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God damn it, Grey's Anatomy. You hooked me back in with last season's epic, harrowing finale. You got rid of George and Izzie. You rehabbed Meredith from one of the most irritating characters on the show to one of my favorites. You added a handful of new blood that was interesting and/or hot. You got me. And then what do I get when I make it back to recap an episode? Sixty minutes of emotional adolescents braying on about their FEELINGS mid-surgery. I thought we were past this!!
Anyway, everybody's seriously thrown by Cristina's quitting, none more than Derek, who decides he's going to take it out on Altman for no good reason. Meredith, Hunt and Altman have this episode-long powwow about how to best convince Cristina to come back, but Derek gets all snitty about how they shouldn't do that. This leads to conflict when a foreign head of state from Vaguely Rendered Arab Emirates shows up with a heart condition that needs to be operated on under utmost secrecy. This gets complicated when his Charlie-from-West-Wing/Jonathan-from-30-Rock informs Meredith that President Somewhere also had an unexploded aneurism. One that probably just exploded. So Team Cristina all find themselves in an OR, with the open heart AND brain of this guy, and Derek and Altman are carrying on this argument about whose fault it isn't that Cristina quit.
As for Cristina herself, she's gone off the reservation. Luckily, with Callie having just been dumped for Africa, she's got company. They make crazy eyes around their apartment, Cristina attempts home hairstyling on Callie (bad news bears, that), and they hit up the mall in the middle of the day. Aimless, probably signs of serious depression, but I could think of worse ways to spend an afternoon. They're also planning a party, which is where Team Cristina Minus Derek are planning their intervention. Derek gets there first, though, and warns Cristina, so the both of them end up in the roof, drinking wine and talking about anything but medicine.
In other news, Alex and Kepner are on Peds detail, with the shitty new Arizona replacement. (Casting does us a favor by casting Peter MacNicol, an all-time weaselly jerk.) They're trying to save a baby with a failing liver. There's a bunch of medical hoo-ha with the swollen liver and a sponge and not being able to close the girl up -- Dr. Jerkface doesn't think there's much else to be done, but Alex comes up with a bril plan to prop up the liver with ping-pong balls (don't ask), and in case you couldn't tell from last week, Kepner is crushing hard. She even sticks up for Alex with the Chief when Dr. Jerkface tries to take credit for the idea. Later, in the on-call, Kepner can't stop singing Alex's praises, so he does what he always does in that situation: off come the shirts and it's sexy time. Only she wants to go slow, this being her first time and all. Alex don't got no time for coddling, though, and he's pretty harsh in telling her so, sending her running off to Cristina/Callie's party in a pretty emotional state. She evidently tells Jackson all about it, because he whales on Alex something serious when he arrives. (And, yes, it turns out that Alex was only a jerk because he comes from a broken home and schizophrenic brother and blah blah blah Sexy Emotional Trauma.)
But what's up Jackson's fine ass, you wonder? He's been on a losing streak lately, so much that nobody wants him on their team. Bailey ends up taking him because she needs a guy to keep an eye on a woman who's having her pancreatic fistula drained. (In case you were curious, yes, Jackson's still sexy even in the presence of a draining pancreatic fistula.) He gets annoyed at not being able to scrub in on another surgery Bailey's doing, and he ends up missing some telltale bad signs. By the time he does, it's too late, and the lady dies on the table while he's trying to operate. He flips out on Bailey that it's not his fault. Bailey, for her part, is pretty sick of patients dying of post-op infections these days.
Anybody else? Lexie is nice to Jackson, Callie and Mark are probably going to be roommates, and Altman has a very sensual handshake with the State Department guy trying to keep President Somewhere's presence a secret. I expect sexing on each of those fronts in the future.
Watch the episode below, discuss it in our forums, then see what we think are the most annoying Grey's storylines.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously: Cristina couldn't get over her PTSD from the shooting, so she quit being a doctor; Mandy Moore died on Bailey from a post-op infection; Kepner went totally bonkers during Hunt's trauma training, which kind of impressed Alex, probably because she reminded him of Izzie, who is totally the writers' model for Kepner now; Derek decided that finding a cure for Alzheimer's is the crusade which he will pursue to a degree that he'll become totally insufferable; and Arizona left Callie at the airport after a hasty and clumsily conceived effort to give Jessica Capshaw some maternity leave.
