Grey’s Anatomy: Putting the Mock in Mockumentary

 

It’s a film inside a show inside an enigma wrapped in a conundrum.  Or bacon.  That would actually be better.

Sweet Christ on a stick, just when I thought Grey’s Anatomy was going back to the good old days, they pull this documentary crap.  The whole idea behind this week’s episode is that a film crew comes in to see how Seattle Grace works and how it is surviving after the shooting.  Would the hospital really let a crew come in a film knowing full well people have still not calmed down after the shooting?  Also, would any patients still be going there?  I found this premise ridiculous and it just seemed to pander to its audience.  Also, a lot of the scenes included in the documentary were what I would call “lawsuit-inducing.”  The writers must think the viewers of this show are stupid.  Let’s dissect, shall we?

We open with Meredith standing next to Christina explaining to the camera that they are on trauma rotation.  They show a group of doctors working on a patient (thank goodness for blurring of the bloody face) except, of course, Christina, who ONCE AGAIN assumes her rightful place as a broom against a wall.  She explains that sometimes getting out of the way is the best thing to do during a trauma.  Then why are you even on the rotation?  Go get everyone coffee.

You know, if Christina were really having this much trouble, seems that the hospital would have her in therapy and not working.  One, she’d be a danger to any patient she chose not to treat because of her PTS and two, she’d only be making more work for the other doctors and they are already pushed to extremes.  Would you want her working on you?  In the real world she’d never still be on duty.

McDreamy interviews he’s been paged to access the trauma patient once he’s stabilized, then the captions come up on this “documentary” showing someone says that half the guy’s brains are on the floor.  Yeah, because I’m sure his family would agree to sign off that it was okay to use that footage and comment.  McDreamy runs in and asks if he’s a donor.

McSteamy shows up and preens for the camera (do you expect any less?).  Everyone keeps saying they got a donor match and McSteamy says the crew picked the right day to start filming because this is going to “be fun.”  You know, for everyone except the dead guy and his family.  For them, it’s kinda gonna suck.  Jerks.

And why is it a good day?  Because some guy without arms is going to get transplant arms from the dead guy!  Yay everybody!  Except for the dead guy.

First, I’m getting new arms, then I’m going to Disneyland…to punch Mickey!

The booming voiceover guy says, “Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital…home to some of the finest, most influential doctors in the country.”  Yeah, only because they headed west when their personal lives fell apart and the reason their lives fell apart followed them.  The voiceover guy tells us about the shooting and how today they are visiting the hospital to see how they are doing, their triumphs, their disappointments, and the lawsuit-inducing comments.  The name of the documentary:  Seattle Medical:  Road to Recovery – When Lifejackets Fail:  The Meredith Grey Story of Life and Death and Everything in Between. Still shorter than the hospital’s name.

And we begin with Webber talking about the new security system they’ve installed…just now instead of within a reasonable amount of time after the attack.  Since he gave away the million dollars last week to a wasted cause, he could only afford the worst security system ever and it is run by the clowns that get out of one of those little cars. This storyline only gets more ridiculous and unbelievable as the show unfolds.

Lexie tries to get into the hospital but her ID doesn’t work and she screams for the chief who has to come over and vouch for her.  The film crew includes this in their riveting documentary.  So explain to me how the patients are getting through if they don’t have IDs?  Stupid hospital, stupid writers.

Meredith and Christina are interviewed about how they are good friends as well as co-workers.  Excuse me, why is Christina showing more enthusiasm for being in this film than she has for working lately?  Has she become a reality TV contestant?  The crew shows Christina working and captions that she performed surgery on a colleague at gunpoint and it was Meredith’s husband.  So, she doesn’t want to work but she wants to be in a movie about this?  Media whore!

McDreamy admits to the camera crew that Meredith and Christina have sleepovers while he’s still in bed.  So he just admitted to anyone watching this stupid documentary that he’s involved in very boring threesomes.  Yeah, I’d really want him to be my doctor.  Great PR.  Might as well throw his picture on a billboard!

