Impulses! IMPULSES!!!

After a season opener that left quite a bit to be desired, Grey’s Anatomy was back in much finer form for week two, I’m happy to report. Many funny moments, a great plot twist, and the first of what I hope will be many memorable guest appearances by Academy Award nominee with Special Recognition for Innovative Name Spelling DIAHANN CARROLL.

The show opens with Meredith blabbering on in the background with some nonsense about neurons and impulses and how we humans have control over neither. He-Shepherd is “flirting” with her in the elevator, which primarily entails sniffing her hair lustily. Splendid! We then cut to Izzie home in the kitchen, COOKING THE SHIT out of like TEN THOUSAND MUFFINS FOR REASON WHATSOEVER.

On the count of three… 1… 2… 3… WASPY!!!

Cristina goes into Burke’s room in the hospital, closes the blinds, and starts ripping off her clothes, revealing scandalous scarlet lingerie. Heavens, such harlotry! Just as Cristina is, uh, mounting Burke, the door opens, and Burke’s parents (played by Richard Roundtree and Diahannannahanahannn Carroll) walk in. Mrs. Burke is not amused. Cristina, greatly embarrassed, does NOT score a 10 on the dismount.

Anyway, turns out Cristina paid another hospital employee $20 to guard the door but the guy got called away for a code blue. Phew. At least it wasn’t a code black, because YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. Apparently, word about Cristina’s little scarlet-stripper act got around the hospital faster than scabies at a women’s prison. Everybody knows. Meredith calls Cristina a dirty stripper; Cristina retorts that Meredith is a cheap hooker for sleeping with two men at the same time. BUT NO, Meredith says she’s about to decide between He-Shepherd and the vet—if she hasn’t made a decision by day’s end, she’s flipping a coin. Mature!

“I do so adore a good bout of FALCONRY”

She-Shepherd shows up in Webber’s office looking AWFUL. Seriously, like she just got run over by a wagonload of peasants after a long day of boar hunting back at the manor. She asks Webber for the day off because she feels the need to do some drinking. Well according to this article you should have NO PROBLEM WITH THAT, SWEETIE, since you regularly down FOUR BOTTLES OF GEWÃœRZTRAMINER IN ONE SITTING. (Actually, Kate Walsh seriously sounds like fun. Call me!) Webber asks her why she’s drinking, but she counters by asking why he’s—as it appears—living on the couch in his office. He says “marriage is hard” and gives her the day off to go drink.

The first patient of the week has aggressive lung cancer despite the fact that she’s never smoked in her life. Her scrupulously healthy lifestyle, as it turns out, didn’t pay off for shit. So to make up for it she’s ordered the entire dessert menu from the Cheesecake Factory and is halfway through eating it when the doctors warn her she needs surgery right away or she might die. At this news, she starts giggling uncontrollably, what with her sugar rush. So Webber tells George to reschedule the surgery. The interns then appoint George to go ask Bailey to talk to Webber about maybe letting Izzie back into the surgical program. But at the mere mention of Izzie’s name, Bailey tells George to shut up.

Then we have the next patient, and this guy may be the best Grey’s Anatomy patient ever. He has a tumor pressing against the part of his brain that affects impulse control—if you’ll recall vis-à-vis The Pomp’s voiceover, impulse control lis the THEME OF THIS WEEK’S EPISODE—so he just goes ahead and says whatever the hell is on his mind, regardless of how offensive it is. So the patient blurts out that Cristina looks really uptight and then proceeds to ask He-Shepherd whether “that blond”—yes, The Pomp—is his girlfriend, since the look on his face indicates he wants to mount her.

Then Bailey, who seems to have stopped by the slightly better wig store since last week, starts giving the interns their daily assignments when she looks up and sees a frilly black pair of panties pinned up on the bulletin board. Bailey demands to know whose drawers these are. Meredith panics and refuses to claim them, so Cristina worries that Bailey will think they’re hers, what with her recent tendency toward strumpetry. In a turn of events that strains believability more than perhaps anything that’s ever occurred in this series, Callie steps up and claims that the panties are hers, AND BAILEY BELIEVES IT. Okay. If you think for one second that anyone would believe THE FULL-FIGURED DR. TORRES would fit into Meredith’s size -20 panties, then I’VE GOT SOME W.M.D.s TO SHOW YOU.

Alex—who with the shaved head resembles Thom Yorke, minus the wacky eye thing—gets in trouble with Bailey for making jokes. As Bailey walks off, Cristina chimes in that the Nazi (as Bailey was once lovingly called) is definitely back. And who should overhear this comment but DIAHAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN CARROLL herself, who is not amused. (Just as a side note, I must say I’m greatly relieved that Ms. Carroll has emerged unscathed from her “ill-advised headwear period” of the mid-1980s. Bravissima!)