Meredith's voiceover metaphor of choice this week is "pressure," and unless something interesting happens on that front -- say Mere taking the Freddie Mercury part while Bailey does the Bowie on a duet of "Under Pressure" -- I trust you'll agree that we shouldn't address it again, right? So while Mere VOs, Cristina watches TV surrounded by unpacked boxes in her and Hunt's new apartment; and Alex deals with his broken-down car by the side of the road. Later, all the docs are in the auditorium while Altman gives a post-op conference on that old-man lung-transplant patient from last week. Alex stumbles in and Mere, Avery, and Kepner speculate on what he was doing that has him smelling like a boozebag this morning (Alex: "What happens in Vegas..."); Avery is also fretting because he hasn't get been but on any attending's service, and he thinks it's because he's had a a few screwups lately. Mere tells them all to shut up when Altman gets to the part about Cristina. When Altman's ultimately forced to admit that Cristina isn't here to answer questions about the patient, Mark kind of flips out and starts asking everybody who might be in the know why. Mere can't say, Altman doesn't know, the Chief gets a phone call and leaves the aud, and Derek is too bust peppering Altman with accusatory questions about why she put Cristina under such a pressure-packed situation. Altman defends herself, saying that the initial request was simply for Cristina to watch a patient while she went and retrieved some lungs, and besides, are they here to do a patient presentation or a post-mortem on Yang? Derek, as snottily as he can muster, tells Altman, "Well, you saved the patient." Yes, um, HER JOB. Gosh, the more things change, the more I hate goddamned McDreamy.
It appears that Callie is in a hotel room (her old apartment is being sublet), living in depression and squalor. She jumps at the ringing phone, only to be bummed when it's Mark, asking what she knows about Cristina. From the looks of the "She WHAT?" reaction, it's safe to say she hadn't heard.
Altman and Hunt emerge from the auditorium bitching about Derek's attitude. She asks him how Cristina's doing, and he says she's fine and acting totally normal, except any time he brings up work, she goes blank and ignores him. He thinks she just needs time. Richard comes up to Altman and says there's an emergent patient being admitted and to meet him in the V.I.P. wing. ...Seattle Grace has a V.I.P. wing? Is that for when, like, Ichiro or the Starbucks mermaid gets sick? Richard then tells both doctors that he's required to send a letter to the American Board of Surgery informing them of Cristina's resignation. Is there any reason for him to hold off on sending that letter? They both quickly say "Yes," and ask for just a little more time to work on her.
Avery, Kepner, and Lexie are going over charts, with Avery continuing to fret about the attending not wanting him. He decides he hasn't screwed up with Bailey, he'll ask her. He asks Kepner whose service she's on today, and she replies "Karev," then corrects herself to say Dr. Stark, the new pediatric surgeon she'll be shadowing with Karev. Avery and Lexie click to the Freudian slip pretty quickly, though, and tell her not to go there. "Trust me," says Lexie. "And don't be paranoid," she tells Avery as she walks away, "trust me on that too." Avery gets a look at Lexie as she departs, which Kepner calls him on with a "don't go there" of her own. "I'm a guy," Avery says, "I live there." Stop making my doctor boyfriend say stupid things, Shonda, damn.
Callie drops in on Cristina, who is dancing around, listening to her headphones, pretty clearly ignoring the outside world. Callie gets her to take the headphones off long enough to say that Mark told her that she quit. At the first mention of work, Cristina's got the headphones on and is bad to dancing. Callie gets her to stop again, so an exasperated Cristina explains that she had started to unpack but then got sick of it, so she stopped. She notes that Callie just got dumped for Africa and has a week before she's due back at work. "You're completely free, the world is your oyster, make lemonade!" Cristina starts bouncing off some walls as Callie muses that she was going to get a haircut and make a radical change, but then she thought that was maybe not the best idea. Cristina grabs a pair of scissors and cuts a giant hunk of Callie's hair. Callie screams, but Cristina, crazed look in her eyes, says, "Let's make lemonade!" Now both women are laughing maniacally, so it's clearly catching.
