Juju Says What?

Well Grey’s Anatomy is officially on a roll. It’s so hot right now I’D BURN MY FINGER IF I TOUCHED IT. This week was great: Meredith is becoming more fun again, Cristina and Izzie had a hilarious run-in, and it was nice to see Dr. Webber featured. In other news, god damn was my recap from last week long. This week will be a little more streamlined so it doesn’t take as long to read as, say, the Scientology article in Rolling Stone.

Beginning her voiceover, Meredith says there’s a magic statue at her college campus and it’s a longstanding tradition for students to rub its nose for good luck. And OH HO, indeed there is—I myself rubbed dear old Warner Bentley’s nose many a time. Given the number of people who touch that damn thing I always figured it was the site where ebola started. Anyway, Meredith’s freshman-year roommate really believed the statue gave her good luck on tests, but that didn’t really work since she flunked out. But hey we all have superstitions: knock on wood, don’t step on sidewalk cracks, left nostril first when doing lines off the toilet seat… that kind of thing.Each of the doctors does a little good-luck ritual before surgery. She-Shepherd pins her wedding ring to her lapel; Burke cracks his neck; He-Shepherd repeats his little saying that it’s a “beautiful day to save lives”; Bailey does a little yoga pose that I am naming “Flavasana.” But today these rituals apparently are as effective as, say, the “rhythm method” of birth control, because not two minutes into the show and four patients are dead.

The interns discuss this disaster in the locker room. Izzie says the morgue guy told her that deaths come in threes or sevens, so they should expect an additional three before the day is out. Cristina calls horseshit on that. George, for his part, continues to make a show of avoiding Meredith, which frankly is getting really old. Before long, Bailey calls them all to the E.R. to await new patients.

In the hall, She-Shepherd is dispensing good luck—in the form of hot chocolate, rather than the more “adult” services one might have expected from the resident ADULTERESS—to the doctors and interns. She refers to these these good luck tokens via the West African term “juju,” injecting a much-needed note of ethnic and racial diversity to a show that was, until now, desperately lacking in that regard. She-Shepherd even gives one to Meredith, as a token of goodwill and shared sexual experiences. He-Shepherd notes his wife’s generosity and says he certainly isn’t planning on being that generous to Mark Sloan.

Meredith, the ungrateful little hussy, takes one sip of the cocoa-juju and throws it out. Burke, meanwhile, is freaking out because the hospital laundry has lost his good-luck African-flava-pattern surgical caps. Webber warns him that, superstition or not, there’s no way Burke is gonna delay surgeries just cause his Nelson Mandela collection is still in the wash.

As the interns wait around for patients, Cristina notes that it’s “dead quiet,” which prompts an immediate dubious-black-woman threat response from Dr. Bailey. Izzie says that declaring a hospital “quiet” is as bad as uttering the cursèd name “Macbeth” in a theater—but in a nod to her Twinkies-and-NASCAR upbringing she pronounces it “theAYter.” She would make a great Daisy Mae Scraggs whenever they cast the inevitable Li’l Abner remake.

Indeed, Cristina’s words prove bad luck, because about 3,000 ambulances pull up in the next second, along with a page from Izzie’s heartthrob Denny and a return of the surefire crowd pleaser, the patient vomiting blood. Cristina is assigned a man who was rear-ended—no, not like Clay Aiken rear-ended—and got a scalpful of broken glass when his head went through the windshield. The patient is counting something off with his fingers. Oh great, OCD. Indeed, he’s counting off the whoops of the ambulance siren and says they can’t take him into the hospital until the count reaches 33. Frankly, why waste the expense on this guy. “Oh yes, sir, the WAITING ROOM [morgue] IS RIGHT THIS WAY.”

Meredith’s patient has some chest and leg injuries and says she got struck by lightning. This patient is annoying, horoscope-obsessed, the love child of Andie MacDowell and Sarah Jessica Parker, and likely flying high on a cocktail of prescription drugs. Bailey notes that the woman shows none of the wounding or burn marks characteristic of a lightning strike. So the patient admits that she wasn’t exactly struck by lightning, but instead a tree near her got struck and then dropped a branch on her. Bailey is pissed because this bitch done wasted her time, so she crosses out the chart and starts over. The woman keeps talking about her “boyfriend” in a way that suggests there are probably multiple restraining orders against her.

