By Joe R
Owen and Cristina have finally made their way back to therapy, but so far things aren't looking good. For Owen, everything about their problems comes back to the abortion, and he's convinced that Cristina can't truly not ever want a child. Cristina thinks he's being completely unfair and unsupportive, especially for throwing the abortion back in her face all the time after holding her hand during the procedure. The bottom line is, each of them wants the other one to step up and be their "person" but neither seems ready to actually do that for the other. It probably has to start with each of them admitting that both of them are responsible for the collapse of their relationship, but each of them seems to think that what they are going through is entirely the other person's fault.
So, that depressing horror out of the way, we go back to the hospital for the medical goodies of the week. Derek's sister Amy is back for another Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice Crossover Event (I feel like with all of the promotion ABC has been doing, you have to do jazz hands or some other extra celebration when saying that to really get the excitement across...) to try and convince him to work on an impossible tumor, but he refuses. Amy manages to get Lexie to try and persuade him to take the case but he still refuses. She finally calls him on making this personal because he's dealing with his sister, because this is exactly the kind of impossible case he's been trying to do more of lately and he'd be all over this if Amy wasn't the one asking. He admits he thinks that Amy is too fragile to handle a complicated case like this (she's fresh out of rehab) but eventually he agrees to at least hear her out. Amy convinces him that she can handle it and so the two of them start practicing the procedure together. They finally get a test run to go flawlessly, so Derek agrees to try the actual surgery. We don't know how it turns out yet since they are going to do the surgery during Private Practice for the second part of the Crossover Event. [jazz hands!]
Minus Cristina, the residents are all in crazy studying mode for the Boards, and while some of them have study buddies, Alex has a study lackey: he's gotten one of his interns to write flashcards and follow him around, quizzing him while he works. Her name is Morgan, though he seems to have a mental block that keeps him from remembering that. She starts quizzing him with a list of particular symptoms which turn out to be her own and then passes out spectacularly in the OR. Alex is stunned to learn she's 24 weeks pregnant while Morgan is stunned to learn that she just had a heart attack. She's rushed into surgery and Arizona has to deliver the baby; she tasks Alex with calling Morgan's boyfriend at the Cleveland Clinic and letting him know what is happening. Once Alex finds out that he was the only person in the whole hospital who didn't know 1) Morgan's name, and 2) that she was pregnant, he realizes he's a self-centered ass (...again) and starts to beat himself up (...again). Arizona gives him a pep talk that he's just hardcore like all good pediatric surgeons and like she herself was at his age, but warns him that even when he's being hardcore, he'd better start learning his interns' names.
Jackson and Mark's patient is a woman who used to be Bailey's patient and who had a miraculous cancer recovery under Bailey's care and general surgical awesomeness a few years earlier. She needs another surgery to remove lymph nodes in her arms which have swollen so much she cannot use them, but it's a surgery that she'd asked Bailey about months earlier and which Bailey said was too risky. The woman secretly approaches Jackson and Mark about it and they are willing to do the procedure but when Bailey finds out, she flips her lid. Mark and Jackson finally manage to convince her they might be able to do it, and the woman herself manages to convince her that it's a risk she is willing to take. Once they start the surgery, though, Bailey comes in to hover over the guys and nags and questions every single move they make. Mark finally tells Jackson that he can't ever let himself be distracted because that can endanger his patient, and Jackson realizes he has to order Bailey out of the OR. She takes the suggestion about as badly as you can imagine, and looks to Mark to back her up, but he sticks up for his guy and they force Bailey to leave. The surgery is a success, and Bailey actually seeks out Mark afterward to admit that she was wrong. They have a conversation about how when a surgeon gets older and more experienced, they tend to stop taking such crazy risks, but the residents are around to keep them on their toes and thinking bigger.
And speaking of toes and thinking bigger, Meredith assists Callie with an absolutely stomach-turning case helping out a guy who got his arm stuck in a meat grinder. Richard had suggested to Callie that she might help Mere study for her Boards and pass on her super secret amazing study method. Callie thinks Meredith has to earn it, so she presses her to make every decision when it comes to helping out Ground Round in the hopes that they might be able to keep him with a functioning hand. Meredith gets a little frustrated at first but under pressure is able to come up with a lot of good ideas which culminate in her wanting to use one of the guy's toes to replace the thumb that was too mangled to be saved. The idea is just crazy enough to work, and Mere earns the right to start meeting with Callie every morning at 4 AM to be worked to the bone to get her ready to ace her Boards.