Kepner and a visibly annoyed Alex are checking up on a couple kids, and the one -- an albino-looking monster of a child -- keeps firing his ping-pong gun at Alex. Kepner tries to cheer him up, talking about a surgery they could help Stark on today, but somehow Alex isn't so jazzed about a liver transplant on an infant. The kid fires another ping-pong ball at Alex, so her turns and yells at the kid to knock it off (the kid calls him "Jerkface" in return). Of course, Dr. Stark (played by Peter MacNichol, so we know this guy's either a priggish stickler or an underhanded a-hole) walks in just in time to see Alex yelling at one of his patients. He tells Alex to use his "inside voice," then admonishes him for missing rounds this morning. Alex tries to use both the car-trouble excuse AND the feeling-sick excuse, but of course the latter doesn't work so well on a doctor who can simply give you a once-over and know you're hungover at best. He tells Alex and Kepner that they can prep his liver patient for surgery, and hopefully Alex won't be a jerkface about it. After he leaves, Albino Devil-Spawn shoots Alex again, and Alex wrests the gun away from him.
Richard, Altman, and Hunt hit the V.I.P. Lounge (Eddie Vedder's doing a drop-in set at 10!), where they're met by one Ronald Day, of the U.S. State Department. He tells Richard they need to keep access to this patient to necessary personnel only: "No one can know this man is being hospitalized. No one can know this man is in the country." The patient is wheeled by while a cloud of men with cell phones yell urgently in a language that's not English. "Don't tell the press!" and such. Altman and Hunt get to work with chest compressions, while Day tells Richard, "From a global perspective, it would be great if he didn't die."
Back from the break, Hunt's working on President Secrets with the paddles, trying to keep him from dying, while Altman is struggling with medical history that's all written in Arabic. Day explains that the Prez's car was hit by a truck while he was leaving a super-secret meeting that he totally wasn't at, in case anyone asks, but seriously, global political stability is kind of on the line here. Altman gets her Amanpour on about how Prez's death would affect the first free elections in his country and open the door for Al Qaeda -- Day is clearly impressed. "You don't just skip to the crossword, do you?" Altman starts to say how she used to work in that corner of the world, and Day's like, "We know. We're the government. We're invasive." He says the goal is to get the Prez stable enough to be put on a plane home. Altman's like, "Or our goal is to save his life, whatevs." Inside the O.R., Hunt and some docs are working quickly, while the President's right-hand guy (physically and temperamentally he's more Jonathan from 30 Rock, but when he says he considers himself a son to the man, I guess that makes him Charlie from The West Wing) begs them to save his life. Just then, we get the dreaded V-fib ...
Alex and Kepner are updating the parents of the newborn liver patient, and they keep making a point to address her by her name, "Lisa," since they read that it helps the doctors bond with the patient if they know their names. They read a lot, I guess, because they also start asking surgery-specific questions, which neither Alex not Kepner really know if they should answer. Kepner's actually really good at reassuring the parents without getting specific, but Alex ducks out to ask Dr Stark (currently busy playing video games with another patient) if he'd answer some of the parents' questions. Stark says the 'rents have clearly been spending too much time with "Dr. Internet" (I guess "Dr. Google" would require a product placement fee?), and that Alex should go "hold their hands and let them feel smart" while he finds their daughter a liver. "Her name's Lisa," Alex says to no one after Stark leaves.
Bailey and Avery are walk-and-talking, she telling him that she doesn't really need him today; it's a light day for her, with only two laparoscopic procedures. They come up to the V.I.P. Lounge where they're met by a Secret Service-y person who won't let them by, despite Bailey's claims that she goes in there all the time. Avery starts excitedly asking if it's the President or the VP in there ... or Bono. Bailey looks at him like he's got three heads, with the "Bono" stuff. Richard sticks his head out and asks Bailey if she could take his patient load today. Specifically on Louise Cortez, a re-admit after having surgery for chronic pancreatitis. She's developed a pancreatic fistula that's currently being drained, she just needs to be monitored. Bailey says she'll do it, then conspiratorially whispers to him, "...Is it Bono?" No. No Bono. Bailey heads off, dragging Avery with her -- she can use him now.