Denny, meanwhile, is having problems problems problems—pain and haunted house sounds whenever he breathes. It might be a blood clot in his lungs, a complication from that surgery last week when they implanted the Lego motor that is now powering his heart.

Meredith and Cristina end up in the elevator together with their respective patients on gurneys. Meredith complains that she got “got hot-chocolated by a She-Shepherd.” OMGOMGOMG TVGASM RECAPS NOW AFFECT THE COURSE OF HIT SHOWS!! Well who knows, but that’s what I choose to believe. Anyway, I basically fell out of my chair, so I now have significant bruising from hitting the floor, so THANKS, ELLEN POMPEO. Anyway, Cristina is really up to her limit with this juju shit. But the crazy stalker patient chimes in and says Meredith is not obligated to honor She-Shepherd’s juju. Thanks sweetcheeks, but if I needed relationship advice I’d consult Liza Minnelli.

George’s new flame, Dr. Torres, sets the lightning-struck patient’s leg—apparently she is SGH’s designated, take-no-prisoners bonesetter. God knows what she’ll do to George. Speaking of, George approaches and asks whether she he can give her a hand. Dr. Torres says too late, he missed the boat. Oucho. Then Meredith walks in, trapping George in an awkwardness box between the two women. Dr. Torres notes that the bruises on the patient’s leg don’t look like they came from a tree branch. So the patient admits she wasn’t on the ground but was actually UP in the tree when the lightning struck and then she fell down. Jesus, could she revise her self-diagnosis ANY MORE? What’s next? Fecal impaction? HISTOPLASMOSIS?

Outside, Cristina tells Burke she’s sorry his patient died. He complains that the laundry lost his mdash;he knows it’s not the reason the guy died, but the caps are “a comfort thing” nonetheless. Along those same lines, Cristina mentions she’d be MUCH more comfortable if George and his clarinet-playing ass were out of the apartment, especially because then she and Burke could resume their nasty, SaranWrap-clad sex romps all over the living room. So Cristina admits to Burke she has one of his caps hidden in her possession and just maybe she’ll keep it hostage til he kicks George out. Burke doesn’t like ultimatums, so once she’s gone he enlists George to recover his lost flava, wherever it might be found. Suddenly this plot is sounding a lot like Austin Powers 2.

It turns out one of the patients who arrived earlier is an old friend of Dr. Webber. He WOULD associate with the coughing-up-blood set. I was gonna write that this woman is the love child of Mary Kay Place and Bette Midler, but fortunately I checked the cast list and realized that it IS Mary Kay Place, so phew, disaster averted. Anyway, she’s got all manner of bleeding in her digestive region. This scene turns very interesting when the patient asks how Webber’s been doing recently. He says Ellis Grey’s in a nursing home and he’s been visiting as often as he can—which prompts the woman to interrupt WTF he’s having what amounts to an emotional affair with the woman who drove him to ALCOHOLISM? Ooh so Webber was an alcoholic! And at the hands of Meredith’s mother, no less! (Also, I saw on a spoiler site that Webber is African-American—don’t tell anybody though.) Anyway, the woman is a former alcoholic herself and used to be Webber’s sponsor. Due to cirrhosis she needs a liver transplant. She scolds Webber for hiding his emotional dallying from his wife but says she’s proud he’s stayed sober for seventeen years.

In the locker room, Cristina catches thieving George going through her locker. And boy is there about a decade’s worth of old garbage in there: Red Bull, slutty underwear, handcuffs, rectal thermometers—but no flava cap. Cristina says George won’t find it in there; despite his offers to do her dishes or laundry for a month, she remains unmoved. He asks what she could possibly want, but she wants only for him to leave the apartment. The impasse continues.

Tree-climbing lightning lady needs her spleen out, because it’s so badly damaged it could pass for corned beef hash. Meredith notes to Bailey that she gets the sense the woman is a bit of a stalker. Wow! Is Meredith a psychic or what?!? Meredith also asks Bailey what she thinks about this “seven fatality” voodoo, and Bailey claims to have none of it. Clearly this is all lies.

