By Lauren S
Despite my attempts to ignore them, the interns don't seem to be going away and actually get an episode centered around them this week. Heather is assigned to assist Meredith in the pit all day; since Meredith's hands are busy with a patient, she makes Heather take her phone and call all of Derek's sisters asking if any of them want to donate a nerve for his hand surgery. When Derek finds out he is livid since he wanted to use a cadaver nerve and also doesn't want to ask his sisters for help, and Heather winds up in the middle of a spat with both of them yelling conflicting instructions at her. Oh, and she also winds up taking a call from Meredith's doctor confirming her ultrasound (and Callie overhears that too) but Meredith makes her swear to never, ever mention it again. At the end of the day Heather finally snaps and yells at them both that they put her in a horrible position but her rant is interrupted by Derek's sister Neve Campbell who arrives to give him a nerve despite his protests.
Smash is working with April, who, we learn, has been nicknamed "The Dud" by the interns since she failed the boards. She's in a heinous mood because she's on "lumps and bumps" duty which involves a day full of cutting out glorified pimples and other disgusting small masses from patients, and presumably also because of her breakup. Smash still has no poker face and April yells into him for that and forces him to remember that they are dealing with actual patients with actual feelings. Later, Callie and Jackson call all of the interns into a room and have them compete to see who will help out with Derek's nerve surgery. They systematically shoot each of the newbies down as they take turns examining Derek's wrist -- until they come to Smash. He takes a look at the hand and then tells Derek just what April told one of their patients, which is that he's sure this must be scary but that they are going to take good care of him. That instantly wins him the assist since Callie likes that he was the only one to treat Derek like an actual patient. Smash then goes back to help April with a second day of lumps and bumps and thanks her for teaching him so well about how to deal with patients.
Jo is working with Alex for the day and wouldn't you know that the moment I stop calling her Princess, Alex actually starts. He sees her expensive watch and her Ivy League education and assumes that she must be a spoiled girl from a rich family. Princess Jo helps deliver a teenager's baby; the baby turns out to be really sick and has to be put on bypass to survive. The teen mom is totally uninterested in the child when she realizes that a sick baby is a lot of work and so she and her mom abandon it at the hospital. Jo catches them on the way out and loses her shit to the point where she is wrestling the teen's mom up against the elevator wall until Alex manages to pull her away. She finally admits that her own mother abandoned her at a fire station when she was two weeks old and she lived in a number of foster homes before deciding to just live in her car at age 16. She has one nice teacher who helped her out and that's the one who bought her the watch when she graduated from college. Alex is of course wowed by her hidden depths and they reach a new level of respect for each other that will surely lead to bed.
Stephanie and Leah (LEAH. LEAH. I cannot commit this to memory for some reason. She's just the One Obsessed with Alex to me) are working with Cristina and spend their entire day trying to one-up each other to try and win the chance to scrub in on her surgeries. Leah wins the first round but then Stephanie wins the chance to scrub in on an infant heart transplant and Leah is filled with white-hot rage. When it comes to be time to prep another (adult) patient for surgery, they race into the room and try to outdo each other but wind up so crazed that they make a mistake that could have killed the woman. Cristina walks into the room just in time and is able to fix everything, but she benches both of them. Owen then backs her up and puts them both interns on probation. Later, however, the girls have a bonding moment inspired by the parents of two of their NICU patients from earlier in the day. I am still not terribly moved by their relationships to each other, but I am glad that they all seem to be growing personalities a little bit at a time.