-- Lauren S
Previously: Hey, kids! Last time we met, Callie was dying on an operating table and singing all her troubles away. In the interim, Shonda had a whole lot of big ideas about motherhood spread across her two shows, didn't she? Speaking of which, on a show nobody you know watches, Derek Shepherd's little sister got addicted to Oxycontin and then rehabbed herself up and has now been tasked with saving my beloved Rayanne Graff from something brain-tumorish. Also I guess Cristina and Owen broke up because she had an abortion?
Currently: Cristina and Owen are in marriage counseling, which we all know is a big waste of time, because relationships are repaired through either shared surgical time or sometimes near-death experiences. We don't see the doctor to whom they're pouring out their shared resentments, which gives me at least a little leeway to imagine that it's Amy Madigan as the hospital shrink, because really: it should always be Amy Madigan. After some explanation about their parallel cases of PTSD (which becomes a weird competition over who had it worse), talk soon zeroes in on the abortion. Or, as Owen puts it, "you murdered the child that I wanted." Cristina more than sensibly points out that he sat there and held her hand while she did it and he had told her he was okay with her choice. She, meanwhile, wasn't too wild about him screaming "You murdered our baby" in front of all of their friends. Disagreements! Then the Meredith Voice-Over kicks in with thoughts about seeking professional help. I've discussed my policy with Meredith VO before, but just to re-iterate: unless she's telling us something important (she never is), I'm just going to ignore it.
At Seattle Grace, Amelia Shepherd is trying to convince her brother Derek to find a way to operate on Rayanne's brain tumor. They're staring at X-rays and he's adamant that there's nothing he can do. Lexie's there too, and looking totes uncomfortable, particularly when Amelia recruits her as her backup. But Derek is digging his heels in, even after Amelia sticks a photos of Rayanne's son Mason and talks about her pal Cooper back in L.A. who's going to have to tell Mason that his mom is dead if they don't fix her. Derek seems legitimately angry at Amelia, because it wouldn't be a Derek Shepherd scene if he wasn't being an asshole for no reason, and he makes a gratuitous reference to her being just out of rehab, and he finally tells her to go back to L.A. and get over her dying patient.
The residents gather by the whiteboard as Kepner fills out surgical assignments, and they get to talking about the upcoming Boards. Kepner and Avery are "study buddies," and Mere laments that her own study buddy is in counseling trying to save her marriage. Alex, true to form, has wrangled his Ellen Page-looking intern to quiz him during the day. Meredith brusquely shrugs off Kepner's offer of study help, insisting that she's an excellent surgeon and doesn't need to prove herself to anybody. Chief Webber overhears this and Looks Concerned.
The residents gather by the whiteboard as Kepner fills out surgical assignments, and they get to talking about the upcoming Boards. Kepner and Avery are "study buddies," and Mere laments that her own study buddy is in counseling trying to save her marriage. Alex, true to form, has wrangled his Ellen Page-looking intern to quiz him during the day. Meredith brusquely shrugs off Kepner's offer of study help, insisting that she's an excellent surgeon and doesn't need to prove herself to anybody. Chief Webber overhears this and Looks Concerned.
Which leads us to this seriously bizarre scene where Richard approaches Callie as she's scrubbing up for a surgery and just intoned darkly: "Grey." Callie refuses whatever Richard's suggesting. "Yang, maybe," she says, but Richard says Yang's a cowboy. They both propose Kepner and decide against it. The whole scene is being filmed in near darkness, with us only seeing their reflections in the glass. Like this is Mulholland Dr. or (more to this show's speed) something out of Once Upon a Time. And there's this Phillip Glass Fog of War music playing. It's very strange. Anyway, Richard insists that Callie will make do with Grey, then he -- I shit you not -- recedes back into the darkness. Like Marley's ghost. WTF?
Elsewhere, Ellen Page is quizzing Alex while he examines a child (and freaks him out by talking about a hypothetical chest-cracking case). Arizona comes in and gets the rundown on the kid, who needs a gastroscopy. Arizona assigns Ellen Page -- whose name is Morgan Peterson -- the surgery, with Alex supervising. Which appears to annoy him, and he calls Morgan "Megan" and perhaps not by accident.