Burke, meanwhile, is doing a procedure to see how bad Denny’s clot is. While this is going on, Denny tells a little anecdote about horses, which prompts Alex to chime in that he has an uncle who’s a rodeo cowboy. What? SHUT UP. Anyway, Burke says Denny’s clot is so big—Izzie gets real excited for a second—they can’t get it with a catheter and will have to open up his chest again.

SGH’s wacky staff psychologist/swami shows up to empathize with the OCD guy. The patient says his car accident happened because he couldn’t bring himself to pull through the intersection til he’d counted 333 clicks on the turn signal. You know what I’m thinking? Natural selection. Anyway, OCD has ruined this guy’s marriage and career—and his mom had it too, in fact it drove her to a little seppuku at age 38. The patient apologizes, saying he knows his habits are really annoying. Oh good, I thought it was JUST ME. Incidentally, throughout this whole episode, George is pressing his face to the window in an attempt to “intimidate” Cristina. Since when does “follow Cristina around” translate to “act all retarded and bloaty and regress into infancy”?

Webber delivers some bad news to his patient/ex-sponsor: to tide her over til a liver transplant he’ll have to put in some shunt in a tough procedure that has only about a 50% survival rate. The unexpected twist? She really doesn’t have any other choice. Ha ha! Never saw that one coming!

The stalker lady has heard about all the other surgical deaths and refuses to have her spleen out til the next day. Bailey cannot tolerate this shit and argues that “spleen trumps horoscope.” AWESOME, medical rock-paper-scissors is back! Gout-psoriasis-irritable bowel! Pleurisy-nail fungus-cretinism! It was fun two weeks ago and IT’S FUN NOW. Anyway, the patient, convinced she’ll die if the surgery goes ahead, asks Meredith to call her “boyfriend” so he can be there for the operation. Right honey, maybe with that restraining order in tow.

During a moment alone with Denny, Alex does his best to crush any hopes the poor man might have of surviving his operation. He says Izzie paints an optimstic picture of his prospects just because she likes him—but man to man, his odds are pretty poor. Further, he suggests that Denny pull away a bit from Izzie, since his obviously impending death will crush her and, well, she’s not really one to pull away. New low! Way to use fear of death as a tool, KHRUSHCHEV.

In the ever-popular SGH quasi-outdoor cafeteria, the interns trade stories of their annoying patients over lunch. George, in a remarkable feat of will, sits down next to his stalkee, Cristina, even though she’s seated next Meredith. While talking to Cristina, George inexplicably maintains a nice crosseyed, mentally-challenged look on his face, topped off by chewing with his mouth open. Though Cristina keeps moving over, George keeps following. Wow, I officially cannot stand him.

Cristina relates her whole saga of Burke’s hat juju and how she’s holding it hostage. Izzie stops by and asks whether the others believe the whole “curse of the seven deaths” thing. She tries to play down her worry about Denny, but it’s unconvincing. George continues to be weird and gross during the whole scene, clearly intent on showing Meredith what she’s “missing out on.”

Later, as Cristina’s prepping the OCD guy for surgery, he keeps asking whether the O.R. is really “cleancleanclean,” since he is still really hung up on that whole sets-of-three thing. I can only imagine this guy’s DVD collection. Thirty copies of Tora! Tora! Tora! Cristina judges the guy harshly, especially when he keeps turning the light switch on and off. He notices this and says that deep down he and she are cut from the same cloth—overachievers, competitive, straight A’s in college, tendency toward raunch—and that’s why she can’t stand him. She acquiesces on the light switch but clearly wouldn’t mind if this guy dieddieddied soonsoonsoon.

Izzie asks worriedly how Denny’s feeling as they wheel him into the O.R., but he remains emotionally distant, apparently having taken Alex’s advice. He mentions he’s written a will and says Izzie has to be realistic about his chances. Despite her Christian pleas, he insists on calling her Dr. Stevens.

