Episode Report Card Lauren S: B+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Blame It On the Rain
By Lauren S | Season 5 | Episode 3 | Aired on 10.09.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The impossible has happened -- Derek has actually moved in! However, he assumes that this means that Meredith is kicking out Izzie and Alex, which Izzie learns when she finds Derek measuring her bedroom to become his office. For someone who just came from living in a trailer, I'd think he'd appreciate just having a living room where he couldn't touch the opposite walls at the same time, at least for a little while. But this sends Izzie down into the dumps, which isn't helped by the fact that Alex is still being mean to her. Derek even tries to get Cristina on his side, but though she admits she would kick the other two out, she gets mad at him for the little ploy. She goes and talks to Dr. Amy (Meredith earlier announced that she was all better and finished with therapy) and begs Dr. Amy to tell Meredith she still needs help. Mere and Dr. A then meet in the elevator for some touching words about how she's doing better but she isn't finished with needing therapy. Amen!
Callie and Hahn are apparently still a secret to everyone but Mark. This freaks Hahn out, even more so when she realizes that Callie told him all about it because she and Mark are buddies. Callie finally convinces Hahn that she's friends with Mark, she's the kind of person who likes discussing her life with a friend, and she's not going to stop being herself in this relationship, which Hahn actually takes quite well. I may still feel like this is a forced storyline, but it might just be the healthiest relationship that this show has ever seen thus far. When he's not teasing the happy new couple, Mark is still giving Lexie crap for mooning around after George. She diagnoses a really rare condition in a patient but when Mark offers her the chance to scrub in on the surgery, she declines because she's helping out George. He was supposed to take his intern test, but ended up offering to help the Chief when disaster struck.
Ah yes, the watery disaster -- a pipe burst on the surgical floor and the Chief is determined to believe that maintenance has it contained, despite Bailey's repeated warnings that things could get worse than just drips coming from the ceiling. In example number ONE MILLION of why you never doubt Dr. Bailey, she's totally right, as illustrated by the ceiling of one of the ORs caving in on top of a patient with a wide-open abdomen. It's a pretty humbling end to the day for Richard, who started out the morning giving the entire staff a lecture about how residents will need to learn actual general medicine, attendings and residents alike will have to actually teach, and a whole bunch of other new guidelines that might actually make Seattle Grace look like a legitimate hospital. Having learned his lesson about not being such a bossy know-it-all, he follows through on his speech about being a good teacher by staying late and acting as proctor while George finally retakes his intern exam, the results of which we'll presumably learn next week.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!A fish tank alerts us to the fact that we're in Dr. Amy's office, because fish are soothing to those having a psychiatrist appointment. My dentist when I was a child also had a fish tank, and I'm sure it was supposed to be soothing to all the little ones about to have teeth pulled or the like. But the problem was that they put in fish that turned out to be kind of vicious and would eat each other, so you'd see a few floating around and then a blob of fish remains. Happy drilling, little children! Mere VOs: "As surgeons, we're trained to fix what's broken." She's in a really good mood as she explains to Dr. Amy that she's in a hurry because there's a big meeting, but that she wanted to stop by and tell Dr. A that she's done with therapy. VO: "The breaking point is our starting line at work." It's for this reason that I'm happy not to work at a job where people's lives depend on me. Dr. Amy is pretty confused and assures Meredith that she's come a long way but that she's definitely not done. Mere, however, tells her shrink that she is happy now, and isn't that the point? Dr. Amy tells her it's not. While Mere thinks about this with a furrowed brow, her VO continues: "But in our lives, the breaking point is a sign of weakness." Dr. Amy begs Mere to stay for her session, but Mere makes excuses about the meeting, shakes the doctor's hand and thanks her for everything. Her VO concludes, "And we'll do everything we can to avoid it."
Izzie walks into her bedroom with her hair in a towel, post-shower, to find Derek taking measurements in her bedroom. He tells her that he's thinking of turning this room into his office when she moves out. A very confused Izzie asks when she's moving out. Derek, ever the sensitive soul, looks perplexed and concerned that he just dropped a bomb. But it passes in a second and he asks hopefully, "Soon?"
Izzie storms into Alex's room to see if he's heard about the surprise eviction, but to her horror a female head pops up from under his covers. The girl generously offers that Izzie can join them, but she just runs away as quickly as she can.
Once Alex has bundled off his Flavor of the Night and headed to work, he finds Meredith and demands to know when she was going to tell he and Izzie they had to move out. Derek comes up at that moment and demands to know the same thing. Izzie, of course, materializes to present a baked good to Meredith as a desperate bribe. Mere wants to know why they have to move out (and, isn't this a conversation they maybe should have had before they moved in together in the first place?) so Derek explains that it feels like he lives in a frat house, especially with Alex's parade of women. "Parade of skanks," Izzie corrects. Aw, fifth-grade level flirting. Alex, awesomely, just brushes that all off and wants to know if he's apartment hunting. In her general, led-by-others way of making decisions, Meredith tells them she has to think about it. Even before I saw the rest of this episode, I knew that what was coming was Meredith asking Cristina to essentially decide on her behalf. Izzie begs Meredith to savor her Guilt Muffin before she decides. Once they are gone, Meredith whines to Derek that she likes her roommates. He tells her he does too (doubtful), that they were her life and this is "our life." This is a totally valid point. One he could have spoken to her about beforehand. Making no sudden, scary moves with your commitment-phobe girlfriend is one thing, but saying nothing and then acting kind of dicky about the whole thing with her friends is another. I'm convinced there's a happy... well, a functional medium in there somewhere. He finishes by telling her he's excited about their life together and giving her a peck on the cheek, but there's a bit of a condescending undercurrent to it all.