WTF is this?

Grey's Anatomy is a repeat this week. The second half of the Grey's Anatomy event will air next Thursday. The repeat this week may be a result of the Writer's Guild strike which started on November 5th of this year as writers for many films, television shows and radio shows could not negotiate their new basic contract with the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers), which gets renewed every three years. The biggest issue is over payment on DVD sales and media broadcast on the internet. Because of the strike and the uncertainty regarding when it will end, perhaps the producers of Grey's Anatomy are attempting to stretch out the shows that are already written for as long as possible. But taking a mini break in the middle of a Grey's Anatomy Event? Come on! What happened to the guy with the exploded corroded artery? Is McDreamy really going to attempt to do brain surgery without a computer that is supposed to guide the needle? I'm on a need to know basis, here. This is taking cliffhanger to an entirely different level.

Anyways, the repeat is of the first episode of this season. If you need to be reminded of what what happened, read my review here




A picture of the striking writers of the writer's guild.

Exposed Corroded Artery

So this week's Grey's Anatomy seems hell bent on grossing me out. Once again, its all about the patients, each one meant to shock, induce catharsis and just plain freak out the audience. First up, we have the guy with the exposed corroded artery. He's a young man whose narcissistic girlfriend just broke up with him because exposed corroded arteries just weren't a turn on for her. He's been flirting and noticing Lexie all day and Lexie, the valiant girl she is, has been fending him off because of her almost thing with Alex. Sure enough, Ava shows up and convinces Alex to let her watch his surgery from the gallery so she can swoon at the idea of her lover being a hot shot surgeon. In the gallery, Ava runs into Lexie and lets the cat out of the bag; that is in fact, not supposed to be there but her super hunky boyfriend Alex let her watch. This causes Lexie to go back to the guy with exposed corroded artery and the two of them plot how they're going to get revenge on their exes. As they laugh about the various and sundry ways they will torture their exes, his exposed corroded artery explodes all over Lexie, who stands there in shock. We will have to wait to see what happens with this guy until next episode, as the writers have so generously left us with a cliffhanger.

Izzie and Cristina are in competition to be on Hahn's service; Cristina because cardio is her passion, her everything, her entire life, and Izzie because she wants to prove to Cristina that she can be as badass as Cristina. However, the patients needy youngest children grabs hold of Izzie and begs her to promise her dad will be ok. Izzie, being Izzie, complies and in a singsong fairy tale voice promises that they will do everything they can to fix her dad's "hurting heart". This causes Hahn to all but growl her disgust and Hahn chooses Cristina to be on her service. However, this assignment is short lived because Bailey insists that Cristina come help her with her patient. Izzie is freed up to prove just how badass she can be. But nothing really dramatic happens and the surgery is as ho hum as all the other surgeries featured on Grey's.

Cristina is called on by Bailey who has a white supremacist as a patient and he won't let her examine him because she is black. Since Cristina is neither black, nor white (the fact that she's not white drives home Bailey's point), she is chosen to perform the examination. While examining his abdomen, she finds a huge black swastika tattooed from his chest to below his navel. Her great grandparents evidently died in a concentration camp, which leads to Cristina doing everything in her power to keep from killing him herself. Both Cristina and Bailey get him into surgery so they can repair his lacerated liver, but of course, all he can think about is getting a white doctor in the OR to make sure the black girl and the asian don't kill him on purpose on the table. O'Malley is chosen for that job. While in surgery, Bailey realizes she is late for her lunch with her husband, where they were going to talk about their marital problems because she is elbow deep in "a nazi". She takes a moment to look around the room and declares that nobody better ever call her the nazi again. The present surgeons bow their heads in understanding.

Meredith is dealing with a pair of EMTs trapped in an ambulance after another ambulance careened into them, sending the vehicle rolling until it landed on its top. One of the EMTs has no chance of living as he is trapped in a door with a large piece of metal cutting him in half. Meredith is sent to find his wife, who coincidentally works in the hospital, to give her the worst news of her life. Meanwhile, the Chief decides he needs to bring the medical equipment out to the ambulance so they can see what is wrong with the other EMT before they move him and work desperately to save his life. This EMT has a piece of oxygen equipment piercing his back, which has torn a hole in some vital organs. Moving him without knowing exactly what they will do once they have him out of the ambulance would result in serious ramifications. As Meredith crawls through the passenger side window of the ambulance, and over the dead EMT, with the ultrasound equipment, she announces that they're "losing him".