George, apparently now a sex offender, follows Cristina into the women’s restroom. He’s figured out that she probably has the cap somewhere on her person, most likely down near her MOST HOLY OF HOLIES, so he tackles her in front of the sink. Just as George has his hand all the way down Cristina’s shirt and is mounting her from behind, Dr. Torres walks out of the stall and asks whether he’s aware this is the ladies’ room. He responds with a sheepish “yes ma’am,” and she leaves. Cristina notes that, dude, he called her ma’am, there’s no way she’s sleeping with him now. HA George sucks.

When Izzie learns that Cristina’s holding Burke’s surgical cap hostage, she freaks out because she wants Burke to have every possible juju on his side while he’s prying Denny’s ribcage open. So Izzie tracks down Cristina, literally pulls her aside into a room, and commands that THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS HER to give Burke the cap. Cristina thinks this is all a joke and says Burke doesn’t need damn hat. After all he’s Isaiah Washington. The argument escalates until Izzie resorts to physical threats, saying “I grew up in a trailer park and I am not above kicking your little pampered Beverly Hills ass… AND I DO MEAN PHYSICALLY KICKING YOUR ASS.” This made me laugh out loud, HEARTILY.

So Cristina surrenders and gives the cap to Burke. But she insists he doesn’t need it—the reason she kept it, after all, was to remind herself that she wants to be a competent surgeon like Burke, who doesn’t need luck or juju or serendipity or MAGIC 8 BALLS to get through an operation. He admits she’s right—but puts the cap back on as soon as she’s gone.

Meredith is still trying to convince her stalker patient to go for the surgery. She adds that she called the patient’s “boyfriend” and he said he actually hasn’t been her boyfriend in a while. Ah, such tact. At the other end of the tact spectrum, Izzie asks Alex what the hell he said to Denny to make the poor guy think he’s dying. Hmm, Izzie, maybe the DICK CHENEY VALUE PACK OF OPEN-HEART SURGERIES he seems to need has something to do with it. Alex says as much, which prompts Izzie to break up with him on the spot and declare that Denny, even in corpse form, is far more man than he. Burke catches the end of this spat as he walks in and says neither of them can scrub in, because whatever hocus-pocus is going on between them, he doesn’t need it in their O.R. He won’t even let them watch from the gallery: he wants their bad energy as far away as possible. Oh GREAT here he goes with the energy shit again.

As the surgeons start their various surgeries, they all whip out their superstitious rituals once again, with the exception of Dr. Webber. Ooh, Webber in action! Exciting exciting. Meredith interrupts Bailey to tell say that lightning stalker spleen lady has started bleeding out. But the patient STILL refuse to consent to an operation. So Meredith tells the blatant falsehood that the patient’s “boyfriend” called and wants them to operate. Bailey declares a Code Blue. What’s that, the code for LIES?

Out by the board, Izzie waits nervously to hear some results, especially worried because a couple nurses mention that patients are dying left and right. In front of Izzie, Alex bets a nurse $20 that it’s Denny who bites it. Damn, when they lay on the Alex-as-asshole stuff they really lay it on thick. We learn that the stalker girl died. Call me callous, but THANK GOD. Then Webber walks out of the O.R. with a horrified look on his face that makes us think Mary Kay Place is dead body #6. Actually, Webber announces she made it through—we learn that the OCD patient died instead. NICE.

In Burke’s O.R., things go poorly, as Denny’s heart once again proves weak of constitution. Afterward, we see Izzie crying against a wall… because Denny is ALIVE!!! Ooh they’re being tricky this week. Denny asks why she’s crying. She responds she just cannot fall for a patient. Asshole coworkers, sure, but a patient just seems like a bad idea. Denny laughs and says well good luck with all that, which prompts Izzie to plant a big wet sloppy one on Denny, breathing tube and all.

George walks into the locker room and once again makes a show of avoiding Meredith. Bad-mood Alex can’t take this anymore and says George is a sad, whiny excuse for a man. Fine, he got laid and it went badly—a real man would move on and not mope around so much. Alex can’t stand it and says if it wouldn’t get him thrown out of the program he’d smash George’s head right into the locker. I hope you’ve been lifting weights Alex because that head is HUGE.