Karev yells at some little girl named Lily for playing her music too loud and I like him a little more.  He shows the camera crew his bullet wound.

Don’t make me count to three!  Because I’ll do it, young lady!

Aww, we meet sweet couple of the episode and I would recommend getting your insulin shot now.  Wife Mary, otherwise known as Mandy Moore, is going back to Seattle Grace for her colostomy reversal, which sounds like something that shouldn’t be reversed, but will actually restore the function of her intestine.  Are they using a pig intestine?  That would go along with the donor arms!  Her husband says he packed her robe and fuzzy slippers and kisses her and I vomit a little in my mouth.  Also, it’s pretty clear to me at this point **SPOILER ALERT** or not really…Mandy’s going to die.

The sugar sweet kiss of death.

Turns out she was supposed to get the surgery “months ago” but then the shooting happened.  Again, this just shows it’s been months since the shooting and they are just now getting the security system in place.  Stupid hospital.  No wonder Mandy waited so long to come back (as if she would).

Mandy admits she hasn’t been back to the hospital since she and Zach Branff broke up.  Well, that and the shooting. But then she sees Bailey and they hug – they had been trapped together during the shooting.  Wow, talk about a bonding experience with a surgeon.

Lily’s airway is blocked!  Hope she signed the release so they can show her face like they are doing.  Karev recommends doing a special kind of tracheotomy where they have to cut through Lily’s throat and insert a tube.  I have seen this on numerous medical shows and am thoroughly convinced if I ever came across someone who wasn’t breathing, I could perform this with an exacto knife and the plastic body of a writing pen (ink removed).  So you’d better hope you never stop breathing around me because I’ll probably kill you trying to prove my point.

Anyhoo, now poor Lily can’t speak because of the tube in her neck and Arizona tells the camera crew that there is a benign growth in Lily’s neck that keeps coming back and causing her breathing problems.  “But it’s gotten worse.  Way worse,” she says.  When your beeper goes off, that’s HIPAA calling.  Jesus, I get pissed when I have to give the pharmacist my address in front of other people and Arizona basically told us this kid is going to die.  Hope her grandmother misses the documentary when it airs.

Lily starts to cry and Karev is totally cool with her, putting in her earplugs and giving her back her iPod.  He explains that a lot of times kids are alone because parents can’t be with them 24/7.  Then he says the hospital has cots for when parents want to stay over.  He says it’s not that they are bad parents, they’re just busy.  Yes, busy working to pay for the insurance so they don’t have to declare bankruptcy over their kid’s trach.  Thanks, Karev.

Oh, awesome!  The wife of the guy who is brain dead and is about to donate his arms is being interviewed by the crew.  You know, I know if my husband died and his body parts were about to be donated, the first thing I’d want to do is wait for lighting to be set up correctly so I could be interviewed by a documentary crew about it.  Yep, that’s exactly how I’d want to spend my last moments with my dying spouse.

What?  I only get 15 minutes and Octomom is due back at any time!

Then the crew shows footage of her signing the papers to donate his arms.  Again, that’s a private moment I’d want filmed.  She admits it’s hard to know his hands are going to be out there holding someone else’s hand.  Aside from the invasion of privacy, sister, you just can’t think that way.  Think of the good you’ll be doing for someone else.

McSteamy interviews that he and McDreamy have known each other forever.  “We grew up together. Went to med school together.  He’s like my better half,” he says, forgetting to add, “We both banged his wife during the same time period, and I recently banged his sister.”  Then he brings up McDreamy getting shot and how horrible it was.

Then we see the high school football team of McDreamy and McSteamy discussing attaching new arms to Lt. Dan, and Torres questions them on the bones since they seem to forget those are as important as everything else.  The camera catches her rolling her eyes and again, would you want to go to a hospital where the surgeons were seen as so disrespectful of each other and so arrogant of their abilities?  This scene just made her look like she wasn’t getting their way at student council and that the hospital was a total boys club.