Bailey is getting REALLY worked up about Sloan and Avery "stealing" a patient of hers. This is a woman Bailey treated for eight years and finally -- miraculously -- cured her cancer. Now, the woman has come to Sloan for a procedure that Bailey previously ruled she was a poor candidate for. Avery explains about some new technique that they think would work on the patient, but Bailey thinks it's too risky and intends to take her case to the patient herself. Sloan tasks Avery with convincing Bailey they're right. Best of luck!
Meredith approaches Callie for a little of the old walk-'n'-talk. And finally the cloak of secrecy is pulled away -- Richard suggested Meredith be the recipient of some super-secret study method that Callie has apparently perfected and is keeping locked away in a vault where no one but the most worthy of surgeons can access it. If Meredith can remove Excalibur from the stone in which it sits, she will have proven herself worthy of its splendor! Or something. Callie has also taken to talking about herself and Meredith in the third person. She tells "Meredith Grey" that she's going to have to prove herself today, as today is going to be "a grind." They've reached the patient at this point, and he's drawn a crowd of doctors around him. The crowd parts and we get one of those very Grey's shots where the doctor sees what we've yet to see and is stopped in his or her tracks. So goes Meredith. Callie steps up to the patient and we see the situation. Dude's elbow deep into a meat grinder. The EMT rolls her eyes at Callie's unforgivable "grind" pun. Hey, someone had to do it. So. A meat grinder. Can I go back to the singing?
Back from the break, we get a gooood look at this guy's hand coming out of the business end of the meat grinder. We can make out a few fingers, and Callie tries to keep the bleeding stanched as best she can. Two other butchers -- the guy's brothers -- stand aside and fret. Callie has decided that Grinder here is going to be the test case that determines whether Meredith is worthy of Callie's study technique. She's putting the case in Meredith's hands. Meredith immediately thinks amputation is the best option, which freaks out the patient and his brothers. Callie's like, "O RLY?" and calls for someone to fetch a bone saw. (At the same time, she assures the brothers that this is a teaching exercise and not to freak out, which must be VERY assuring to these mooks.) Suddenly, Meredith finds a viable finger and changes course, deciding that they need to find some way to cut the machine open. All this time, Callie is second-guessing her and prodding her and otherwise putting her on the spot. Because suddenly Meredith has regressed to like Season 1 levels of uncertainty? Haven't we pretty well established that Mere's a rock star of a surgeon? I get that the Boards are putting everyone back in the emotional space of an intern, but this seems awfully convenient characterization. Anyway, turns out the Brothers Butcher aren't crazy about the idea of losing their multi-thousand dollar machine, even if it means their bro getting his hand back. So they offer to disassemble the grinder themselves, in under 45 minutes, with "a set of Allen wrenches." Oh, brother. Wait, sorry! Didn't mean that pun, honest. But I'm leaving it there, because of integrity.
Lexie meets Amelia back in the X-ray room, where Amelia pitches an idea for an extremely complicated-sounding surgical maneuver that she'd have to perform in about 90 seconds. Lexie wonders if it's even possible, and Amelia's like, "No idea! Is the thing." Lexie suggests doing a test, but Amelia doubts they'll get Derek's approval, on account of him being a jackass and her never being able to stop reminding him of that. Lexie volunteers to ask Derek herself and avoid the familial drama. To Lexie's credit, she's only halfway out the door before realizing that getting her to pitch this idea to Derek herself, and think it was her idea, was Amelia's plan all along. Both women agree that Amelia's good at manipulation.
Back at counseling, Cristina and Owen are arguing about whether she made it clear to him all along that she didn't want kids. And this is ultimately where I come down on Cristina's side and don't budge. She didn't want to have children. She was never ambiguous about that. Owen decided to roll the dice and hope that time and his own handsome brand of gentle pressure would eventually smooth out those edges, but it's entirely his problem that it didn't happen in the year they were married. He tries to make the argument that Cristina never told him of her baby aversion until after they were married, but your intrepid recapper Lauren has already provided me with the ammo to tell you that that's false. She totally told him she didn't want to have children, even if present-day Cristina can't manage to conjure up her own history.