This incident apparently inspires George to grow some cojones at long last. He approaches Dr. Torres to apologize for not calling, but she gives him a taste of his own medicine and flat-out ignores him. Undeterred, he whips out his cellphone and calls her right then, from just a few feet away. When she answers, George finally comes out with the line we’ve all been waiting to hear: “Callie. Congratulations. You’re still in the running towards becoming America’s Next Top Model.” Actually, he says hi, this is George, he shoulda called sooner, sorry, cause he loves to watch her set bones and he spends only a few short minutes a day in the women’s restroom and he really likes her and he’d love to have her set his own bone sometime, would she be into that? From the look on Dr. Torres’s face, that’s a yes.

As everyone leaves the hospital, Burke gives his lucky surgical cap back to Cristina. She-Shepherd keeps handing out the goddamn cocoa-juju and tells Meredith she’s sorry to hear about her patient. Damn she is desperate for goodwill. Meredith takes a sip but throws it out again as soon as She-Shepherd is gone.

There have been a lot of good episodies recently, but I think I liked this one the best. The confrontation between Izzie and Cristina was a riot, and it was a nice episode for Webber also. And all the annoying patients died! What more can you ask for. The thing I don’t get—and this’ll probably prompt all manner of hate mail—is how Izzie got so into Denny. I mean LADY he’s charming and all but he just lies there in the bed. It just seems a little unrealistic to me. Also, I didn’t like how George was acting like a psycho toddler all episode and then at the very end he’s suddenly all sympathetic and endearing. Nonetheless, I thought this was a great hour of television. Each of the doctors does a little good-luck ritual before surgery. She-Shepherd pins her wedding ring to her lapel; Burke cracks his neck; He-Shepherd repeats his little saying that it’s a “beautiful day to save lives”; Bailey does a little yoga pose that I am naming “Flavasana.” But today these rituals apparently are as effective as, say, the “rhythm method” of birth control, because not two minutes into the show and four patients are dead.

The interns discuss this disaster in the locker room. Izzie says the morgue guy told her that deaths come in threes or sevens, so they should expect an additional three before the day is out. Cristina calls horseshit on that. George, for his part, continues to make a show of avoiding Meredith, which frankly is getting really old. Before long, Bailey calls them all to the E.R. to await new patients.

In the hall, She-Shepherd is dispensing good luck—in the form of hot chocolate, rather than the more “adult” services one might have expected from the resident ADULTERESS—to the doctors and interns. She refers to these these good luck tokens via the West African term “juju,” injecting a much-needed note of ethnic and racial diversity to a show that was, until now, desperately lacking in that regard. She-Shepherd even gives one to Meredith, as a token of goodwill and shared sexual experiences. He-Shepherd notes his wife’s generosity and says he certainly isn’t planning on being that generous to Mark Sloan.

Meredith, the ungrateful little hussy, takes one sip of the cocoa-juju and throws it out. Burke, meanwhile, is freaking out because the hospital laundry has lost his good-luck African-flava-pattern surgical caps. Webber warns him that, superstition or not, there’s no way Burke is gonna delay surgeries just cause his Nelson Mandela collection is still in the wash.

As the interns wait around for patients, Cristina notes that it’s “dead quiet,” which prompts an immediate dubious-black-woman threat response from Dr. Bailey. Izzie says that declaring a hospital “quiet” is as bad as uttering the cursèd name “Macbeth” in a theater—but in a nod to her Twinkies-and-NASCAR upbringing she pronounces it “theAYter.” She would make a great Daisy Mae Scraggs whenever they cast the inevitable Li’l Abner remake.

Indeed, Cristina’s words prove bad luck, because about 3,000 ambulances pull up in the next second, along with a page from Izzie’s heartthrob Denny and a return of the surefire crowd pleaser, the patient vomiting blood. Cristina is assigned a man who was rear-ended—no, not like Clay Aiken rear-ended—and got a scalpful of broken glass when his head went through the windshield. The patient is counting something off with his fingers. Oh great, OCD. Indeed, he’s counting off the whoops of the ambulance siren and says they can’t take him into the hospital until the count reaches 33. Frankly, why waste the expense on this guy. “Oh yes, sir, the WAITING ROOM [morgue] IS RIGHT THIS WAY.”