Even worse, McSteamy and McDreamy say they don’t want to count themselves as “medical titans,” and once again the camera focuses on Torres and her eye rolling and heavy sighing.  Seriously, I’d be at Seattle Grace Mercy EAST if I ever needed anything.  And I don’t care if it closed, it would still be a better hospital.

Get the wading boots, McDreamy & McSteamy are talking.  You might want to get a ruler, too.

Torres is taking blood from that patient and tells us the surgery will take two teams of like a thousand people and 15 hours to complete.  All I could think about is why the hell is a surgeon doing blood work?  Don’t you have scuts like Lexie for that, or what about the nurses?  Jesus, have the writers ever even been in a hospital?

Turns out Lt. Dan lost his arms during a logging accident and ouch…and where the hell was OSHA?  Lt. Dan’s wife says the accident brought them closer and not just because she has to wipe his ass, button his shirts and shave him.  Holy shit, that would really add some time to the morning routine, wouldn’t it?

And I’m kinda over it.

Mandy Moore tells Bailey that she and her show husband left town after the shooting and never looked back, apparently until this morning when they decided on surgery.  They burned through their savings traveling all over the world because “life is so short.”  You have no idea how right you are.

In an interview at their home, Mandy interviews that after the surgery, she’s looking forward to “Babies…lots and lots of babies.”  Yeah, she’s a goner.  Also, you burned through your savings so how the hell do you expect to pay for kids?  Real responsible!

What do I possibly have to fear?

Suddenly an alarm goes off and Bailey says it happens once or twice a week.

Calming AND reassuring, thanks.

Okay, hold the phone malone…can you even imagine how stressful it would be to be in a hospital where an alarm went off twice a week?  How the hell are people in ICU doing?  What about heart attack patients?  What about the NICU with all the babies?  Oh, I’m sure women who have just given birth really enjoy that screaming alarm, and do the surgeons hear it in the O.R.?  That would scare the shit out of anyone and I’d hate to think of the damage Jackson could cause during brain surgery if an alarm went off while he was rooting around with a pokey instrument.  This is the kind of stupid crap I can’t believe the writers foist on viewers, like we’re that stupid.

Webber looks like a complete ass-munch as he tries to explain that there are a few “kinks” in the new security system, but they are working through them.  Christina and Mere voice over that they system actually locks down different areas of the hospital during emergencies, put in place since “someone” was roaming around the hospital during the shooting.  Hmm…who could you possibly mean?

She knows there will be Africans in Africa, right?  Because she’s looking like Webber just sat in the front of the bus or something.

Arizona knocks and just walks right in on Webber.  He says he’s so proud of her because she won some Carter Madison grant.  We see her and Torres out at the coffee cart talking about it and Teddy says, “Are you kidding?” and Torres says, “NO SHE’S NOT KIDDING,” in such a way that its clear she’s jealous and pissed.  She’s jissed!

The face (and strong jaw) of someone totally and completely jissed off.

Arizona interviews that there are major gaps in child healthcare in third world countries (as opposed to the adults, who get AMAZING healthcare in those places).  She admits she applied for the grant two years ago and I have to wonder – would something like that really take that long to come through?  I mean, I could see one year but two?  People have moved on…even I don’t like keep a job longer than that!

They show Arizona with Torres holding hands and walking down the street as Arizona voices over that she was single then.  Listen, according to the laws of almost every state, you’re still single and staying that way.  She says of course she’s taking the grant and moving to Africa.  Holy shit, really?  And now Torres is stuck with a peach apartment?  What a bitch.

Also, I am not sure the hospital would be thrilled with potential patients knowing they had lesbians working in pediatrics – and before you send evil emails, you know what I mean.  There are tons of closed-minded people out there who don’t agree with gay lifestyles and some of them may consider taking their health concerns elsewhere if they thought they were being looked at by someone gay.  I doubt the hospital would have even wanted to poke that bear.