Bailey meets with her patient with lymphedema. The woman, Carrie, is played by one of the nurses from E.R. (no, not Kyle Richards unfortunately), and we see that "lymphedema" translates to "scary severe swelling in the limbs." In this case, this poor woman has Popeye arms. Carrie laments that she can barely raise her arms; can't even brush her own hair. Bailey tries to say that the good news is that her cancer is gone and that the lymphedema is the price they have to pay. But Bailey can hardly get the words out; she knows what cold comfort that is. For her part, Carrie admits to feeling low for having to sneak around to other doctors behind Bailey's back. She will always see Miranda as a miracle worker. But she wants her life to have some quality, and she's willing to take a chance with another surgery.
Back to the Grind.The Super Mario Brothers are quickly trying to disassemble the grinder while Meredith warns them that the more they loosen it, the more their little bro bleeds, so they need to do it very quickly. Callie continues to fire "You sure about that"s in from the sidelines, to Meredith's frustration. She does manage to prod Mere into suggesting a fail-safe of sorts, a pneumatic tourniquet on his arm to buy them a little more time. Callie seems satisfied, but the atmosphere is still urgent. Mere gives the brothers 15 minutes to get the grinder apart before they will have to amputate.
Derek's in the middle of brain surgery (no big) as Lexie tries to make Amelia's case for a simulation run. Derek thinks his sister is too emotionally wrapped up in the case to see clearly that she can't help this woman, though Lexie argues maybe Amelia's passion is going to make her try harder. Derek sighs that the bottom line is that the procedure can't be done in 90 seconds, but if Lexie needs to see it for herself, so be it. Lexie's all, "Yeah, maybe YOU'LL be the one seeing something!" but then thinks better of trash-talking the surgeon who's wrist-deep in gray matter.
Turns out Alex is doing the gastroscopy on the boy himself because he needs Morgan/Megan to continue to quiz him for the boards. He could not look more disinterested in his intern as he demands more and more questions. He might want to glance her way, actually, because she's looking clammy and disoriented, which might be the resting state for surgical interns, but on a television show, we all know it means "imminent peril." He calls her "Megan" again and asks for symptoms on the latest index card, but the symptoms she rattles off -- tightness in the chest, indigestion, blurred vision, shortness of breath -- aren't on the cards, nor is the fact that this "patient" is 24-weeks pregnant. Alex keeps his eyes on the gastroscopy and berates her a little more for asking weird questions until she ultimately collapses. He yells at his fellow doctors to help her as we go into commercial. Oh, hell, is this another episode where Alex is a terrible person and then later we're all supposed to feel sorry for him because he hates himself? How do I ALWAYS get these episodes?
After the break, Megan's conscious again, in a hospital bed being examined by qualified doctors and also Alex, who yells at her for not telling him she was pregnant. She's like, "Everybody knows I'm pregnant; the Pregnant Intern is kind of notorious." The OB/GYN on hand says she's not having contractions and the baby is fine, but Alex surmises from Morgan's symptoms that she's having a heart attack.
Counseling. Owen is browbeating Cristina to come up with a reason she doesn't want kids, but -- for the billionth time -- Cristina tells him she's not damaged or abused, she's never been mugged by a baby. She just doesn't want kids. Owen says, verbatim, "NO ONE doesn't want kids!" Oh my God, I hate this so much already. Look, there are two ways to unpack that statement: Shonda and the writers either believe what Owen is saying -- that there's some biological imperative to want children and even when people think they don't, they eventually do -- or else they think "everybody wants kids" is a self-evidently ridiculous statement, in which case they're loading down a previously likeable character with the biggest pile of BS belief I've heard from someone on this show, and that includes the time the blonde thought she was having sex with the ghost of her dead boyfriend.
So Cristina rightly defends herself, saying not wanting kids is a thing, and more importantly it's her thing. (And more importantly, Owen KNEW it was her thing, sorry, that was Joe saying that and not Cristina.) After things get quiet, Owen says that at some point, Cristina is going to change her mind, and when that day comes, she's going to regret it. Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Senator Santorum. So glad we're all looking out for the future regrets we're scripting out for sentient females. (Argh, sorry, I don't even want to be worked up about this; it's the EASIEST thing to get fired up about because it's so self-evidently one-sided.) Cristina, once again calmer than she has to be, explains that should that faraway day ever happen, she at least will know that she made a conscious choice to eschew motherhood for her career. And she can live with that. But once again, Owen returns to the part where he needs to know WHY. Gee, Owen, it really is a mystery. How could the least nurturing woman in three states ever possibly not want to mother a child?