Meredith’s patient has some chest and leg injuries and says she got struck by lightning. This patient is annoying, horoscope-obsessed, the love child of Andie MacDowell and Sarah Jessica Parker, and likely flying high on a cocktail of prescription drugs. Bailey notes that the woman shows none of the wounding or burn marks characteristic of a lightning strike. So the patient admits that she wasn’t exactly struck by lightning, but instead a tree near her got struck and then dropped a branch on her. Bailey is pissed because this bitch done wasted her time, so she crosses out the chart and starts over. The woman keeps talking about her “boyfriend” in a way that suggests there are probably multiple restraining orders against her.

Denny, meanwhile, is having problems problems problems—pain and haunted house sounds whenever he breathes. It might be a blood clot in his lungs, a complication from that surgery last week when they implanted the Lego motor that is now powering his heart.

Meredith and Cristina end up in the elevator together with their respective patients on gurneys. Meredith complains that she got “got hot-chocolated by a She-Shepherd.” OMGOMGOMG TVGASM RECAPS NOW AFFECT THE COURSE OF HIT SHOWS!! Well who knows, but that’s what I choose to believe. Anyway, I basically fell out of my chair, so I now have significant bruising from hitting the floor, so THANKS, ELLEN POMPEO. Anyway, Cristina is really up to her limit with this juju shit. But the crazy stalker patient chimes in and says Meredith is not obligated to honor She-Shepherd’s juju. Thanks sweetcheeks, but if I needed relationship advice I’d consult Liza Minnelli.

George’s new flame, Dr. Torres, sets the lightning-struck patient’s leg—apparently she is SGH’s designated, take-no-prisoners bonesetter. God knows what she’ll do to George. Speaking of, George approaches and asks whether she he can give her a hand. Dr. Torres says too late, he missed the boat. Oucho. Then Meredith walks in, trapping George in an awkwardness box between the two women. Dr. Torres notes that the bruises on the patient’s leg don’t look like they came from a tree branch. So the patient admits she wasn’t on the ground but was actually UP in the tree when the lightning struck and then she fell down. Jesus, could she revise her self-diagnosis ANY MORE? What’s next? Fecal impaction? HISTOPLASMOSIS?

Outside, Cristina tells Burke she’s sorry his patient died. He complains that the laundry lost his mdash;he knows it’s not the reason the guy died, but the caps are “a comfort thing” nonetheless. Along those same lines, Cristina mentions she’d be MUCH more comfortable if George and his clarinet-playing ass were out of the apartment, especially because then she and Burke could resume their nasty, SaranWrap-clad sex romps all over the living room. So Cristina admits to Burke she has one of his caps hidden in her possession and just maybe she’ll keep it hostage til he kicks George out. Burke doesn’t like ultimatums, so once she’s gone he enlists George to recover his lost flava, wherever it might be found. Suddenly this plot is sounding a lot like Austin Powers 2.

It turns out one of the patients who arrived earlier is an old friend of Dr. Webber. He WOULD associate with the coughing-up-blood set. I was gonna write that this woman is the love child of Mary Kay Place and Bette Midler, but fortunately I checked the cast list and realized that it IS Mary Kay Place, so phew, disaster averted. Anyway, she’s got all manner of bleeding in her digestive region. This scene turns very interesting when the patient asks how Webber’s been doing recently. He says Ellis Grey’s in a nursing home and he’s been visiting as often as he can—which prompts the woman to interrupt WTF he’s having what amounts to an emotional affair with the woman who drove him to ALCOHOLISM? Ooh so Webber was an alcoholic! And at the hands of Meredith’s mother, no less! (Also, I saw on a spoiler site that Webber is African-American—don’t tell anybody though.) Anyway, the woman is a former alcoholic herself and used to be Webber’s sponsor. Due to cirrhosis she needs a liver transplant. She scolds Webber for hiding his emotional dallying from his wife but says she’s proud he’s stayed sober for seventeen years.

In the locker room, Cristina catches thieving George going through her locker. And boy is there about a decade’s worth of old garbage in there: Red Bull, slutty underwear, handcuffs, rectal thermometers—but no flava cap. Cristina says George won’t find it in there; despite his offers to do her dishes or laundry for a month, she remains unmoved. He asks what she could possibly want, but she wants only for him to leave the apartment. The impasse continues.

