Episode Report Card Lauren S: B- | 28 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT Unsheepish
By Lauren S | Season 10 | Episode 11 | Aired on 12.05.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.So Cristina and Smash are totally doing it now and the last of Smash's charming nervousness is completely washed away. It's time to finally perform baby Nathan's surgery and Cristina is blindsided the morning of the procedure by the news that so many other doctors wanted to see it, the hospital wants to live-stream the whole thing and Smash set it all up with Owen without asking her. Nathan's parents and Cristina are all against it, but it winds up happening anyway, at least until the procedure takes a bad turn and Cristina orders it turned off. At the same time that she is trying to save Nathan's life, Mere and Stephanie are implanting their first portal vein into a sheep. Everyone is far less excited about that one, but it goes flawlessly. When Smash and Mere wind up in the elevator together afterward, she tries to talk to him and he snaps that she won and is generally a complete jerk and runs away even when she tries to order him back to yell at him. Hours later, things have taken a turn for both patients and baby Nathan seems to be stabilizing and healing while the poor sheep dies. Cristina and Mere then find themselves alone together and at first they are stilted with each other, but manage to kinda sorta get along. That is, until Mere asks what's up with Smash's attitude and the whole conversation devolves into yet another fight with both of them taking everything too personally.
James Remar shows up at the hospital again, this time in withdrawal and begging for Princess' help. She tries to send him away, but Owen reminds her that she's a doctor and this is her job and right after that, James collapses in a seizure so she has to start caring for him. Alex is super-pissed and tries to kick him out, but Princess parrots Owen's words about being a doctor, and then she hangs out with James as he starts going through horrific withdrawal hallucinations. Most of these have to do with Alex and are pretty horrible. Finally, in one particularly bad moment, he pins her to the wall and Alex is fortunately there to pull him off and shackle him to the bed. Later, however, he sees Princess still in there, sleeping in a chair and being a good person and all that.
Bailey is dying to get back to work, but she's still finger-pulling and now she's got a doctor from psych shadowing her and catching every tug. She's the only one who can clear Bailey for surgery, and Bailey finally begs her to find out what she'll have to do to operate again. They make a deal for Bailey to complete five sutures, but to do so with her instruments in disarray, without any rearranging or counting or redoing or finger fiddling or anything else like that. When she struggles, the doc implores her to consider taking OCD medicine that will help her get herself under control, but Bailey is adamant that she doesn't need it. Richard has finally been released by the hospital, but after a while he comes back to get in some practice in the skills lab and so he sees Bailey's struggle as she tries and fails to do the sutures cleanly. Finally, he has a talk with her where he tries to absolve her guilt for calling him a drunk, but she can't seem to forgive herself. He points out that she wasn't wrong, as he is an alcoholic, which is a disease and that he got it under control only when he accepted help. This finally seems to convince Bailey to at least try out the medication.
Callie and Derek have implanted sensors into a new test patient, but things aren't looking good when the woman can't move her artificial fingers and instead keeps yelling at her poor devoted husband. Once he leaves the room, she cries about how she just wanted to finally do something for him, but that she can't seem to stop taking out all of her frustration on him. Funny how that's kind of like what's going on with Callie and Arizona, who can't seem to stop fighting. Derek finally has an idea and gets their patient to move her fingers by finally not thinking about the movement, and thinking instead about showing her husband how much she loves him by reaching for his hand. Callie learns from this and realizes that she and Arizona have been doing too much talking and need to maybe go back to some touching instead to start getting along once again. That night, it looks like they are going to try just that.
April's sisters have arrived in town for her wedding, and after brunch with her and Matthew they have plans to throw her a bridal shower. Their nickname for April is "Ducky" since she was their ugly duckling little sister and it's driving April crazy that they still use it. Jackson shows up at the restaurant and then April leaves to show her sisters the hospital, which conveniently leaves Matthew and Jackson together to walk down the street and act uncomfortable. They witness a dude getting dragged down the street by a taxi and while Jackson is shooing away onlookers, Matthew clears the guy's windpipe with a pocketknife and a straw. When they get the dude to the hospital, Jackson yells at Matthew for being too hasty and doing a sloppy job and that all happens in front of April, who yells at Matthew, too. Later in surgery, Jackson tells April he was wrong, that Matthew did the right thing and convinces her to go spend the day with her family. But it turns out that he did that to save her impression of her fiancée -- when he runs into Matthew later and Matthew demands an apology, Jackson admits that he did actually have to spend hours fixing his crappy job. They both insult each other and Jackson accuses Matthew of trying to show off and be a hero, but then calm down and lie that they are fine with each other. When Jackson admits he won't be at the wedding, Matthew even goes so far to say she knows that it means a lot to April, so he should reconsider.
Out of surgery, April attends her bridal shower where her sisters continue to drive her crazy until she snaps and points out that she's turned into a gorgeous woman and an awesome surgeon. She then fires them as bridesmaids, and recruits a stunned Mere, Cristina and Arizona to stand up with her instead. Surely, nothing is going to go wrong with this plan at all next week, right?
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Mere lets us in on a secret: all doctors are competitive science nerds. This is… a secret? I would hope they were, given that they dedicated their life to science. Callie and Derek are working on an actual model of an arm and hand that is picking things up, and they hook up their next test subject to the machine so that she can move it herself. The woman, Becca, comments drily that when they do this she feels like the Bride of Frankenstein -- understandable as they are hooking cords up to big plugs set in her head.
Mere tells us that doctors compete because they all want to be the one who actually changes the face of medicine. Mere and Stephanie are trying to do so by… shearing a sheep. Actually, the sheep is their first test subject to receive a 3D-printed portal vein. Stephanie herself exclaims happily that they are changing the face of medicine. Or giving the face a shave, at least.
Meanwhile, Cristina apparently decided to do right by her patients and focus her mind on her work and off of her sexual frustrations by sleeping with her resident. She and Smash are giggly and post-coital in an on-call room and he convinces her they have time to go again before their conduit finishes printing.
Arizona and Callie meet up in the hall and both are cheerful but still tense with each other as they catch up on their days. Arizona asks if Callie is going to make it to April's shower, and Callie totally forgot and seems less than excited about it. Her mood isn't helped when Arizona reminds her that April is their friend, and she promises to be there if she can. Which I interpret as her surely finding something else to do during that time.
They walk past Princess, Stephanie and Leah, who greets them both, sporting a rather shellacked, poofy updo that would better suit someone twenty years older about twenty years ago. Leah's proud that she managed to sound professional but admits when asked that she's still dying inside. Smash runs up and tells them there are two seats left in the gallery, and Leah and Princess claim them immediately. Stephanie is insulted that they want to watch Cristina and Smash's surgery and not her own, but they just can't muster up excitement for a sheep.
Owen walks up to Mere and tells her it's a big day, but even he doesn't care about the poor sheep -- he was talking about Cristina's surgery on baby Nathan and forgot about Mere's surgery altogether. She's irked, but before she can give him crap Richard is wheeled out, finally having been discharged. He's embarrassed but pleased to see that everyone gathered to say goodbye, even though he points out that he's not going far and he will, in fact, be back to work. Bailey says, incredibly stilted, that he got himself better, but Richard replies that she's the one who got him better. He's wheeled into the elevator, and as the door closes Bailey starts pulling on her fingers. A psychiatrist, Dr. Alma (played by Illeana Douglas) appears to have been assigned to shadow Bailey and asks her if Richard leaving is stressful for her. Bailey snaps that it's not, but Alma replies by asking why, then, is she counting her fingers?