Bailey tracks down Sloan and Avery and gives them a breathless recitation of what sounds like a hellish surgical history for Carrie, including chemo, radiation, emergency heart surgery and some time spent in a coma. "Her body is a battlefield!" she stresses. Sloan thinks this means Bailey managed to talk Carrie out of it, which is a silly notion. If Bailey had talked Carrie out of it, she'd just be all "Ya burnt!" about it. She's trying to break the land-speed record for debriefing on a patient because Carrie has agreed to the surgery, and she's going to make damn sure these two fuckups don't end up killing her. She hands Avery a fat folder of papers and orders him to read every word of Carrie's file before they begin operating. Avery's like, "But the surgery begins in a half-hour." Like Bailey a) didn't know, nor b) cares. Silly boy.
Meredith and Callie are in surgery, and Mere is seriously grossed out by the pork smell on these severed digits. Up in the gallery, Alex is watching it all, amused that Mere is going to have, while Alex tries to study his file. Lexie and Amelia arrive for the show, and as Alex bitches about losing his only competent intern for the day because she's pregnant, Lexie immediately wonders how Morgan is doing. Because yes, everybody knows Morgan is the pregnant intern but Alex. Avery gets beeped out to surgery, as Alex explains that he was tasked with calling the boyfriend, but after calling four times, he hasn't heard back. Lexie's like, "Yeah, but he's a fourth year at the Cleveland Clinic, so..." Because Alex seems to be the only one who hasn't noticed that the only thing more inescapable than horrible tragedy at Seattle Grace Mercy West is how everybody is all up in each other's personal business. Amelia, meanwhile, is rapt by Meredith trying to reattach the fingers rather than simply amputate. "That's going to be so much harder" she sighs. Also harder? Lexie's brainstorm to go through the carotid artery in their procedure. Amelia says it'd be harder, but would give them better control than going through the femoral artery. The two women bolt, leaving Alex to stare at Meredith alone, hoping she pukes.
Avery and Sloan are removing lymph nodes from Carrie's ... wherever you remove lymph nodes from. Avery almost drops one, causing him to let out a small "oops!" From the back of the room, tiny little Miranda Bailey jumps all over the "oops!" Sloan passive-aggressively invites her to step up and better observe their every move. She starts second-guessing like crazy, and Avery is obviously distracted by her presence.
Lexie finds Derek and makes another case for him to consider surgery. She says it's only what he's been teaching her -- to keep looking for a solution until she finds one. Derek says the key difference is that he knows Lexie can handle it if they lose the patient. He doesn't think Amelia can. Lexie shoots back that it's Derek who is too emotionally involved. If it were any other doctor coming to him with this patient, he'd be all up in it. It's only because he's too worried about Amelia falling apart that he's not. Derek's inability to find a retort to that means Lexie wins.
House of the Sad. Cristina and Owen are trying to do some exercise where they're supposed to just stare at each other and breathe, but she doesn't like what she's seeing in his eyes. She says they used to be able to look and know they'd be okay. She is basically begging him to let them be okay. "There's a reason we're together," she says. She turns to the unseen doctor and says Owen needs to let go of the grudge, to rip up his list of grievances against her, or it'll never work. In turn, Owen wants her to stop thinking she's the sun and that he revolves around her. "Maybe my needs are worthy," he says, which brings them back to the abortion thing again, which by now they both seem pretty sick of discussing.
Back in Miranda Bailey's OR, our girl is literally popping up over Sloan's shoulder in order to try and drive from the backseat. When she sees Sloan begin to dissect in an area that she knows from Carrie's history has a lot of scar tissue, she objects quite strenuously. Sloan tries his best to shoo her concerns away, but Avery, to his credit, addresses them head-on. He says most of that scar tissue was in an area Sloan isn't dissecting in, and he learned this from reading the file like Bailey told him to. This shuts her up for a moment, but only until Sloan hits a big ol' bleeder and he and Avery scramble to contain it. Miranda -- her panic at war with her fury -- grits at the both of them that she told them so.