Derek is busy blowing off Lexie -- his craniotomy got cancelled, so she doesn't have anything to do today -- because he's trying to make out with Meredith behind closed doors. Are they trying to make a baby? I honestly don't remember. Now Mere is interrupting Derek's macking with talk of Cristina -- should she go talk to her? He's more intent on the making out, but for the record, he doesn't think Mere has anything to apologize for or anything. There's another knock at the door, only this isn't Lexie, it's another security guy with an earpiece, looking for Dr. Meredith Grey. Derek turns to his lady and asks what she did.
Meanwhile, Cristina is giving Callie a haircut, going at her raven locks with the zeal of an underpaid gardener. She won't let Callie look in a mirror, which is a red flag Callie ignores, probably because she's too busy suggesting they throw a housewarming party. Cristina LOVES that idea and starts vibrating in another direction, talking about getting furniture and texting people about the party, which gives Callie a moment to look at her new haircut and scream in horror. Cristina is barely paying attention ("I have several credit cards and nothing to do!"). "I look injured," Callie wails, "do you even cut hair?" Cristina stops bouncing and looks at her: "I sorta can't believe you let me do that." Anyway! Furniture! Let's go to the mall! Where Callie can hopefully find a Supercuts staffed with very understanding people.
Meredith joins Hunt and Altman in their efforts to keep President Incognito from coding. While Day looks on from out in the hall, they get his heart started again. Altman gets a text and asks Hunt about the housewarming party his wife is apparently throwing. Meredith isn't thrilled by how weird Cristina's being. Hunt asks Meredith to talk to her, and Altman thinks they all should, at the party, when Cristina can't get away. Hrm. Mere says she's the last person Cristina wants to talk to. Meanwhile, Day pulls Altman aside and wonders if maybe they could save the party-planning talk for after they save the life of the unconscious head of state. For what it's worth, he says, the Prez is a good man, and it'd be a shame if all he was working for got cut down because of this. Altman's like, "Thanks once again for the added pressure!" Back with Meredith, she's telling Hunt that Cristina needs space, but Hunt says space will lead to her getting locked out of the program. He doesn't think that's what she wants, but by the way he asks Meredith "Do you?" it sure seems like he's asking because he doesn't know.
Bailey is with Ms. Cortez, explaining to her about pancreatic fistulas and how they're draining the pancreatic fluid so it doesn't end up digesting all her other organs. Which is certainly good. Ms. Cortez seems a bit nonplussed, and not thrilled about being back in the hospital, but she trusts Bailey. Avery tells Bailey her OR is ready, so she leaves Avery to monitor the drainage bag (Jackson Avery: still sexy while monitoring a drainage bag), and to make sure the liquid remains clear and that she's not spiking a fever, either of which could signify an abscess or early sepsis or "any number of nasty things." Bailey tells him to remember his first rule of residency: "Eat when you can, sleep when you can, and don't screw with the pancreas."
Alex and Kepner are assisting Stark on the liver transplant, but the liver (which is in fact a graft of an adult liver) has swelled too big to fit into the tiny infant body. Stark's blasé about this -- apparently it happens, one of the many maddening realities of medicine that I'd rather not know -- and even when the baby's BP starts dropping he just packs the cavity with gauze as a stopgap, and says they won't be able to close her up today, and will just have to wait and hope the swelling on the liver goes down. I'm sure this is all standard medical procedure, but Alex and Kepner stand in for the audience as they share twin "Oh no he did NOT" looks. After Stark leaves, Alex voices his concern that the liver is way too big to be ready to close up Lil' Lisa within a day. Kepner worries about organ deterioration or infection. "How is this a solution?" she asks. "It's not," he says. Tension!
After the break, Cristina and Callie are furniture shopping, with Callie trying to get Cristina to see how irrational it is that she's seemingly cut Meredith off completely. But because this is Grey's Anatomy, Callie can't talk about someone else for more than three sentences before what she's saying starts to not-so-secretly refer to herself, as she says you can't just cut someone off and pretend they never existed and that you never had a relationship. So, yeah, we're talking about Arizona now. Cristina, to her credit, goes with the flow and starts needling Callie about Arizona's roller-shoes. "How was I okay with that?" Callie laments. "I used to be a lot cooler. I was a lot cooler when I was single." If you could hear the "Jenny from the Block" spin that Sara Ramirez puts on "single" (check it out), you'd know why I put up with Callie even when she's acting a fool. Cristina notes that Callie has hardly ever been single, which is true, as Callie admits. She's looking forward to her new single life, though. But one look in the mirror reminds her she needs to hit the hairdresser first. Cristina's like, "Yeah, after I purchase this entire living room floor display and then ask for same-day delivery and them most likely exhibit more textbook manic-depressive behavior."
