants to leave Derek on the mound. Lexie gets a hit and the doctors all go after the ball as if they are toddlers who haven't properly mastered the art of walking yet, because apparently when they set food on the field they all forgot their basic motor skills. Seriously, we've seen most of them run down the halls of the hospital and they look much more adept than we're seeing now. The rest of the Seattle Presbyterian team then arrives for practice, led by their Chief, McDougall. He mocks Owen for even managing to form a team with all of the embarrassing goings-on at Seattle Grace and Owen tries to stay calm and just promises to kick their butts the next day. McDougall is understandably doubtful as he watches the sorry display on the diamond in front of him. Derek then gets a page and grabs Lexie to go and do a consult, so all of the other doctors take this as a dismissal and leave, ignoring Owen's protests. McDougall then blows a whistle and his team all run out to the field; you know they are good because they have on matching team shirts. You know they are at least better than the Seattle Grace team because they can actually jog like humans.