After the break, Meredith is making the case for salvaging one finger (albeit shortened), but Callie points out that the thumb is pretty clearly done for. Callie says without the thumb, there's no point in attaching the finger, since so much of hand function is thumb-related (all monkeys: "Tell me about it!") and he'll be better off with a prosthetic. This doesn't seem to be Callie giving Meredith a hard time either. It just seems like they couldn't make it happen. Meredith won't settle for that, though. So she digs into her bag of tricks and comes up with this idea that she read about somewhere: removing the man's big toe and placing it where his thumb was. I can't think of anything I'd enjoy more. Callie thinks it's ridiculous, as the big toe is pretty important for all the walking and such. Mere seems to think adjusting to that would be preferable to losing the hand. She's adamant that this is the fix. The twinkly music here suggests that this is the moment Meredith wins Callie over, but Callie maintains the big toe is not the fix. The second toe is. Same benefits but reduce potential disability. Plus he won't have a big honking TOE THUMB! Just a demure little toe-thumb like Megan Fox. First they have to get the patient's consent. Guys! Mention the Megan Fox thing!
Derek finds Amelia working her procedure out on a computer. He presents himself as relatively open to the idea, but when she explains she's going through the carotid, he says it's too dangerous, and they start arguing again. He tells her not to try this -- she's too fragile if it goes wrong. Amelia really objects to the "fragile" thing. She says she's an addict, one who's fallen off the wagon twice, but who's also gotten back on both times. This doesn't make her fragile, it makes her strong. "I am in a building full of pills," she tells him. And even though she's aware of that every second, she's doing her job. And that's not fragile. Derek finally hears her, and he quietly asks her to show him what she wants to do. He still doesn't think she can do it, mind. But she's going to do it anyway, so he's going to be with her. Well, really, Derek. About time.
Inside the hospital room and out of earshot, Meredith is pitching the idea of toe thumbs to Handsy O'Grinder and his brothers. Richard and Callie look on, and Richard gloats about being right about Meredith having the right stuff. Callie's resistant to say it, even though Richard's like, "She's putting a toe on a man's hand! She's good!" Not sure that should be the arbiter of talent in a hospital but okay. Inside the room, the Mario Brothers are dubious at best at this "weird" solution, but between this and a prosthetic, Handy tells her to take his toe. "Take my left nut if it'll help." Meredith is like, "No, just the toe, but thanks." Back outside, Richard sees that Mere has gotten approval (via an ironic thumbs-up gesture from Mere, heh) and rubs it in with Callie. She wonders if this is what he's going to do with his time now -- just pull strings like a puppet master. Richard seems to think he's quite good at it.
Alex is going on his round, checking in on the babies. You'll be thrilled to know he's already found another intern to quiz him for the boards, so those lessons about treating the interns like people have worked gangbusters. He can't find Morgan's baby in the neo-natal unit, and when the intern expresses surprise that Morgan had her baby, Alex realizes she must still be in surgery. Which is not great news. He dashes out.
Sloan, Avery and Bailey are scrambling to stop Carrie's bleeding. Avery is getting flustered and unsure of how to fix the problem, which is just making Bailey go more ballistic. He half-heartedly offers a suggestion and Sloan tells him to go with it. He also tells him that whatever is distracting him needs to be left outside the OR, and so in the biggest act of bravery I have perhaps ever seen on this show, Jackson Avery sacks up and tells Dr. Bailey that she is preventing him from doing his job and to please leave his OR. Dude. Bailey is shocked and turns to Sloan like, "I know your resident did not just..." but Sloan backs Avery up. Okay, for the record, I had quite enough of Bailey getting shamed in the OR in that stupid flashback episode a few weeks ago BUT I do like that Avery is coming into his own. Well done, handsome.
Meanwhile, Alex chases around the hallways like a crazy person, making a big ol' show of how concerned he is about Morgan. He finds a scrub nurse carrying bags of blood to Morgan's surgery, who says it's not looking great. Altman's in one OR working on Morgan, while Arizona's in another trying to save the baby. She needs Alex's extra hands, but Alex first needs to answer the boyfriend's call on the phone. He basically says it's touch and go for Morgan and baby and this dude should get on a plane now. Alex huffs and puffs and gets back into the OR, where he will no doubt make a big show of how his heart grew three sizes for like the 800th episode in this series.
Back to the house of pain, where Owen has moved on from the No. 1 most infuriatingly woman-hating think a husband can tell his wife ("Why won't you just shut up and have my baby?!") to No. 2 on the list: "I hate that you're so close with your friends." Actually, Owen manages to combine the two, somehow making the case that since Meredith has a baby now, Cristina should want one too. (BRB -- drinking.) After all, they do everything else together; it's like they're a team. Cristina reminds him of what we all know: Meredith is her person. Owen yells that HE should be her person. Okay! Now we're getting into semi-defensible territory. Not saying Mere shouldn't be Cristina's person, too, but you can see where Owen would feel shut out. But Cristina feels the same thing: "Be MY person!" she yells back at him. Be her person. Have her back. Seems reasonable. ...What am I saying? These two are doomed.