McDreamy is off flirting with the nurse from last episode, insisting with all his charm and machismo that the two of them are friends and are allowed to talk even though Meredith decided earlier that she doesn't like the idea of her boyfriend dating other women. Before she gets around to actually telling McDreamy this, he finds out that the pretty nurse was once engaged, but it didn't work out because she knew exactly what she wanted and he didn't. Which is exactly the same problem McDreamy is having with Meredith. Isn't that convenient? Anyways, his patient is the girl who caused the accident with the ambulances after she had a seizure behind the wheel. Apparently she's never had a seizure before, but thanks to that tumor in her brain, she's had two. McDreamy's plan is to drill a hole in her head and go in with a computer guided needle to remove the tumor. But wouldn't you know it, right after he gets himself inside her brain, the computer that guides the needle breaks. Looks like he's flying solo on this one.

All in all, this episode was weak for what ABC advertised as "A Grey's Anatomy Event". Sure there is a second half and maybe the plot will pick up and make me actually care about these patients, but so far it seems the writers are relying and shock and gore to grab the audiences attention. And I have to say, it's all been done before. If I wanted shock and gore, I'd watch CSI. No thanks. Where's all my drama?

All This Show Needs is a Good Rod Stewart Montage

The title of this episode of Grey's Anatomy is Forever Young. The residents are forced to relive their high school experiences when a hoard of high-schoolers invade the hospital as a result of a school bus crash. Seattle Grace literally becomes a high school, complete with lunch room gossip, silly crushes and flirting and secrets. Oh, wait. Yeah, Grey's Anatomy already had all those things going for them. A certain freshman English research paper comes to mind.

Anyways, McDreamy is dating. Specifically, he is dating Sydney, which is enough to make every cell in my body cringe. Ok, I get that McDreamy is trying to get Meredith moving by provoking her with this date. But Sydney? Come on. You're supposed to be torturing Meredith, not yourself!

Meredith witnesses this entire date and gushes insecurity right onto Cristina, who seems to be caring less and less about this McDreamy disaster with each consecutive show. She must be channeling the emotions of the audience.

McSteamy is watching the date, too and is cringing for me so that McDreamy knows just how upset I am with this date. Ew.

The next day, at work, George and Izzie are avoiding each other. Remember all the bad sex their having? The lack of chemistry? It's a good thing they can be grown ups about it and talk through their issues. Oops, my bad. They aren't grown ups. Meredith is avoiding McDreamy too, because of the awkwardness of having to witness her boyfriend on a date with another woman. As a result, George ends up confessing how uncomfortable it is with Izzie, now that the relationship has moved out of the safety of the friends zone. Shortly thereafter, Izzie complains to Meredith about the same thing during Bailey's first lecture as new Chief Resident. Ironically, the lecture is about growing up; i.e. not gossiping, having sex or causing drama while on duty. Since Izzie is gossiping about her personal life during this lecture, she gets yelled at. It's so nice to have Bailey back in charge.

Due to the aforementioned bus crash, teenagers are everywhere and conveniently enough, the patients all represent the major cliques in school. There are two stereotypical teenage girls with superficial lacerations. They're there to annoy the hell out of the audience and to remind us all why we hated high school so much. They gossip in the cafeteria and giggle about McSteamy, leading the audience to believe they think he's cute. When they tentatively approach McSteamy, we find out that he looks just like one of their fathers. Looks like McSteamy's losing his touch.

Another girl, the head of the pom squad (it's like a cheerleader, but with more dancing than cheering), has a huge gash across her face and a broken tail bone. This effectively destroys her ability to continue on the team and her sympathetic 'friends' waste no time replacing her and then go about their merry way. All the interaction between her friends and her is done with the highest level of fake sympathy. If you ever needed and example of what a frenemy is: that was it.

Then we have the so called freaks. A boy is brought into the hospital with a pencil sticking out of his eye. The obvious question is: Why is there a pencil sticking out of his eye? And the obvious answer is: A bully put it there. Ok, so maybe the answer isn't so obvious. But you get my point. He is a loner. No one cares about him. No one, that is, except his one friend. The only one who went to the hospital with him and waited through his surgery. His parents didn't even show up. And although there were several high school students crying in the waiting room for him, they didn't actually know him and probably couldn't say for certain what his name is. More of those fake sympathy people. These two friends only have each other. It's them against the whole high school. Unfortunately, in surgery, an artery exploded, his head swelled and he was put into a coma he will probably never come out of.

Finally, we have a patient from Bailey's past. A man who affectionately refers to her as "Mandy". We come to find out that, in high school, Bailey tutored him. He was on the track team and she pretty much did all of his homework in the hopes that he would ask her to homecoming. He didn't. Still, nothing has changed for them. Bailey turns into a giggling idiot every time she has to talk to him and she even agrees to fill out the mountain of paperwork he has to fill out for the hospital. Although several people remind her that patients are supposed to fill out the paperwork themselves, Bailey continues to fall all over herself to do whatever it is he needs her to. He has a heart problem, she saves his life, and still he takes her for granted. This encounter sends Bailey right back to high school and she takes out her frustrations on McDreamy, who she assumes was one of the popular boys in high school. One of the popular boys that would never pay attention to her; She was a smart, band geek with glasses and pretty much got ignored by every popular guy in high school except for the track star. She finally realizes that he only paid attention to her so she would do his homework for him.