Stark is updating Lisa's parents on the surgery, spinning it as an entirely successful surgery that, while they want to monitor some post-op swelling, is generally reason to exhale. Mr. and Mrs. Lisa are understandably relieved, but Alex and Kepner are understandably troubled. They follow Stark into the hall, where Alex peppers him with reasons why he should've told them the full story. Stark says he wasn't about to give them new reasons to worry, they're too worried as it is. Alex snaps that Stark isn't worried enough, but when Stark challenges him to name something else they could possibly do, Alex can't. Stark says in that case, stick to the things he can do, like Stark's post-ops. "You tried," Kepner tells Alex, then watches him longingly as he stomps off all sexily tortured by his inability to help sick children.
Cut to the caf, where Alex has apparently decided to deal with these new frustrations by shooting the ping-pong gun at Avery, Lexie, and Kepner. Avery grouses to Kepner about how Bailey doesn't trust him to do much more than watch fluid drip into a bag. Lexie tells him to take an easy day when he can get it. She also grabs the ping-pong gun from Alex when he gets overzealous with it. Kepner explains his bad mood, noting that "New Robbins is no Robbins at all." Meredith shows up with her Secret Service bodyguard, and the kids all ask her what it's like treating Bono. Lexie also asks if she's going to Cristina's party, then shoots her with the ping-pong gun when she says she doesn't know. Alex grabs one of the balls away from Lexie, stares at it for a second, then takes off.
Meredith re-joins the gang in the VIP Lounge as Altman and Hunt brief the delegation from the Vaguely-Rendered Arab Emirates on "the Emir's" condition. He's got a tear in his coronary artery, and when one of the Arabs asks if the tear was sustained in the crash, Hunt says there's no way of knowing, despite Day trying to ask him not to answer that. Altman says they stabilized him with a balloon pump, but they will have to perform open-heart surgery. At this, Jonathan-Charlie's eyes go downcast. One turbaned man asks for reassurances that "his highness" will be operated on by the finest surgeons they've got. Richard steps forward to say that, yes, Drs. Altman and Hunt are the heads of his Cardiothoracic and Trauma units. But they weren't asking Richard, they were asking the state department if these were the best doctors the whole country had to offer. Day starts to say that this is why maybe they'd rather take him back home and operate there (he's eager to get the Emir off American soil, for diplomatic reasons), but Altman speaks up over the resulting discussion and says that they're out of time and out of options -- she is the only person who can keep the Emir alive today. She also says that if they knew her better, they'd feel better about their chances. Credit to Kim Raver for not making that line feel needy or overly cocky. Meanwhile, Jonathan-Charlie pulls Meredith aside and tells her that they cannot operate on the Emir, for reasons which he feels the need to whisper in her ear. She jolts into action and pulls him out into the hallway.
Cut to a rather pitched pedeconference in which Jonathan-Charlie explains to Mere, Hunt, and now Derek that the Emir was diagnosed with an unruptured cerebral aneurism about four months ago. It apparently didn't show up on the CT, but now he's got a blown pupil, so they think it's burst. J-C tells Mere he was sworn to secrecy until after the election, and he's not sure if he's betraying the Emir or not. Meredith tries to reassure him that he's trying to save the man's life, but J-C says the Emir is trying to save thousands of lives. You know, he lives under constant pressure, get it? Mere says she thinks he'll understand. If, you know, he lives. The doctors join Altman, who's looking at the current CT scans, which show a rather sizeable brain bleed. Derek starts giving her shit about using the shock paddles seven times and giving him blood thinners, like she was trying to do anything but get his heart beating again. She tells him to get off her ass, she's apparently got the fate of the entire Middle East on her hands. Derek says he does too, as they're not going to have to perform simultaneous brain and heart surgeries. Altman looks like she's thrilled at the idea.
After the break, Meredith and Derek are scrubbing in, and he's trying to wrap his head around the notion of Cristina -- Cristina Yang -- throwing a party of any kind. Meredith says she is, and at said party, they're all going to try to talk to her about returning to the program. She thinks Derek should come too, since he quit once and then came back. He reminds her that when he did that, she tried to talk him into coming back, and he hit her engagement ring with a baseball bat. He tells her -- orders her? -- not to talk to Cristina. And when Altman and Hunt enter, he says it again: "No intervention on Cristina Yang!"
