Recap: Grey’s Anatomy: In The Race to Be Chief, Something’s Gotta give

When Grey’s Anatomy first stepped onto the scene, I really had no intention of watching it. I loathe Desperate Housewives with a passion and since the two of them were on the same night, I let the suckiness of one prevent me from ever getting started with the other. When people said I should watch start watching, I put more resistance than an Olsen twin at the Hostess factory. Then CODE BLACK happened, and I got hooked. The rest, as they say, is history. This week, George is still coping with his father’s death, and as far as mourning goes, his methods are interesting to say the least.I’m really going to enjoy writing for Grey’s but it sucks that I have to take over for m_ruv, because he was funny, and there was no way that I am going to be able to come close to the way he was able to come up with jokes about Ellen Pompeo’s face and Sara Ramirez’s breasts more quickly than Angelina Jolie could adopt third world babies. But the show must go on, so let’s get it started, shall we?

I know I said I love Grey’s, but there are some things I can do without. I really don’t have a handle on the necessity for the constant voice overs. I’ve always been the “don’t explain to me what I am watching, I knows what I am watching because I turned it on and I am watching it!” Alas, as with my problems with the dude on Heroes, I will have to let this one go. Per usual, Meredith starts us off by saying that “Nobody believes their life will turn out just kind of OK. We are filled with expectations of the trails we will blaze.” I would agree for the most part, but some people out there just have lower standards. I count each day that goes by without a new picture of Britney Spears or Paris Hilton vag as a blessing. Asking for more would just be greedy, no?

As I watched the last year, I always thought that Burke and Christina were the best couple. Nobody would imagine that two people with such hug egos could co-exist in the same hospital, let alone the same room, but they made it work. If making sacrifices for your partner is the true measure of a relationship, betting on these two would be easy. And then there was the tremor, which seemed like it would be small, but proved itself stronger than anything you could find in a Kevin Bacon movie.

What’s the point? Oh yes. Christina and Burke, Meredith and Derek were having dinner, which is great, except that Christina and Preston are still trying to get the other one to speak first. This is a situation that clearly requires a Dutch oven, but being as they are eating, something else will have to be done. Until then, it’s the “International House of Silence” as Meredith puts it. If only the two of them had kids that got lost on their way back home from Saskatchewan, they could have called this episode “Babel”.

Although there is not much speaking going on, Christina drops the bomb that the Chief is retiring and that he was thinking of naming Burke as the new chief. This surprised the He-Shepard because apparently, The Chief asked Derek about being the chief as well. Of course McDreamy is babbling and Meredith is babbling and talking about how a couple can be in a relationship and not talk. Seriously, all we need is a deaf Asian girl to start flashing people and this episode really is Babel.

In other parts of the house, Callie comes storming out of George’s room and bumps into Izzie. George has lost his father, and I guess he thinks that the longer things are getting muy caliente with his girlfriend; he won’t have to think about how much losing his father hurts. Therefore, George has decided that he is going to spend every waking minute getting his friction on with Dr. Torres, who is not finding the friskiness endearing any longer and perhaps fearing that she is starting to chafe, begs Izzie to deal with George, since they are best friends and all. The next we thing we know, George comes to his door, and expecting Callie to be there is waiting for her naked. George didn’t seem fazed, but I couldn’t tell what the look on Izzie’s face was trying to convey. Upon the sight of George’s boner was she A) mortified B) impressed C) about to laugh, or D) asking him who does his waxing?

What? I’m huge in Japan…

George the sex machine is the talk of the day as the interns are changing, but Izzie is having trouble getting any of them to help. If only she had taken a picture of his penis, she might have convinced them a little easier. Callie had told her that George has never talked about his father with her, and so Izzie decides that she is going to confront George about his problem alone. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I am not quite sure where “Constant Boner” fits on that scale and neither does Izzie. I don’t know, they are making fun of Georges, but some of the last words his father said to him were to hold on to Callie. Could it be that he just grabbed a hold of her and the constant pounding is his way of making sure he has a good grip? He just doesn’t want to deny his dead father one of his last wishes. I don’t find anything wrong with that.