After the break, Meredith and Callie are doing the toe transplant, and there don't seem to be any problems. Callie isn't even having to ask Meredith if she's sure every time she makes a decision. "You're impressive," she finally tells Mere, who is like, "But we knew this?" Turns out, Callie's always thought there was a lot of hype surrounding Ellis Grey's Daughter and this is the first time she's seeing Mere as a badass surgeon in her own right. God, between this and Bailey getting bitched out in the O.R., it's like this episode is playing out the vapor trail of the What If? show. Callie goes on to recap how she and Meredith have never been friends, not even when she was with George (I'd say especially when she was with George but whatever). Mostly because Meredith thought Callie was a freak and Callie (though she stops short of saying it outright) was intimidated because Mere was the skinny, blonde, pretty girl. But now they are both married and with babies and a lot more alike. Meredith, with the blasé confidence of the skinny, blonde, pretty girl, is like, "You're not a freak. And we CAN be friends!" Callie, who is sometimes the best, narrows her eyes at this involuntary condescension and lays it down: she's going to help Meredith study for the boards, but it's going to be WORK, and Mere will show up on time and WORK or else risk an ass-kicking. This could be fun.
Amelia and Derek are teaming up to get this catheter procedure down in under 90 seconds. Still not quite working, but they're getting there. Lexie comes in with an update on another patient and is heartened by the progress, though Derek still says this is but one step in removing a very complicated tumor. He sends her away, but she spots the photo of Mason on the wall and becomes possessed with a deep and abiding love for Private Practice characters. "I want to go down trying," she says. Derek tells her to pick up the stopwatch.
Alex and Arizona are tending to Morgan's alarmingly premature baby, who is teeny but stable. She asks Alex how Morgan is doing, and he realizes he hasn't checked. Okay, COME ON. This is like the third time this week that Alex has realized that he hasn't been paying enough attention to Morgan. Does he have Memento disease? So of course he defaults into the typical self-pity mode, where he's all "I ran my intern into a heart attack, never knew she was pregnant, and haven't checked up on her since her surgery -- why I am such a sexy fuckup??" And because Shonda loves a sexy fuckup more than anything in this universe, Arizona ends up writing Alex a blank check for it. She says Peds surgeons HAVE to be ruthless in order to help the tiny humans or some such whatever. She says she was exactly like Alex is now. But he should still learn his interns' names. So Alex lives to smirk another day.
Bailey tracks down Sloan in the hallway, and though he's looking to avoid another fight, she is there to tell him that Avery was right. Carrie's arms are going to be functional again. She starts beating herself up about why she wasn't going to let Carrie do the surgery, and Sloan tells her that Avery is a resident, young and willing to take risks. Bailey is older; she knows risks have consequences; she's more conservative. That's why they keep the residents around -- to keep them fresh. Bailey half-jokingly asks Sloan if he's telling her she's not young. "I'm saying you've arrived," he tells her. Then he turns back to say that if she pulls that kind of crap in his O.R. again, he'll report her. Bailey, having arrived, takes it like a woman.
Alex is now studying his own damn notecards at Morgan's bedside when she wakes up. He tells her that Altman patched her up and that her baby boy is in stable condition. He talks to her in calming tones and says Chris (the boyfriend) is on his way. She still seems crazy groggy but she chills out. She tells him he's sitting there with her because it's quiet and he needs to study. It's okay, she'd do the same. She falls back asleep and he goes back to studying and I guess this is Alex's girlfriend? I mean, he's already gotten a head start on treating her poorly.
Meredith and Callie put the finishing touches on Frankenhand. Derek and Amelia and Lexie get the catheter procedure done in 86 seconds. He tells her to get Rayanne up to Seattle for surgery. Happy news all around!
Oh, except for Cristina and Owen, who probably should not be married. Sorry. They still can't talk to each other AND their doctor turns out to be definitively NOT Amy Madigan. Bummer news all around.
Joe R will be back week too, so there's still time for Amy Madigan to come back and tell everyone why they're wrong. 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.