Kepner comes upon Alex, who is sterilizing a ping-pong ball. When Stark comes in, he explains that the ball could be their perfect solution to Lil' Lisa's liver problem. It could keep the liver from compressing her blood vessels, and since it's celluloid and not plastic, it won't deteriorate like a sponge will. Alex (and Kepner for that matter) beams like a kid who just came home with straight A's on his report card, but Stark is reserved. He says he left Alex to do his post-ops and "here I find you playing with balls." He sighs and wonders whether he'll have to speak with Alex's supervisor. NOW who's the Jerkface, huh?
At the mall, Callie's getting her hair did while Cristina looks out at the mall people like they're behind glass at a zoo. Observe as the mall people slowly go about their day, with nothing better to do but gnaw on soft pretzels and gab about relationships. {Much like her reaction to discovering the not-so-wild world of dermatology. -- Angel] Not for nothing, Cristina, but replace "soft pretzels" with "the occasional organ transplant" and you've got a regular day at Seattle Grace. Callie asks Cristina if that's what she's going to do, become a mall person. When the question becomes too much about the unspoken elephant in the room -- Cristina's medical career -- Cristina decides to get up and buy a pretzel.
Avery updates Bailey on Ms. Cortez's draining: no change. She's off to do surgery, and he asks if he can scrub in. Exasperated, she says she needs him to monitor Ms. Cortez, which of course Avery takes as a statement on his ability as a doctor. He sulks off while Bailey goes in to surgery.
Derek, Meredith, Hunt, and Altman are all performing surgery on the Emir's open heart and brain. Which, in case you were wondering, is apparently the perfect venue to continue their conversation about whether or not they should have an intervention for Cristina. In case you've forgotten, Derek is taking the "con" position. Rudely interrupting this conversation is the Emir, who once again goes into V-fib. Altman needs to use the paddles on his heart, but it means Derek has to first extricate his instruments from the man's brain. Altman gets impatient at having to wait, but Derek's eventually out, and the get the heart beating again. And presumably now they're free to resume sniping at each other about personal matters.
Alex asks a nurse about Dr. Stark's discharges, which is when he learns that Stark went back into surgery on Lil' Lisa. He heads for the observation deck, where he sees Stark -- assisted by Kepner and Richard -- employing Alex's ping-pong ball technique. He's even impressing Richard with pretty much the same bullet points Alex made to him about the benefits of the ball. Kepner is grossed out by this and finally asks Stark if this was his idea or Alex's. Stark glares at her and says, "Let's just see if it works." Alex sulks from up in the observation deck and finally storms off. Feelings! Feelings everywhere!
Speaking of feelings getting in the way of practicing good medicine, Avery pops in to check on Ms. Cortez and finds her nearly delirious and shaking with fever. Her drainage bag (never stops being sexy to type "drainage bag") is now filling up with blood. He orders a nurse to get Dr. Bailey. Cut to Bailey in surgery, saying she's almost done and that Avery needs to get Ms. Cortez into an OR, open her up, and wait for her. Avery's kind of freaked out at the "open her up" part, but okay.
After a quick commercial break, Avery, having hoped that Bailey would make it out of her surgery by the time it came to begin his, does indeed open up Ms. Cortez. And so begins the weekly Grey's Anatomy Storyline-Tying-Together Haunting Song Cue.
Back in heart/brain surgery, Derek is still sniping at Altman, technically about how she needs to work faster so he can start working on whatever he needs to, but everybody knows why he's really being snippy. Altman finally lays it all out: she tried everything with Cristina, from coddling to tough love to low pressure to high pressure, and nothing worked. "Yang was my student," she says, "don't you think that I wanted to help her." Derek gets clear to go brain-diving, which at Seattle Grace is apparently like holding the conch shell because now he gets to speak. He says they all tried to help Cristina and they all failed; now's the time to back off. Hunt snaps that she's his wife and he's not going to back off and give up on her. Meredith then snaps that they all clearly have the same goal, to get Cristina back, so let's focus on that. Or perhaps on the patient whose heart and brain are exposed to an open OR and are also coincidentally ceasing to function. Derek finally calms down long enough to state the blazingly obvious: that he's so worked up about this because Cristina saved his life. They all kind of silently acknowledge this. Then Meredith quietly says that he's asking them all to just do nothing, and they can't do that. She can't do that. Derek understands. And with their argument having been quelled, it's time to close this patient up. Because that's when you know surgery is over. Sweet Jesus in the cradle.