Say what you will, at least Mel Gibson is getting some work.

Rut-roh!  Trouble in arm land!  Lexie looks at donor’s arm and asks if Torres has seen “this.”  It’s a tattoo!  The size of absolutely nothing!  It is the tiniest tattoo I’ve ever seen and it reads, “Nicole,” the donor’s wife’s name.

OH MY GOD THAT IS THE tiniest tattoo ever…are you serious?  And…seems like the person who put the IV IN WOULD HAVE SEEN IT DOYEEEEE.

Well, because getting someone else’s arms can somewhat screw with your mind, they ask Lt. Dan and his wife about it…as though they are going to reject the arms because of it.  Uh, no, they are totally good to go.

Hey, drama queens?  Could you take down the overreacting a notch and give us the goddamn arms already?  Thanks!

You know why?  He probably doesn’t want his wife to wipe his ass anymore and she probably seconds that.  Also, couldn’t you just remove it during surgery, it’s not like it’s that skank from L.A. Ink’s arm.

It’s not like the tattoo is going to Africa or something.

Donor’s wife NICOLE interviews that he got the tattoo about a year ago right before he proposed.  Now let’s think about the timing on this interview…how much time has passed between Nicole’s first interview about him dying and them finding out about the tattoo?  A few hours?  And yet here she sits talking about the tattoo as though she’s answering the fact they just found out about it.  Because apparently donor wife has nothing better to do with her time right now.  PANDER ALERT.

Once again Lexie’s security card isn’t working.  That sounds really safe for patients she’s working on – her not being able to get access to medical equipment because her card doesn’t work.

Karev has to put Lily in an MRI and she can’t take her iPod with her.  Instead of just piping through her music or putting the MRI headphones on like my tech did (okay, didn’t wipe out the jackhammer noise, but still), he sings to her.  Aw, Karev, your heart has grown bigger than the Grinch’s!  It’s actually a pretty funny moment to hear him sing to her – the tech gives him a look like, Bitch, please.

And now a little something from Sinatra karaoke…

Christina and Mere are on another trauma and when it is revealed the guy is shot, Christina get squinky and says she’s going to check on the next trauma coming in.  We see her checking on the next person in her lacksadaisical way, then she leaves the patient’s room and lies down on a bed in another room.  Again, this is being filmed…would you want that doctor working on you?

All this not-working is exhausting….

Back with Mandy, her husband is telling her they should just catch a plane somewhere tonight.  Bailey interviews this is very basic surgery and she does a couple a day.  So you know Mandy’s for sure going to die.

Karev has bad news on Lily’s test for the camera crew and it looks like he’ll be involved with the HIPAA investigation as well.  He interrupts Arizona who is having a very testy conversation with Torres about leaving.  Torres bitches that it’s Arizona’s decision and no one turns down a Carter Madison grant.  She says if the situation was reversed…she wouldn’t consider moving to another continent right now.  Or will she???

ON CAMERA, Lily’s mother gets the news that they can’t remove the growth on Lily’s throat because they’d have to remove the trachea, which means she wouldn’t be able to breathe.  But if they leave it in, she won’t be able to breathe.  So we get to see the exact moment this woman learns her kid is going to die.

Hey single mom!  We’ve chosen this busy passageway and asked the camera crew to join as we tell you your daughter has no hope.  But we are going to give your house a complete makeover.

Karev says since the shooting he feels that there is something they can do for everyone.  What will they do for Lily?

Lt. Dan is getting new arms!  Totally gross footage that I manage to avoid thanks to the fact I have arms and can hold my hands up to the TV and not really watch.

And boy are they tired!

Once again, Lexie cannot get through security and she is freaking out on some rent-a-cop about how she needs to see groundbreaking security but had to go get McSteamy coffee.  Isn’t he in surgery?  That extra caffeine might make him jittery and attach the arms incorrectly.