Anyway, Mrs. Burke is surprised that Cristina, as a woman of color and a surgeon—not to mention a stripper, let’s not forget THAT—would make a joke about racial genocide. Cristina, quite nonplussed, promises to be more sensitive in the future. At this point He-Shepherd walks up and introduces himself, prompting all manner of congratulation, gratitude, and general cooing from Mrs. Burke. She asks He-Shepherd if she might borrow Cristina for a quick cup of coffee. Cristina gets roped in against her will.

Meredith and He-Shepherd then have a fraught conversation in the stairwell. She feels like a homewrecker, though he reassures her that his home was quite thoroughly wrecked long before she arrived. He says that regardless of what Meredith decides, he’s ending it with She-Shepherd. He gets all up in her face and kissy-kissy, and just as I begin taking bets about who’s gonna walk in and interrupt them, WHADDYA KNOW but the door opens and it’s THE FULL-FIGURED DR. TORRES. After He-Shepherd leaves, Callie returns the panties to Meredith and suggests that next time they get a hotel room. Or, FYI, she’s willing to rent out her own little den of sin in the hospital basement for $4.99 an hour should they be so inclined.

Cristina runs into Burke’s room and pleads with him to come rescue her from Academy Award nominee Diahann Carroll, who thinks Cristina is a racist stripper. Burke insists his mother is harmless; Cristina remains unconvinced and runs out. Mr. Burke observes all this wordlessly but starts laughing once Cristina leaves the room.

He-Shepherd asks Webber whether he’s seen She-Shepherd, who’s not returning calls. Webber says she took the day off because she was exhausted from falconry and found another woman’s panties in He-Shepherd’s tux pocket to boot. He-Shepherd says he regrets this, but Webber says he clearly must’ve wanted her to find out if he was, you know, leaving dirty panties in his pockets. PANTY-POCKETER!!

Meredith, meanwhile, is attending to the no-impulse-control patient, who reminds her helpfully that she looks tired and needs a better hair conditioner. Great, so the impulse-control guy is one of THE GAYS. He asks whether Meredith had sex with He-Shepherd, and she replies, “Not today.” OOH, how COY. The patient says He-Shepherd is hot and he would get on that if he had the opportunity.

Out in the hallway, George has his panties in a bunch about Callie’s panties being up on the bulletin board. She’s quite amused by the jealousy and says nothing about the panties actually being Meredith’s. The sugar-high lung-cancer patient, meanwhile, is playing NASCAR with her wheelchair in the hallway and nearly mows down two goiter patients and a syphilitic nurse. And tension continues to mount between Alex and Bailey, who has had it with his attitude. He wheedles her for refusing to talk about the Izzie situation, but Bailey warns him not to go there.

Nice.

A new patient arrives in an ambulance—some boy who was street luging, hit a car, and got catapulted onto a big pile of tree trimmings. Oh great, STREET LUGERS. And as he’s unloaded from the ambulance, we see oh wow, EVEN BETTER, he’s COMPLETELY IMPALED ON A TREE. Okay, in re: the impaling. Dear Grey’s Anatomy writers/creators: I know that the train-derailment episode from last season with the two people impaled on the pole is one of your favorites. But we have to simmer down with the impaling. Impaling is over. Impaling was over in the Middle Ages.

Anyway, tree-kid’s panicked father is getting in the paramedics’ way as they’re taking his son in. Alex gets annoyed and, as the father gets physical with him, pushes the father roughly against the wall, giving him a bloody nose. Bailey witnesses this and is like OH HELL NO. She unloads on Alex that he WILL NOT get physical with another human being on her watch ever again, WILL NOT question her authority, and MOST CERTAINLY WILL NOT not defend his own girlfriend for killing a man. Ooh, great scene.

In the calmer pastures of the ever-popular SGH quasi-outdoor cafeteria, Mrs. Burke is gently but firmly grilling the shit out of Cristina. She reminds Cristina that Burke graduated first in his class at Tulane; Cristina counters that she graduated first at Stanford, nyah nyah nyah. Mrs. Burke promptly smacks her across the face with her bejeweled handbag. Actually, she asks Cristina what her future plans are, i.e., she’ll surely switch to a less time-consuming specialty like obstetrics once she’s married, right? Cristina nearly spits out her wheatgrass martini as Mrs. Burke continues on that Cristina is “no spring chicken” and that Burke is an obvious marital catch—the most brilliant thing she’s produced in her life. HAHA this woman is great.

At this moment Burke shows up to the rescue. His mother is most nonplussed that he’s up out of bed, but he insists that he wanted to stretch his legs and get some air. She sees right through this and, as soon as Burke is gone, turns to Cristina and says, “YOU did this.” HAHA. She then calls Cristina out for being selfish and says that she’ll never last in a relationship with someone as giving as Burke. OOH. Cristina is speechless with embarrassitude and nonplussment. (Yes, if you haven’t already guessed, the word of the week is NONPLUSSED.)