Bailey bolts out of her own just-finished surgery (she knew she was finished when she and one of the OR nursed agreed to disagree about whether Conan's first week back in late night was a success or not) and races down the hall to where Avery has just declared time of death on Ms. Cortez. Oh dear. Bailey, having now lost another one, despairs, but Avery and his insanely gorgeous eyes are not trying to accept responsibility here. "Post-op pancreatectomies always get fistulas!" he protests. "I didn't screw this up! They always get fistulas and then they get severe complications and then they die!" Bailey keeps trying to calm him down, but it's not happening. "I did what you said! You told me to open here up and you weren't here! I tried to fix it! This is not my damn fault!" Bailey finally yells at him to shut the fuck up already and get out of her OR.
Strummy-strummy heartbreak music continues as we return to Cristina in her suddenly immaculate and newly-furnished apartment (did she also hire sturdy gentlemen to unpack everything and disassemble the boxes and bind them with twine and then take them off to be recycled and then place her various knickknacks around the loft and buy food and drinks and while she took a much-needed shower? Because that all seemingly got done. No, apparently that was all Callie, while Cristina sat down and opened a bottle of wine. Derek ascends the steps to the apartment, but he's insanely early. Cristina is worried he came here to convince her to come back. He says he's not, but a bunch of other people will be. "Oh God," Cristina despairs.
Kepner hits the on-call room, where Alex is having an anger nap. She just wants him to know how awful she thinks Stark is, but oh by the way, she totally stood up for Alex during the surgery, and she's going to talk to the Chief about how perfect Alex was even though he got no credit for it. Of course, all Alex cares about is the child. But Kepner's not finished telling him how great he is, and that combined with the on-call setting means it's time for Alex to do what he does: have sex with women who should know better. Off come the shirts, and Kepner tentatively reminds him that she's, like, a virgin and stuff. He asks if she wants to stop, but boy doesn't she. They kind of frantically make out for a moment, but Kepner wants to maybe slow it down a bit, first time and all. She starts to say "I need..." but that triggers something in Alex's damaged little brain, and so he flips out on her about how he can't take care of her little virgin feelings while he's just trying to get some. Oh, here we go. Time for Angry Cad Alex, which generally leads to Sexy Damaged Alex, which then leads to Let's Get Married Despite Your Brain Tumor Alex, which then leads to Sexy Mopey Alex. So he yells at April that she's not a child and he can't take care of her, or of everybody in this place. He storms off in his little black wifebeater, hopefully past a station full of nurses who make this face at each other, because you know how many times they've seen this before.
Altman goes to do post-op on the Emir, but she finds his room empty. Day shows up to tell her he's already en route back to Vaguely-Rendered Arab Emirates. He tells her she did a good job, and in fact is only sticking around to thank her and say it was nice meeting her. Their handshake goodbye lingers for quite a bit, making me think this isn't the last we'll see of him. Heeeeey, Dr. Altman, get some of that.
Housewarming. Mark greets the Interventionists (Mere, Hunt, and Altman), telling them wine's on the table and beer's in the fridge. (Hunt: "We have a fridge?") Mark then abdicates hosting duties to Hunt while he plops down to an increasingly drunk Callie. She asks if she can move in with him -- not in a rebound-y way, just until she can get the subletter out of her apartment. Besides, she's starting over from scratch and doesn't want to do that alone. Uh-huh. Mark assents, then comments on Callie's hair, which is shorter and wilder and appears to have blue streaks in it. ...You guys, they're going to start having sex again. Lord help me.
Kepner shows up and immediately starts apologizing to Hunt for not bringing a housewarming gift. The apology turns to hyperventilating turns to stammering turns to crying, until Avery finally pulls her aside to find out what's wrong.