McDreamy takes offense to this categorization of 'popular' kid. Turns out, he too, was a band geek, was scrawny and had lots of pimples.

Meredith's dad ends up in the hospital because he put his hand through glass in one of his drunken tirades. He asks for Meredith to do his stitches. He apologizes for all the things he said to her after his wife died and talks about how he wished he got more time with her as a kid. Meredith obviously melts when she hears this, although she doesn't show it. But all of her relationship problems stem from her daddy issues. If those were fixed, she and McDreamy could live happily ever after. But when Meredith tells Lexie that their dad was there and that Lexie should keep a better eye on him, Lexie explodes. She basically tells Meredith that their dad didn't really mean any of the things he said to her because he's a drunk and one day you'll be his favorite daughter and the next, you're an ungrateful bitch. Lexie sarcastically thanks Meredith for advising her to keep a better eye on their father and then storms off.

This whole sister thing, in my mind, is fantastic. They're working things out; learning different details about each other's lives. Although these fights might make you want to climb the wall as you watch them, they are stepping stones to creating a real relationship as sisters. And now, my psychoanalytical rambling is finished.

Secrets are a huge part of this show. Lexie blames Alex for telling Meredith that their drunken father was in the ER. Alex shoots back that he doesn't really do the whole secrets thing because its immature and, like, so high school. Lexie argues that this wasn't about some irrelevant high school secret, this was her personal family life. Then Alex tells Lexie to grow up. He had to start taking care of his drunk father at age 7 and she's 24. She should just accept it and take care of her father like a grown up.

In addition, the whole Izzie and George having bad sex thing was supposed to be a secret. However, both George and Izzie told Meredith, who told Cristina, who told Callie, who told McSteamy, who announced it to an entire OR. Eventually the 'secret' ends up on an inter-hospital emailing system and Izzie storms off to find George and break up with him. After things cool down, they finally sit down and talk to each other like adults. Both agree that they want their best friend back more than they want to be dating each other, but they don't explicitly break up. I'm sure we'll find out next episode whether they're breaking up or if they're going to try to be best friends and boyfriend/girlfriend at the same time.


Some Side notes:

• Callie apparently didn't get fired from the hospital, just from her position as Chief Resident. She uses this experience to convince the dethroned head pom that she can go back to doing what she loves instead of doing all the organizing and stuff that the head pom is in charge of.
• Frenemy (n): Two people who are best friends on the surface, but secretly hate each other and do things that will tear down the other one. Example - Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.
  

More of the same.

Izzie and George are having bad sex. A lot of bad sex. In fact, the sex is so bad that it makes them forget that they're in love with each other. I'm guessing the reason they keep forgetting why they're in love with each other has less to do with the fact that they're having bad sex and more to do with the fact that the only time they had really good sex, both of them were drunk out of their mind on scotch. Personally, I never really bought the whole Gizzie affair. It just doesn't work. It's like incest.

Dr. Hahn is still hazing Cristina. Every time Cristina tries to be involved in a cardio case, Dr. Hahn is intentionally mean and downright rude to Cristina. She even went so far as to deliberately tell Cristina that she was addressing Dr. Grey and not her. How immature is that? Hello, you're supposed to be a professional. Perhaps you want to start acting like one and actually do your job by teaching Cristina what she doesn't already know about cardio; a specialty she is clearly passionate about.

Meredith is still having issues with Lexie, but she's trying. She wants to feel a bond with Lexie but she just can't. It's taking Meredith a little longer than Lexie would like to open up to her.

McDreamy has basically become the Chief's wife. He drops off the Chief's dry cleaning and picks it up and the two of them even have dinner and a movie night. This is because the Chief never learned how to take care of himself. He married Adelle right out of college and she is the one that has been taking care of him ever since. Now that the two of them are separated, the chief is like a fish out of water and taking advantage of McDreamy's generosity. (Oh, and the Chief saw Meredith naked when he walked in on the two of them doing the nasty)

McSteamy has a thing for Dr. Hahn. Or maybe its not so much a thing for Dr. Hahn as it is a thing for her surgical skill, her no nonsense attitude and the fact that she wants nothing to do with him. For the moment. I have a feeling that might change. I mean, Dr. Hahn can't just be the mean old lady who picks on Cristina. She has to be having sex with someone on the show.

Callie got fired, although I'm not sure if she was just fired from her position as Chief Resident or fired from the Hospital completely. Dr. Bailey has basically been doing her job for her all this time without getting any of the credit. The Chief finally caught on, fired Callie and made Bailey Chief Resident. And I say, it's about damn time. That position should have been Bailey's anyway. It's good to see Bailey bossing around the interns again. Only, they're not really interns anymore, are they?