She continues to freak out and I probably wouldn’t let her through either.  Instead, she runs through the system and immediately sets off the alarm.  Heart attack patients of the hospital, unite!  The system locks down and Jackson gets locked in a vestibule with a patient.  He totally freaks out.

Lexie makes a break for it as the security guys compare baseball cards.

The film crew shoots the first arm being attached and we see it move.  McDreamy interviews that since getting shot, he feels lucky. Oh, you feel lucky punk?  Do ya?  Um, yes, he does.  He also feels like God as both arms turn pink because of the blood flowing into them – the surgery worked.

They are worse than cooties!

Lily’s mother interviews the commute to the hospital is tough because she lives 3 hours away.  Again, she just found out her child is going to die, but she decides to be interviewed for a documentary.  If my kid were dying, I’d be shitting myself silly.  I can barely concentrate at work when my dogs have to go in to have their teeth cleaned.  But you know what I don’t do?  Mug it up for the camera.

Lily’s mother reveals to us that Arizona said they could do something experimental on Lily.  So, you told her child was going to die and now you’re saying you might be able to save her?  Should we call a therapist or a minister?  Way to screw with Lily’s mother’s emotions.

They put a stint into Lily’s throat and they are taking part of her rib cartilage to grow inside of her as a trachea.  Uhh…hmmm.  Is that possible?  How long would it take?  Can you grow me a Clooney?

Think those are Epstein nails they are hammering into her?

Jackson is still stuck in the vestibule, again this guy is NOT with Jill Goodacre, and he is freaking out and doing CPR on his patient.  I’ll all about the claustrophobia, but this room does have a ton of windows, so you should feel okay, and if you don’t, BREAK A WINDOW.  Also, the patient is coding, so once again, enjoy your lawsuit, Seattle Grace.

Teddy says she does not like the new security system and we see her yelling at a security guard who clearly gets his minimum wage and nothing more.  She says, “Open the f#cking door or I’ll report you for wrongful death!”  Yeah, he can get in line behind the doctors at this hospital.

You don’t kiss your security guards with that filthy mouth, do you?

The alarm goes off and a team gets into the vestibule but Jackson won’t leave.  We see him in a hallway later kicking over a wastebasket.  He interviews that he lost some friends during the surgery and getting stuck in the vestibule brought it all back.

It does look like that back of everyone’s TV system!

Lt. Dan throws a clot and no blood is going into the arm.  Torres scoots McSteamy out of the way and fixes everything.  She really is a titan!  Lexie takes this time to give Lt. Dan’s wife the news and talk about positive – she says one arm is better than none.  This couple rocks!  First okay with the tattoo, then okay with the one arm.  Glass:  Half full.

Karev explains the whole growing of the trachea and basically it boils down to you put the cells in the centrifuge, you take the cells back out, you put ‘em in an incubator and you shake ‘em all about.  Then you put ‘em in the hokey pokey abdomen and spend the next few months growing a new one.  That’s what it’s all about.

The Chief decides to send his urine to the lab for testing.  Something just ain’t right.

Bailey is doing her routine surgery, it went perfectly, only took an hour, she’s going to close the incision with her eyes shut and a glass of brandy in one hand, and it’s over.  She tells the husband it’s over and they hug because all is well!  Except for karma, that’s coming back to bite you but good for your cockiness.

Life is good and back on track and totally normal and nothing can go wrong now or mess with my good mood.  Nothing.

Ah!  The camera crew follows the surgeons to the neighborhood bar so we can see how loaded they get after a day of surgery.  Hope they don’t show up with hangovers for their surgeries tomorrow.

Karev interviews the trachea has to be taken care of very carefully so he’ll be living in the hospital to make sure it grows correctly before they put it into Lily for more growing.  We see footage of him sleeping in a cot next to Lily, probably because the on-call room sheets are actually being washed for once.