Impaled tree-boy is in the O.R. and has already lost one kidney. Seemingly half the Western world is watching from the gallery. Cristina keeps complaining about Burke’s mother and says that she plans to speak her mind next time the “sexist” Mrs. Burke picks apart her flaws. Meredith, off in Botoxic dreamland, says Cristina SHOULD just spit it out, go with her gut, follow her impulses. Oh great, IMPULSES. Nothing like a HEAVY-HANDED THEME. Cristina says philosophical Meredith sucks and she misses philandering-whore Meredith, who was much more fun and actually made recognizable facial expressions. Out of nowhere, Meredith blurts out that she’s decided on He-Shepherd as her knight in shining armor, etc. Finn is great and all, but he was in Batman and Robin, in FULL FETISH GEAR no less, and that’s just unforgivable.

The lung-cancer patient is fed up with preparing for surgery and says she’s leaving the hospital, survival odds be damned. She’s lived her entire life pent-up, repressed, stifling every impulse—OH GREAT, IMPULSES AGAIN—and she just wants to live every moment to the fullest, she may die but they will not take her FREEDOM, etc. The orchestral accompaniment soars.

Meredith goes home to check on Izzie, and there are muffins all over the goddamned house. The doorbell rings and it’s Finn, who has stopped by to bring food for Izzie—despite the fact that he didn’t even expect Meredith to be home. He also adopted three puppies, built a church, and donated both his kidneys to orphans on the way over from his office. He repeats his standard spiel—”Meredith. Take all the time you need. I’m a complete fucking doormat,” etc.—but then just when I think “Take A Chance On Me” is about to start playing he actually leans in and starts making out with her all hardcore OH YOU NAUGHTY BOY WONDER YOU. Anyway, this leaves Meredith in a tizzy, since she had been this close to letting him down easy.

At big gay Joe’s bar, Izzie shows up with muffins. By this point she’s made approximately forty-five thousand. Still in the trancelike state from her muffin-baking madness, she mutters in a monotone that Joe should “have a muffin I was running out of room I’m a good baker they’re good try them they’re really good they’ll help you,” etc. Joe calls security.

She-Shepherd is also at Joe’s bar, since there are literally no other places to drink in the entire Seattle metro area. She starts complaining about the slutty sex that slutty Meredith had with her slutty husband—a little ironic, coming from the current HIGH PRIESTESS OF ADULTERY OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST REGION. Anyway, She-Shepherd vents, Izzie leaves, and Joe goes and puts his head in an oven.

Cristina, still at the hospital, is annoyed that Mrs. Burke will not leave. Meredith whines that Finn is perfect and brought Izzie lunch and says she decided she’s gonna end it with He-Shepherd instead. Shockingly, Cristina and Meredith break away from their self-absorption just long enough to notice George flirting with a nurse. He still denies that he’s jealous over the Callie panties incident and says he’s just young and healthy. Not to mention GREAT IN BED, as Meredith can attest.

The no-impulse-control guy keeps asking Cristina whether she has a boyfriend and, if so, why she’s so angry-looking. Is she frigid? Cristina laments that Mrs. Burke called her selfish, and the patient agrees warmly that Cristina is indeed completely self-obsessed.

Before long, they have no-impulse-control-guy in one O.R., while another huge team of surgeons is still trying to extricate impaled-tree-limb kid in the other O.R. Both patients start bleeding, crashing, etc.—standard Grey’s Anatomy procedure to indicate that a commercial break is coming up.

After the break, Bailey is at Joe’s bar talking with the still-shitfaced She-Shepherd, who’s slurring her words gloriously and says her current life plan is to get really fat off of muffins until she figures out something else to do. She starts bawling and wonders aloud why such a wildly attractive woman as herself—a young Catherine Deneuve, one might even say—can’t make her marriage last.

The lung-cancer woman is at the bar too, Living Her Best Life® by pounding shot after shot in rapid succession. She sidles up next to Alex and buys him a drink. I realize now that this woman is the long-lost twin of Meredith Vieira. Love that hedgehog-faced charm!

“The more you know, the more you trust Bayer.”

George’s new nurse crush-object is also there, and he’s “impressing” her with his bar-games skills by repeatedly missing the dartboard and nearly killing her. Meredith exhorts him to get over the jealousy: Callis is hot—almost dirty sexy hot, no less—so George is just wasting his time throwing darts when he could just go home and get lucky with her. George practically runs out of the bar.

