Episode Report Card Joe R: B | 3 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT We Bought a Zoo
By Joe R | Season 9 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.14.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.So Callie has pitched the idea that the crash survivors pool their lawsuit money and buy Seattle Grace in order to save it from slowly choking to death under Pegasus's thumb. Callie and Meredith are the most onboard, and Derek seems persuadable once his financial guy tells him it's not a totally insane idea (it helps that Derek's new status as the Pegasus poster boy is totally mortifying to him). But Arizona is dead-set against mortgaging Sophia's future, to the point where she's really insulting to Derek about his "egomaniacal" survivor's guilt, and Cristina basically laughs Meredith out of the room when she's told about it. So things look rocky.
But Cristina is convinced by two things: 1) the interns start talking about jumping ship, and Stephanie in particular is so Cristina-like in her mercenary zeal to be the best, and Seattle Grace is no longer where she can be the best; and 2) Owen tells her he doesn't really believe that the Pegasus deal will truly save the hospital. She ultimately can't tell Owen about the plan, as he's under a legal obligation to be loyal to Pegasus. She does find out that the sale is going down TONIGHT, though, and the only thing the doctors can do to stop it is to resign en masse, thus killing the sale. Owen looks like someone killed his dog by throwing his cat at it.
Arizona is ultimately convinced after Owen is forced to deny her and Bailey's request for genome mapping on a cancer kid, and Bailey makes it clear that she can't stay at a hospital like this anymore. So the doctors all quit, and the sale is dead, and they can't tell Owen, so he feels righteously betrayed, and we end on Callie, Arizona, Meredith, Derek, and Cristina at the Shepard-Grey manse, making plans to incorporate, while Owen stands in the rain, banging on Cristina's door. If this leads to Owen having sex with Cahill over some sense of abandonment, I will revolt.
In other news, Alex and Jo bond further while working on an infant bowel surgery. They see their story of co-workers whose sparring makes them a good team in the parents of the baby. So Alex loooooves her now, even though she's dating someone else. Also, April and Todd the Cute Paramedic plan their first date, and she actually goes to Avery for advice about it, and he manages to get past his jealousy to tell her to just be herself. Which lasts about an hour or so, until Todd confesses his terrible secret that he's saving himself for marriage, and April is so happy to hear it that she totally lies and says she is too, so that should lead to an unbearably annoying revelation in a few weeks.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We pick up right where we left off last week, with a somewhat manic Callie having just pitched the idea to Derek, Meredith, and Arizona that they buy Seattle Grace (/Mercy West? Is that still a thing?) in order to save it from the Pegasus scourge. Just a reminder about my policy towards voice-over on this show: I don't pay any attention to it. Nine years of watching this show have led me to physically tune it out, and on the rare occasion when I can actually hear the frequency on which Meredith's VO operates, I will only remark upon it if it makes crucial narrative sense to do so. Which it hardly ever does. Anyway, so Arizona wants Callie to keep it down because the babies just went down to sleep, but Callie is HYPED. She makes the case again: there will be no ER, no research, no time to interact with patients, and from the research she's done, any and all dissent from the doctors gets squashed, thus they all start leaving. Callie doesn't want to leave. "We have to buy the hospital!" Derek wants her to slow down, but Mere thinks she might be right. Arizona, however, is the most adamant of the four against the idea. She's not interested in hospital administration -- she and Derek have just now gotten back to work, after all. "Don't you want to just work?" Derek also chimes in that making your own decisions is not all it's cracked up to be -- he had that job once and he hated it. He mentions the deal he made with Pegasus to help facilitate the sale, though he doesn't get into the particulars of the gaudy posters. But he thinks maybe that's the way to make it work -- play their game but change things from the inside. Arizona wants to know what Hunt thinks, since he's pretty invested in the sale.
Yeah, about that: Cristina and Owen are busy trying out new things in bed. She's ignoring Meredith's calls, while Owen ignores a call from Cahill that causes Cristina's eyebrows to arch. Owen says she just wants to strategize about the sale. Cristina: "At 3am? I bet she does." He says the nurses threatening a walkout, which could threaten the sale, since basically if anybody leaves, it could lower the value of the hospital NOT LIKE WE'RE SAYING ANYBODY COULD LEAVE OR ANYTHING. But Owen ignores the call like a good husband. Cristina tries to assure him that nothing is going to threaten the sale, but she could be more convincing. Owen's got so much on his shoulders -- the fate of the whole hospital, in fact. It's easy to see why he'd want to stay in a bubble with Cristina for a bit more. (Also, kudos to Cristina for ignoring what must increasingly seem like a legit emergency from Her Person in order to give Owen her full attention. Seems like turning an emotional corner, to me.)