Christina interviews about people treating her differently since the shooting and she’s like duh.  Some people called it heroic but “I did what I had to do,” she says.  She continues talking nonsense about being a hero and finally Meredith grabs her hand to shut her up and says she is a hero.  Christina starts to falter and Meredith asks if they can cut.  Mercifully, they do and we go to commercial.

Back from commercial we see it’s four weeks later and Webber is talking about how the security system is being removed.  So shooters of Seattle, have at it!  Oh, and here’s Webber’s social security number if you are interested.

…Apparently by the cable guys.

We see Lt. Dan with both arms in slings and his wife says he has feelings in his arms then she PINCHES HIM BY THE INCISION.  Oh my God you total bitch, that had to hurt!  A caption reads, “Before gaining all feeling back, Zack (Lt. Dan) decide to get a tattoo just under the name Nicole. It reads: ‘Thank You.’”  Uh huh.  Because getting a tattoo on arms that have been transplanted is a really good and healthy idea.  I’m sure you won’t get hepatitis at all.  I’m sure the tens of thousands of doctors who put in as many hours would be thrilled to hear you’ve just injected your arm with foreign ink.  Is it a nice gesture?  Yes.  Was it a wise move?  Hell to the NO.

If only we could grow funny bones as fast as that trachea, we might be okay.

Lily’s back to get her trachea sew into her belly.  “Dr. Karev calls me a human incubator,” she says.  You mean like most women are anyway, thanks to the whole womb thing?  Lily shows pictures on her iPod she’s taken of the trachea.  It totally looks like it’s been infused with Pepto Bismol.  She says she may put her rock star plans on hold to become a doctor.  Rock star would be easier, Lily.  No MCAT.

Karev gives Lily a lecture on what not to do with the trachea – no drinking, smoking, driving drunk, mosh pit, or stupid stuff.  The caption reads that Lily was asked what the best part of her experience was by her teacher to share with the class.  She said it was Karev and we see him at her show and tell.  I would have thought the best part was not dying, but Karev did help with that.  Glad to see he spent three hours driving to her school and three back, what with all the time residents/almost attendings have on their schedule.

Arizona interviews that going to Africa is right around the corner and Torres admits she’s going with her.  A caption reads, “They both gave notice the next day.”  Arizona I don’t mind leaving, but Torres is hilarious.  Hope she doesn’t go.

Look at all the fun stuff they bought for their super-fun vacay in Africa!  Those sandals are going to kill at happy hour.

And as I mentioned before, I hope they don’t do some kind of transcontinental thing where half the show is in Seattle and half is in Africa with these two.  E.R. got very preachy with that (and they were waaay past jumping the shark) so I hope the same fate doesn’t befall Torres.  I mean, she married George, how much more does she need to suffer?

And what’s this?  Mandy’s husband is back at the hospital with flowers?  Didn’t routine surgery go home?  Nope. Because as we could all see from the beginning of the show, Mandy wasn’t going to make it.  Bailey interviews that although it’s rare sometimes people just don’t wake up from surgery.  Mandy went into a coma after the surgery and never woke up.  There is no sign of brain activity and now her organs are failing.  Bailey has to have a very tough talk with the husband.  The bummer is that if she’s septic and the organs are failing, she can’t be a donor.

Yep, everything looks routine here, what with all the monitors and such.

The film crew shows Bailey talking to the husband and telling him to let Mandy go.  The caption reads that three days later, the husband let Mandy go, and Bailey denied a follow-up interview.  Probably because hospital attorneys told her to shut it.

Interview with Christina who says the staff went through the scariest thing they can go through and now every day is a gift (first season Christina would have barfed at that last part).  She says they are all blessed…blessed, blessed, blessed everyday.  The interviewer asks if there is anything she’ll take away from this.  “Being a hero has its price,” she says.  Good line for the last scene, but what price is everyone paying for you checking out, hero?

Christina left the stage because Bill O’Reilly was being a jerk.

Next week?  Everyone snaps like a rubber band!  Well, actually it’s just Jackson and Christina.  See you then.