We start to see our first patients and George and Izzie accompany The She-Shepard, or I guess I should say Dr. Montgomery. That divorce ruined one of the great nicknames of ALL TIME. A girl named Jilly is in the stirrups, and at first she is a little upset about all the attention in the room. Addison tells her that it is a teaching hospital, so Izzie proceeds to take a gander. And I’m not sure what the hell she is looking at, but it surprised her even more than seeing George naked just a few hours ago. I’m thinking to my self “What the hell is going on?” Is she pregnant? Is she actually a man? Did her friend Rachel accidentally get the business end of their strap-on wedged in there too far?

George is a little curious himself, but since the girl was uncomfortable didn’t look at first. Finally, Jilly says that he should take a look, and he is just as flummoxed as Izzie. Seriously, what the hell is going on down there? Does she trim her cooch like a bonsai tree? Did they find Jimmy Hoffa? WHAT IS IT?

“You shave less than Kathleen Turner”

Coming back from commercial, I feel really bad that I was making so many jokes because it turns out that thing so out of the ordinary was cancer. She had cervical cancer and the tumor was so big they could see it from the outside. And while I am not familiar with the stirrups or the speculum, I would imagine the tumor would have to be pretty big to be visibly without sticking your head in there.

Izzie suggests that the girl call her family because it’s not good news, but we learn that the girls are runaways, and they have always been family to each other. Hmm. Runaways. I wonder if the girls had some illicit love affair and their parents didn’t approve. Realizing that Sofia Coppola would never make a movie about them if they broke up, they decided to run away. I made that last part up, but you know it’s true.

Wow. There really isn’t any good transition from that to anything else, so let’s check up with Dr. Sloan, who has Meredith and Alex in tow. He still hates the students and he still hates Seattle. To cure his first problem, he orders the interns to attend to a guy with bedsores and to clear up his second problem, he has decided to leave Seattle. Yes, that’s right. No more McSteamy for you! Come back…one year! Eh, I really don’t care. Sure he was good eye candy for the ladies, but everything else sucked. Minor fling with Callie, tried to hit on everybody else. If they keep him around, it’s only so the writers can slap a sexual harassment suit on him later down the road. Or maybe he’ll get hit by a bus. Either way, they should just get rid of him now.

The funniest line of the episode came when Christina was walking with Callie to assist a patient in the ER. Callie was talking about her problems with George and mentioned that he has a “voracious appetite”. Christina couldn’t believe what she just heard and said she never wanted to talk about what George eats. I’m not sure what Christina is pissed about. If Dr. Burke had enjoyed his meals as much as George apparently enjoys his, he would have been forced to go hungry. And you know what they say. Poon melts in your mouth, not in your hand!

As for the patient, he messed up his kneecap while running a marathon. After a little bit of distraction, Dr. Torres popped his knee back in place. If this kid had left the hospital, he would have been the shortest time any patient has EVER stayed at Seattle Grace, so I am sure something is going to have to fuck him up later for him to even be mentioned at this point. And even then, unless he has some sort of knee cancer, he is going to have a hard time matching up to Jillian.

Yes, Jillian. Remember her? She didn’t want anybody to call her parents, but her parents showed up anyway. And they were Amish! OK, I admit I never saw that one coming. So, what happened? Did Jillian and Rachel leave on Rumspringa and just never came back? What’s the deal here?

We find out that the girls left because of Rachel. The two of them were best friends, born only two days apart, and were always saying they would be together forever, and so when Rachel was shunned for leaving town after she was baptized, Jillian went with her. Jillian’s parents won’t acknowledge Rachel’s existence, but since Jillian had not been baptized before she left, it was OK to talk to her. Rachel, still protective of her friend, told her parents to leave because they weren’t welcome, and Jillian didn’t want to go back to the Amish life.

Jillian’s parents, who we’ll call Mose and Greta, stuck around just long enough to hear that their daughter would need a radical hysterectomy, and even if they weren’t welcome in their daughter’s room, they were going to be there to support her. When they first showed up out of the blue, I thought to myself “How did they get here so fast? Is there some Quaker population in Washington that I don’t know about?” But when you saw the look on Jillian’s face, it was obvious that she was the one who called her parents, but she was too embarrassed to tell her best friend about it.

There were many other things going on besides the Puritans. We all love Dr. Bailey because of her focus and determination, and it has been difficult for her to deal with Izzie in the wake of what happened with Denny because Izzie shook her focus and even made Bailey question why she became a surgeon. All of those attendings she looked up to? They might be great surgeons, but she never wants to emulate what they are doing outside of the operating room.

