By Joe R
Oh my. As was set up last week, this week's Very Special Musical Episode is a result of Arizona and Callie's car accident. Because Callie took off her seat belt to retrieve her phone, she goes through the windshield when they hit the truck and this results in just about every bad internal injury in the book. As the others fight to save both her and her baby's lives, she watches them from afar, singing, and sometimes they jump in an accompany her. Let's just say that it's a good thing that many of these actors aren't usually asked to sing, and that Sara Ramirez was given the lion's share of the work.
Callie has so many different injuries that the doctors all argue about what needs to be fixed first, but ultimately she just needs to be sedated for a day until they can do much of anything. Lucy isn't prepared for a possible baby delivery this complicated so Richard flies Addison up to take care of things, and it's awesome to have her back even if it's only for a few scenes. After a very strange sex interlude/montage (not kidding), Cristina has a brainstorm of how they can fix Callie's heart less invasively than usual and it involves using some sort of crazy risky method Burke taught her. Teddy doesn't want to do it and Owen initially backs Teddy up, but when shit starts to go really badly in surgery the day, Teddy is overruled and Cristina takes over and does the procedure. At the same time Derek fixes a bunch of stuff in Callie's brain, but he can't be sure any of it worked and they all just have to wait to see if and how she wakes up. Addison tries to hold off on the baby's delivery but eventually has to do a c-section; Arizona runs in to try and help and is able to get the baby girl breathing. Finally, as they wait for Callie to wake up, Arizona and Mark make peace with each other and manage to admit that they are both important to Callie and their new baby daughter.
Lexie and Avery have a few awkward moments as all this unfolds due to Lexie's being there for Mark. Ultimately, though, she goes home with her current roommate lovah, which seems like the right thing to do but still makes me sad, as apparently I have to admit that I am just a big old Mark-Lexie 'shipper. Meredith has an emotional breakdown because she was jealous of Callie getting pregnant and now wonders what the point of life is, basically, but Derek promises her that they will have a child somehow. The twosome that doesn't come through the ordeal so well is Cristina and Teddy -- Teddy is so bent out of shape at what happened with the nifty Burke procedure that she declares that she can't be Cristina's teacher any more if Cristina won't listen and learn. One could argue that saving the patient showed she made the right call, but Teddy's ego appears to have one massive bruise and at least for now, she's over it. Finally, as Arizona waits at Callie's bedside Callie finally wakes up, and the first thing she says is that yes, she'll marry Arizona.
The writers worked in basically all of the Grey's signature songs, including Callie singing a line from the original theme song, "Cosy In The Rocket." Other songs include "How To Save A Life," "Breathe (2 AM)," "Chasing Cars" (which isn't as embarrassing as one might have anticipated from the brief clip in all of the episode promos) and "Grace." I'll leave the full list -- and the details of that sex interlude/montage -- in the very capable hands of Joe R, who will be filling in for this week's full recap. --Lauren S
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There's a way to look at this episode as kind of a miracle. Something so singular that it couldn't happen on any other TV show -- even though, yes, obviously, dozens of shows have done musical-type stuff before. But Grey's is kind of in a glass case, both ratings-wise and esteem-wise. The people who are watching it will keep watching it; they'll stick with the show through a stylistic experiment, even one that involves Chyler Leigh speak-singing and Cristina and Hunt sing-sexing. But more important than that is the fact that Grey's lost all of its standing as a Very Important TV Show. That'll happen when your show is so decidedly about lady doctors and their feelings -- so inferior to subjects like manly bootleggers or boxers or meth dealers. To be fair, that'll also happen when your lady doctors start having sex with the ghosts of former boyfriends. But the point is: nobody respects this show anymore anyway -- why NOT to a weirdo jukebox musical centered around a doctor who's so badly injured that she's hallucinating herself?
So previously: Callie and Arizona were driving out to a cabin getaway weekend, arguing about Mark as per usual, when Arizona decided to ask Callie to marry her. And that's when the car crash happened.
We open with the airbag deploying and smacking Arizona in the face. She's got a nasty gash on her forehead and her face is full of scrapes, but she's the lucky one. Because we pan over to the passenger seat to find only broken glass. Callie's legs are still partially inside the car, on the dash. The rest of her is pitched out onto the hood, she having previously taken off her seat belt to dig around for the phone when Mark called. Arizona starts screaming her name and gets out of the car, while we see Callie's bloody face, twitching and hyperventilating. Callie's voice-over, sensibly taking over for Meredith this week, starts talking about the brain, and what a funny little organ it is. How it controls what we see, what we hear, how we process what the world is handing us. Right now, Callie is processing by seeing a vision of herself -- healthy, uninjured -- standing by the side of the road. As Arizona screams for help and calls emergency, CallieVO tells us that when the brain is traumatized, shit can get weird. And that's basically all the explanation we need for the singing that's about to happen. Starting with Callie (trust that whenever I talk about Callie singing, it's the Callie apparition I'm talking about), who kicks things off inauspiciously, staring at her own broken body with a puzzled expression and croaking out, "Nobody knows where we might end up..." It's cute, but please don't make me think of the old opening credits of this show.
All this while, Lexie's still singing about breathing -- a rather lovely little song, and Chyler Leigh does a very respectable job at it, but ultimately it feels more awkwardly placed than "Chasing Cars" did. Especially when she makes it to Mark, despondent in a stairwell, and tries to comfort him through song. He's crying, and he tells her that she doesn't have to do this; "I know you hate me." Lexie looks at him, says, "I don't hate you," and then immediately back into the chorus. Awkward, I'm saying.
Alex finds Arizona up in the gallery and offers to stitch up her forehead. She says she's fine, then breaks down. He puts a hand on her shoulder, while Lexie does the same for Mark, who can only whimper, "She's my best friend," over and over.
After the break, Alex and Lucy are on the roof as a helicopter approaches. Lucy is bitching about getting benched and how bad it makes her look in front of her colleagues, while Alex is all, "She's the best in the business" and more importantly tells her that this is all so very much not about her and maybe she needs to suck it up. And then the helicopter lands and it's Addison. Addison! Oh, I've been hoping that they'd airlift you out of that awful spinoff show and look! Now they've done it.
Addison gets right to work, getting a status report from Kepner and digging into Callie's chart. Lucy meekly tries to offer some help, but Addison bites her head off, ticks off the list of shit Lucy did wrong, and then tells her to get out. She then takes a good look at the broken body of her good friend Callie and promises her that she and the attending are going to get together and come up with a plan to save her. At the words "a plan" the music starts to kick up, so you know what's coming.
Song: "How We Operate"
Original Artist: Gomez
Performed by: Owen
Most Portentous Lyric: "Calm down / Get straight"
This is the "Owen takes charge of the situation" song. Have I mentioned that Kevin McKidd is a shockingly great singer? Even on this overly literal and tonally bizarre song choice? Meanwhile, Meredith, Cristina, and Alex look on and ponder the fuck-upedness of it all. Meredith tells Cristina that she takes back her stupid edict about how Cristina can't be the baby's godmother. The girls notice the hickey on Alex's neck, and Cristina immediately begins to tease him about being in loooove. Alex throws cold water, saying that by virtue of working here at "Seattle Grace Mercy Death," she's bound to either go crazy or get cancer or shot or hit by a truck or something. Meredith thinks he's got a point about that "Mercy Death" stuff. Bummer.