Dear Grey's writers: I really dig the brother-sister vibe Avery and Kepner have right now. Please don't have them sleep together, ever. I know Kepner's the new emotionally unstable Izzie, and Avery is the new 007, but please don't do that to me again. Signed, Joe R.
Hunt just wants to know where the hell Cristina is. Turns out, she's up on the roof, sharing a bottle of wine with Derek. I will say, much as he continues to be a thorn in my ass, I have enjoyed how this season is exploring the heretofore unexplored Cristina-Derek relationship. "If you're asking my opinion," he tells her solemnly, "I think you should. I think you absolutely have to. You should keep and refinish the original floors." Swerve! Not career advice but home talk! Tricky! Cristina, ever the anti-traditionalist, wonders why she has to -- didn't Derek and Mere do bamboo or something? (The drunken spin Sandra Oh puts on "bamboo or something" is a subtle gem.) Derek says they were building their house from scratch -- Cristina and Hunt have original oak floors and the building is historic. Cristina ultimately knows he's right. What I like about this conversation is that it's obviously a metaphor and the only way anybody's going to even slightly get through to Cristina, but it's not like a 1:1 perfect analogy. Derek's just trying to get her thinking rationally about something again. He pours her another glass.
Back at Seattle Grace, Alex looks in on Lil' Lisa and her happy parents watching her sleep. Job well done. Meanwhile, Bailey and Richard are going over what went wrong with Ms. Cortez. Apparently just One of Those Things, neither Bailey's fault nor Avery's. But Bailey's not satisfied. What Avery said about there always being fistulas in post-op pancreas patients has gotten to her -- she wants to know why that's true. There's got to be a way to bring that number down. Bottom line: Bailey needs a win. After Percy and Mandy Moore and now Ms. Cortez, Bailey could use a win. And furthermore: "Yang was the one I didn't have to worry about." Richard says he knows. It certainly does seem like Cristina's absence has created a pervasive unease around the entire hospital. Richard tells Bailey to look into the pancreatectomy patients and see if there's anything that can be done. She asks if she can use Avery -- he was really great today. Aw, somebody go tell Avery that. ...Wait, can I? Richard's happy to hear it, and he in turn beams about Alex saving a patient with a ping-pong ball.
Speaking of Alex, he shows up to the party and immediately spots Kepner pouring her heart out to Avery, who makes an immediate beeline for Alex. Alex makes his first -- and last -- mistake by smirking and saying he can explain, but he doesn't get the chance because Avery WHALLOPS him across the face. YAY! Again! Again! Avery obliges me, a couple times over, obviously letting his fistula-based frustrations carry him away a bit, until Mark and Hunt pull him off. Alex looks like he's going to lunge back, but Callie and Mere shove him towards the door.
Cut to Lexie helping Avery ice down his hand. He asks if she thinks it was hard for Yang to just walk away. "Don't be stupid," she tells him, "you're not quitting." Besides, he might've just gotten himself fired, or at least arrested. Avery says he pretty much had to, since April is the only friend he's got left at the hospital. Lexie, again: "Don't be stupid." Is it me, or was all of Lexie's dialogue this week said twice to mean different things? Also, obvs, these two are going to hook up soon. Approved.
Outside, Mere is icing down Alex's face while simultaneously upbraiding him for what happened with Kepner. He knows he was wrong but ... wait for it ... he has his reasons. Are you sitting down? He wasn't in Vegas, he was in Iowa, tending to his dysfunctional family. Specifically, his brother from last season, who's been diagnosed schizophrenic after attempting to kill their sixteen-year-old sister. Alex was there to sign the commitment papers, and he's wallowing in his own self-loathing for not being able to be there while his family is going to shit. So, yes, we're just going to keep doing this same Sexy Damaged Alex story until it stops working, basically. Yes, at the risk of being unpopular, this recapper is placing the blame squarely on you, the viewer.
Up on the roof, Cristina decides she should probably get back down to her own party. Derek says that's for the best, yes. He pauses, then asks if there's anything else she'd like to talk about. She hesitates, then sits back down: "What do you do about bathroom tile." Pour another glass of wine, this could take a bit.
Joe R should give Derek more credit for being right about how to approach Cristina, but he doesn't want to. He can be reached for lavish praise and nothing but at joseph.reid21@gmail.com, and you can listen to him yammer on to his heart's content on the Extra Hot Great podcast.