Yes, Dr. Bailey’s life needs a little bit of purpose, and while you would think that she already has plenty on her hands with her baby still not a year old, I guess the producers thought she could fit a little but more into her life and now she’s organizing a free clinic. Honestly, the first thing I thought when I saw this was “Remember when Juliana Marguiles tried to pull this off on ER?” Nurse Hathaway was desperately trying to come up with funding, and Dr. Carter reminded her that he was rich and his grandmother would pay for it all. I am suspecting that Izzie is going to end up creating an Endowment for this whole thing, but before we get to that point, Bailey has to get some influence.

There is nobody more influential than the Chief of Surgery, but when she asks him, he kind of blows her off. She hasn’t figured out that he is retiring, but almost everybody else has. Derek has a sneaky suspicion that Webber talked to a lot of people about being chief, and it is confirmed when he talks to the former She-Shepard, currently just Dr. Montgomery, and her sort of denial is enough to confirm his suspicions. A few moments later, Derek finds Burke and accosts him about this whole thing as well. I don’t know about you, but I thought McDreamy was being quite the whiny bitch about this whole thing. So Webber promised a lot of things to a lot of people. You can fix this problem by being better than everybody else, not getting your panties all in a bunch.

The first patient crisis of the evening came with dehydrated man. He wasn’t getting any better and he had no feeling in his legs. After telling Christina to do everything she is about to do, Callie cuts the guys legs open, which was kind of gross, but at least they didn’t have to be amputated. In comes Dr. Webber, and suddenly Callie remembers that the dehydration from the flu and the marathon plus the aspirin for the pain caused his muscles to break down. Sounded slightly bogus to me, but that’s why I am not a doctor. I can say that this guy appears to be the only surgery patient that didn’t get an IV. The guy passed out during a marathon and admitted he has the flu. Even I know that means “banana bag”. Dehydration should not have been the problem! Right?

In other matters, I guess I should announce my position on the whole Alex/Addison thing. BTW, what do we call them? Addilex? Alexison? Anyway, I am totally down. Why? Because Addison is hot and I feel like her hotness is going to waste if she is going to stand around and mourn over her failed marriage. And if it can’t be a guy, get a dog to hump her leg or something. This is a travesty. On the other hand, maybe it’s nice to have one doctor that doesn’t sleep with the interns all willy-nilly and such.

After the big kiss last week, Alex and Addison are all awkward this week. Alex sort of wants to put it all behind them, but Addison is worried that he is going to start humping her leg, so she has been avoiding him. Alex finally pulls her into a closet, and since this is the location of some of Alex’s finest sex-on-the-job scenes, I thought they were going to throw down again. Alas, Alex simply says that it didn’t mean anything, and he is over it. It happened, but it doesn’t have to happen again. I don’t think anybody believes that they won’t have sex before the end of the season, but it wasn’t happening this episode.

Earlier, Christina said that Callie wasn’t her friend, but seeing as she has a fetish for gruesome and/or cool procedures, she starts to respect Dr. Torres after that move with the runner’s legs. They are preparing for the surgery when they start talking. Callie knows everything about Christina and Burke from George. Christina and Burke have gotten so bad that she missed out on a cool surgery because she wouldn’t speak to him. Again, it’s more about the egos than anything else.

Once in surgery, Webber wonders why the runner was so crazy about winning. Christina said that she could understand, because she has that same competitive attitude as a surgeon. Webber, older and wiser, tells her that when you come to the finish line, you aren’t going to care about winning or losing; rather, you just care that you made it to the end. I paraphrase, of course, but you get the gist. I love it when they do these “Christina’s heart melts” scenes. Every few episodes they give her just enough humanity to seem like she one day may have a pulse and actual feelings.

As for the other big patient of the episode, news was not so good with Jillian. She was finally able to confront Rachel about how she felt. During the surgery to remove her tumor, Dr. Montgomery discovered that it had spread, making the procedure much more complicated. Besides taking out the tumor, she would have chemo, requite constant care, and well, Jillian wanted to do all of this while she was at home. She wanted to be baptized and have an Amish funeral. The only problem is if she were baptized, she would be forced to shun Rachel as well, since Rachel is an outsider.

