Episode Report Card Lauren S: C+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Breaking Up Is(n't) Hard to Do
By Lauren S | Season 3 | Episode 25 | Aired on 05.16.2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Shonda Rhimes has said that next year, "fun Grey's" will be returning. I've got to tell you, though, with the way everything ended up this hour, I'm not sure who it is that will be having that fun. But let's start at the beginning, shall we? On Wedding Eve, all of the doctors end up back at the hospital except for Cristina, who is ordered home to rest up. In addition to delivering the babies that might end up as Joe and Walter's, Addison is tending to Adele. For a while they thought her baby would be okay, but she ends up miscarrying. Richard, however, never leaves her bedside during the ordeal and she starts to realize that he has changed and he does love her, and with this realization she admits that the baby was his. Meanwhile, Derek is working to remove the ice axe from the fourth climber's head, and realizes that it was put there deliberately. When he interrogates the climbers, one finally admits the guy was so badly hurt they thought he was going to die, and he was just trying to put his friend out of his misery.
At the same time, every couple that isn't Richard and Adele is in some variety of turmoil. Derek tells Meredith he met someone and is kind of a shit about it, but ultimately they talk and he admits he totally loves Meredith and could never walk away from her. That said, he says that if she's not in it for the long haul, she needs to end things, but her answer to that is to change the subject and get them to the wedding. Cristina has numerous freak-outs leading up to the ceremony but finally gets herself ready, only to have Burke walk out of the church to tell her that he knows she'd do this for him but that she doesn't want to, and with that, he's realized that they should be over, not getting married. Meredith must tell the guests that the wedding is off, and then goes to Cristina at her apartment, where Cristina has a breakdown realizing that Burke has taken the few things he cherishes and might be gone forever.
Speaking of gone forever, Ava's husband arrives to claim her, and although clearly unhappy, she decides to go home with him. Before she leaves, she begs Alex to give her a reason to stay, which he doesn't. It takes a talking-to from Addison to realize he was an idiot but when he returns to the hospital, Ava's gone. Izzie does much the same sort of pleading, telling George (again) that she's in love with him. It's fairly bad timing, since George just decided to have a patch-up-the-marriage baby with Callie, who is also celebrating being named Chief Resident, which seems to have stunned Bailey. What could be even worse for this scenario? That would be George failing the intern exam. As he cleans out his locker to leave the hospital and seemingly his medical career as a whole, he sees the new interns for the first time, including one Lexie Grey, half-sister of Meredith and the very same perky brunette who hit on Derek at the bar in the previous episode.
Finally, in the race for Chief of Surgery, Derek emerges victorious when Richard offers him the position. But in a rare moment of maturity and self-awareness, he says he's not ready for it; Richard is the best man for the job and should give it another go, and we're left to ponder who will actually be back at Seattle Grace come fall. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously on Grey's Anatomy, the interns took their intern exams, Izzie told George she had no feelings for him, mountain climbers were brought into the ER missing one of their party who arrived later with an axe in his head, Crush got her memory back, Joe and Walter are adopting but the potential birth mom collapsed at the bar, Adele is pregnant and also collapses, and there's the little matter of the new Chief Resident and Chief of Surgery who need to be announced. In addition, I seem to be competing for Longest Run-On Sentence Ever.
This week, the Chief is giving the voice-over…OR IS HE? His voice tells us, "Being chief is about responsibility. Every single surgical patient in the hospital is your patient, whether you cut them open or not. The scalpel stops with you." Over this important job description, we see him at Adele's side as they rush her back into a room, as Addison and Burke arrive with the mom from whom Joe and Walter hope to adopt. The Chief continues that they need to be able to tell someone that they did everything they could for their child/husband/wife. As an avid watcher of Friday Night Lights, I can't see Rina, the pregnant woman, as anyone other than Waverly, her FNL character. I always suspected that she'd been out of town before we met her having a secret baby, and maybe she was doing that in Seattle. You never know! Addison asks Joe and Walter to leave the room, but they refuse. Addie then catches sight of the Chief and Adele and asks him what happened as his voice-over continues, saying that the Chief gets caught up in taking care of other people's families, as in real time he tells Addie he had no idea why she was even at the hospital. "And you sacrifice your own."
Cristina, Meredith, Callie, and Izzie are gathered together at Mere's house for the shower/bachelorette party, and Cristina says she likes wedding games after all, but she sounds so delighted, I wonder if those were drinking games. Callie is writing Cristina's vows on her hand so that she won't forget them during the ceremony. Izzie is making a bouquet out of toilet paper, presumably to go with Meredith's toilet-paper wedding dress. Izzie is in a right snit and informs Cristina that she doesn't need notes and instead should speak from the heart. Look, I don't care how in love I am with someone; I get really nervous speaking in front of people and I think that I'd need my own vows written down, so lay off. Of course, I'm deliberately trying to avoid the point, which is that Izzie is upset because she can't tell the man she loves anything since he's, oh, married. We've said it before, but let's say it again just for fun. If the timeline of this show is to be believed, didn't Denny pretty much JUST die? I absolutely believe that someone can move on from the death of a loved one, but this seems phenomenally fast. I'm also tired of arguing that I don't believe there's any real chemistry between Izzie and George, so I'll point out that little question this week instead. And back to the vows. Cristina predictably doesn't believe in any of Izzie's advice, telling her that the heart is an organ. "It pumps, circulates blood, gets clogged from time to time. It does not, however, speak. It doesn't have tiny little lips on it." Izzie tells her she's a pessimist, as she gets up and puts the bouquet on Mere's head. So I guess this mean's that I was wrong, and it's a really flowery hat. Cristina just announces that she's going to like marriage; her problem is just the wedding. With that, all the pagers except for Cristina's begin to beep, which upsets her. As she's about to leave behind Izzie and Callie, Meredith tells Cristina that she has to get married, no matter what happens, and that her getting married is a sign. "It's a sign people like you and me can do this! Be healthy, be happy. You marrying Burke restores my faith in me." They banter about Cristina's wedding being all about Meredith, but it's sweet, and these two hands-down have the best relationship on this show. Meredith asks her once more, "You can do this, right?" Cristina says she can, with a "no problem!" tone of voice.