Alex and Lexie were prohibited from doing the horizontal bump after Meredith caught them last episode. This is because, contrary to what she says, Meredith does care that she has a little sister. And she doesn't want the local playboy to use her. Even if Lexie is most willing to be used, which it seems she is.

At the end of the episode, we find out that Meredith and Lexie's dad is a drunk, and probably has been since his second wife (Lexie's mom) died. I gotta be honest, I don't really see where the writers are going with this one. He pretty much wants nothing to do with Meredith and Meredith wants nothing to do with Lexie... so the two halves of the family don't really seem to have much of an interacting plot line. Either way, this information is new, although not surprising, and yet another dimension of drama has been added to the show. More drama, more awesome. It's a time tested recipe. Man, I love Grey's.

Seriously?

Ok, so the title of this entry is a little cliche considering it's the catch phrase of the entire show, but really, there's no other response to this episode of Grey's Anatomy. During this episode, we're introduced to a pair of bloody and battered women, both clinging to a wedding dress for dear life. Neither is willing to let go, even though one has a dislocated shoulder and the other one's nose is so crooked, you could mistake it for one of those yellow signs warning against the windy back roads of rural New England. The two have beaten each other bloody in an effort to get the other one to let go of the stupid dress, and neither particularly wants the dress. You see, it's not about the dress. It's about the contest. The last one left holding on to the wedding dress, wins $100,000 to put on her dream wedding. These two psychos have been at it for days, without sleep. And neither will let go now just because they need surgery. Callie, in need of operating on these women, and also still a little pissed at George, proposes that George act as a proxy for one of the women while she's in surgery. This leaves George holding onto a wedding dress for hours on end.

Meanwhile, Izzie decides that she and George are going to have perfect sex that night. Apparently the time limit of respect for Callie has been reached. She describes how the night is going to go and says she'll even shave her legs. Because perfect sex requires shaved legs. Her patient is a heart patient who is allergic to the anesthesia. So, she has to perform awake open heart surgery with Dr. Hahn. Hahn chooses Izzie to scrub in because she's still punishing Cristina for being Burke's favorite for all these years. Izzie is her typically super nice and calming self and does everything she can to put the patient at ease during the surgery. Cristina tells Izzie that she's not hardcore enough for heart surgery. Heart Surgery is Cristina's thing. Cristina's speech makes Izzie all insecure and she seeks out George to verify for her that she is hardcore enough for heart surgery, but hardcore in an Izzie sort of way, not a Cristina kind of way.

Cristina spends the episode trying to diagnose Meredith's issues by consulting a psych book. She comes to the conclusion that Meredith suffers from severe abandonment issue, which is preventing her from moving forward with McDreamy. (I so called that like two season ago. I'm gonna be a kick-ass psychiatrist). Cristina keeps praying for an intense surgery, and when a man comes into the hospital having fallen 12,000 ft without a parachute, Cristina thinks she's found it. However, the only thing wrong with this guy after falling thousands of feet into some shrubbery is that he has appendicitis. So, Cristina is screwed out of another surgery.

Meredith compares her near death experience to the skydiver. He's feeling all clear and invincible, but Meredith tells him that feeling goes away. So whatever he was going to do, he better do it now, while he still can. (Coincidentally, he was going to tell his skydiving instructor that he's in love with her). I have hope that Meredith is going to come to terms with her issues and hold on to her McDreamy. But as Cristina pointed out earlier in the episode, "realizing you have stuff and overcoming your stuff is two very different things".

The Chief now lives in a trailer right next to McDreamy's. And with the closer proximity, the Chief invites McDreamy to a "gentleman's evening". McDreamy convinces McSteamy to join them and the whole episode, the two of them try to figure out what a Gentleman's evening is. Is it a night of debauchery at a strip club? Or is it a night of poker and cigars? No one knows, and the chief is intentionally vague about it.

But the part of this episode that really and truly pissed me off, was when Dr. Hahn found out about the gentleman's evening and made it into a sexist thing. Apparently, she's pissed she wasn't invited simply because she's a girl. She compares this situation to when lawyers used to have country club outings and would intentionally not invite their black employees. I'm sorry, but it is so not the same thing. Inviting the male attendings to a boy's night is not sexist. It's the same thing as a bunch of girls getting together to watch chick flicks in their pajama's and eating ice cream. Sometimes you just need to be away from the opposite sex for a while. But Hahn still got to go to the Gentleman's evening, anyways. I'm predicting in a couple of episodes, McSteamy is going to perform her sex change for her. Obviously, there's a little bit of penis envy going on there.

And now, for the oh-my-god moment of this episode. Alex slept with the baby Grey and Meredith walked in on them. Apparently, Alex forgot to tell Lexie that he lives with her sister. Oops.