Of course, to me, this seems silly. So what if Jillian has to shun Rachel. It doesn’t mean that Rachel has to go anywhere. Isn’t this just a battle of will, sort of like Christina and Burke? If Rachel returned with Jillian, she could just hang out. Jillian wouldn’t have to talk with her, and neither would anybody else, but aren’t the Amish pacifists? How are they going to throw her out? Having an outsider hanging around might be good. For example, if the Mormons start coming around wanting to play board games, Rachel could threaten the blow them away with a shot gun. And I’m sure there is much more that I haven’t thought of.

Now, I don’t know if Rachel is going to go back, but after the surgery, when she was telling Jillian she should go with her parents, Mose and Greta were watching, and seeing how much Rachel cared for their daughter, even if it meant letting her go and perhaps not speaking to her, they were very happy. Greta even turned around and said she would talk to Rachel’s mom and tell her she turned into a beautiful woman. Awww.

The saddest part about Jillian’s story is that it all could have been avoided. A regular pap smear would have warned her about her cancer before it became almost certainly fatal like it is now. If only there was a…free clinic! The only problem is that Bailey isn’t getting any support. She finally confronts Webber, wondering why he let her make a fool out of herself with this clinic plan if he wasn’t going to be there anyway. Webber, who seems to become less crazy every moment he spends apart from Meredith’s mom, says that he had to do it so she could learn how to do things without him. Oh, and for good measure, he says that someday, she will be Chief of Surgery; but really, who hasn’t he told that to. Even at Starbucks he’s like “I’ll have a venti mocha latte. And you should thing about being chief of surgery.” WTF?

So, who was going to get chief? Like I said, McDreamy was all pissy about it. He even got mad at Meredith about it because she mentioned Webber would be leaving to Sloan, and suddenly he has it in his head to be chief. He, along with Burke, Addison, and Sloan all gather around near the chief’s office to figure out what was going to happen.

A ha! Not so fast!

Webber tells them all of them that they he isn’t leaving until they find a successor, and since all of them have been fucking up so much, they still have to prove to him who it should be. He leaves, but the smackdown isn’t finished yet. Bailey, fresh with a bunch of confidence, walks in and demands that Addison, Shepard, and Burke sign off on supporting her clinic. Oooh, I love it when Bailey gets to the speechifying. Saying that she doesn’t have a mess love life to fill up the time, and that she needs some inspirations since she doesn’t believe in any of them any more, she says that this clinic is going to get done. Ahh, it’s fine with them, because they don’t believe that she can come up with the funding anyway. That is, until Bailey catches up with Izzie, they get to talking, and like I think a lot of us predicted, Izzie decides it will be the Denny Duquette memorial clinic. I am sort of loath to continue the Denny story line any more, but at least it takes care of the Izzie millionaire story line, which the writers really didn’t want to bother with anyway.

And so it comes to our final montage. Webber stepped down to spend more time with his wife, but surprise! Adele has already moved on. She has another man, and he is living in Richard’s house, which is of course the biggest insult. I at least hope that she let him into get his golf clubs, because there is one thing a guy just can’t share with anybody else.

Webber wasn’t the only doctor in for a surprise that night. Christina decides to let Burke win, and says she is in it for the long haul. Meanwhile, George is talking with Izzie. George says that he hurts and that she wants to help, but she can’t and she really just has to let him go. I am not very quick on the uptake, so I wondered what all of this meant, until George went over to visit Callie. Ahhhh, so George is really, truly, putting Callie in front of everybody else.

When he gets to her hotel room, he starts talking about how she always makes him feel better and he just wants to be with her all the time. Callie is still scared that he means they should be having sex, but George says that he doesn’t care what he gets, because any piece of her is great. He finally tells Callie that he loves her, which was shocking enough, and then he proposed marriage!

I do?

And that would have been the most shocking thing of the episode if only Burke hadn’t asked Christina to marry him just a few minutes before. Whoa? Double proposals! From the looks of it, I would have to say that Callie was more shocked than Christina, but I can’t tell who is more likely to say yes, or if either of them is going to say yes.

So, I know my recap was a little helter skelter, but I never realized how much witty dialog I had to follow. Anyway, I thought this was a pretty good episode. The two previous were great, but I think this really worked. I am glad that Webber and Bailey put the smack down and that McDreamy finally got the sand out of his vagina and apologized to Meredith. Sloan has no chance to be chief, and I almost wonder if they would bring in an outside character. Hell, they should just make Finn chief, just to fuck with us all.

What did you think of this episode? Will Webber go back to Meredith’s mom? Will Callie or Christina say yes? Is it over for Addison and Alex?`