Samuel L. Jackson tries to sneak by BUT I CAUGHT HIM

Cristina then shows up, at which point Meredith prepares to flip a coin in order to decide between Finn and He-Shepherd. She flips the coin, but we don’t see how it comes up. Meredith says her choice is made, since she’s been inspired by the no-impulse-control patient’s approach to life. Cristina informs her that actually the no-impulse-control patient died, so she might consider taking advice from someone else. Meredith is most nonplussed.

Since misery loves company, impaled-tree-boy’s father is also drinking at the same bar. Bailey assures him that his son survived surgery and will be fine. The father says he should’ve done something to stop his son: even though kids will indeed be kids, it’s a parent’s job to control them, and he went soft at just the moment when his son needed him to be a stricter father. This clearly sets the wheels of Bailey’s brain in motion in re: the Izzie situation.

Lung cancer lady is talking about how she wished she’d slept around more but didn’t want to be labeled a tramp. She clearly is in heat. Alex’s MILFdar goes off and he perks up. The woman asks whether he’s single, and when he says yes, she informs him that she’s going to the bathroom and would like him to join her in about two minutes to fulfill the wish of a potentially dying woman. Great, now Alex does quasi-necrophilia on a charity basis. Anyway, a few seconds after the woman departs, Alex gets up and practically RUNS after her to the bathroom—where most likely he’ll promptly get whiskeydick.

Meredith, meanwhile, is still drinking. Finn shows up at the bar, and then about two seconds later He-Shepherd arrives as well. Meredith tells the gentlemen that the likes both of them and thinks she deserves the chance to consider her options. In short, she wants to try dating. She then leaves. He-Shepherd assures Finn that he’s not bowing out, and vice versa. I have one thing to say to this. MY ASS. This isn’t a Jane Austen novel, and I’m sorry but Meredith is NO GREAT PRIZE.

Oh yeah, shake that dinero-maker

At the hospital, Callie is dancing around in her panties and sunglasses in her little basement lair of sin. Webber walks by and surprises her, much to her embarrassment. He does understand why she’s chosen to live there—free rent, first dibs on the best overnight trauma cases—but by hospital rules he has to evict her. Suddenly, George shows up, sees Callie sitting on her bed in her naughty underwear talking to Webber, and of course gets jealous.

Back at the bar, Meredith Vieira comes out of the bathroom, buttoning up. Alex follows soon thereafter with a naughty smirk on his face. Hell, if you can score with an aging, terminal cancer patient, the world is your oyster! Bailey approaches him and starts to apologize about yelling at him earlier in the day—but he interrupts her and says she was right and he “shouldn’t be getting physical with patients.” OH REALLY.

Cristina stops by Burke’s room, and Mrs. Burke is still there. Cristina says she was just stopping by to see whether either of them needed anything before she went home. This blatant yet seemingly genuine ass-kissing prompts an approving glance from Mrs. Burke. And as Cristina leaves, Mr. Burke finally speaks—HE SPEAKS!!—and tells Cristina to “hang in there.”

On a bench outside the hospital, Callie accosts George and assures him that the bulletin-board panties were not indeed hers. She does, however, find his jealousy “insanely hot.” And finally, suitcase in tow, she informs him that she’s moving in with him since her lair of sin in the hospital is now officially closed for business.

Back at the house, Izzie is still baking muffins. I’m surprised Rebecca DeMornay from the homeless shelter hasn’t showed up. Anyway, it turns out the interns have brought BAILEY home with them to talk to Izzie. Bailey says that having a baby made her soft on the interns and caused her to look the other way when Izzie clearly was entering unethical ground with Denny. She therefore takes some of the blame for what Izzie did since she did nothing to stop it. Bailey says she wants Izzie back in the program and will talk to Webber about it. Finally, thank god, she tells Izzie that she has HAD IT WITH THESE MOTHERFUCKING MUFFINS IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING KITCHEN.

She’d be a natural for Children of the Corn: The Adult Years

And in the great scene of the night, He-Shepherd tracks down She-Shepherd at her hotel, where she’s inexplicably managed to shower, sober up, and then start drinking again, all in the last hour. Oh, and apparently she had time to SCREW MARK SLOAN AS WELL, since that’s who steps out of the bathroom just as He-Shepherd is starting to make nice and tell her it’s all his fault for ruining their marriage. OH HO HO HO. While She-Shepherd’s face remains frozen, He-Shepherd smirks, grabs her champagne, downs it, and leaves, saying he feels much better now.

Ooh, John Travolta LOVES this part

So what did we think? Apologies for the late recap—between TVgasm New York happy hour, bicoastal technical difficulties, and the onerous Talmudic demands of the High Holidays, it’s been a crazy week. Also, I’ll be on vacation the next two weeks with limited access to both internet and American television, so I’m please to report that everyone’s favorite columnist THE QWERTZ will be filling in on the next two recaps. ENJOY IT WHILE IT LASTS, BITCHES.