Tree-climbing lightning lady needs her spleen out, because it’s so badly damaged it could pass for corned beef hash. Meredith notes to Bailey that she gets the sense the woman is a bit of a stalker. Wow! Is Meredith a psychic or what?!? Meredith also asks Bailey what she thinks about this “seven fatality” voodoo, and Bailey claims to have none of it. Clearly this is all lies.

Burke, meanwhile, is doing a procedure to see how bad Denny’s clot is. While this is going on, Denny tells a little anecdote about horses, which prompts Alex to chime in that he has an uncle who’s a rodeo cowboy. What? SHUT UP. Anyway, Burke says Denny’s clot is so big—Izzie gets real excited for a second—they can’t get it with a catheter and will have to open up his chest again.

SGH’s wacky staff psychologist/swami shows up to empathize with the OCD guy. The patient says his car accident happened because he couldn’t bring himself to pull through the intersection til he’d counted 333 clicks on the turn signal. You know what I’m thinking? Natural selection. Anyway, OCD has ruined this guy’s marriage and career—and his mom had it too, in fact it drove her to a little seppuku at age 38. The patient apologizes, saying he knows his habits are really annoying. Oh good, I thought it was JUST ME. Incidentally, throughout this whole episode, George is pressing his face to the window in an attempt to “intimidate” Cristina. Since when does “follow Cristina around” translate to “act all retarded and bloaty and regress into infancy”?

Webber delivers some bad news to his patient/ex-sponsor: to tide her over til a liver transplant he’ll have to put in some shunt in a tough procedure that has only about a 50% survival rate. The unexpected twist? She really doesn’t have any other choice. Ha ha! Never saw that one coming!

The stalker lady has heard about all the other surgical deaths and refuses to have her spleen out til the next day. Bailey cannot tolerate this shit and argues that “spleen trumps horoscope.” AWESOME, medical rock-paper-scissors is back! Gout-psoriasis-irritable bowel! Pleurisy-nail fungus-cretinism! It was fun two weeks ago and IT’S FUN NOW. Anyway, the patient, convinced she’ll die if the surgery goes ahead, asks Meredith to call her “boyfriend” so he can be there for the operation. Right honey, maybe with that restraining order in tow.

During a moment alone with Denny, Alex does his best to crush any hopes the poor man might have of surviving his operation. He says Izzie paints an optimstic picture of his prospects just because she likes him—but man to man, his odds are pretty poor. Further, he suggests that Denny pull away a bit from Izzie, since his obviously impending death will crush her and, well, she’s not really one to pull away. New low! Way to use fear of death as a tool, KHRUSHCHEV.

In the ever-popular SGH quasi-outdoor cafeteria, the interns trade stories of their annoying patients over lunch. George, in a remarkable feat of will, sits down next to his stalkee, Cristina, even though she’s seated next Meredith. While talking to Cristina, George inexplicably maintains a nice crosseyed, mentally-challenged look on his face, topped off by chewing with his mouth open. Though Cristina keeps moving over, George keeps following. Wow, I officially cannot stand him.

Cristina relates her whole saga of Burke’s hat juju and how she’s holding it hostage. Izzie stops by and asks whether the others believe the whole “curse of the seven deaths” thing. She tries to play down her worry about Denny, but it’s unconvincing. George continues to be weird and gross during the whole scene, clearly intent on showing Meredith what she’s “missing out on.”

Later, as Cristina’s prepping the OCD guy for surgery, he keeps asking whether the O.R. is really “cleancleanclean,” since he is still really hung up on that whole sets-of-three thing. I can only imagine this guy’s DVD collection. Thirty copies of Tora! Tora! Tora! Cristina judges the guy harshly, especially when he keeps turning the light switch on and off. He notices this and says that deep down he and she are cut from the same cloth—overachievers, competitive, straight A’s in college, tendency toward raunch—and that’s why she can’t stand him. She acquiesces on the light switch but clearly wouldn’t mind if this guy dieddieddied soonsoonsoon.

Izzie asks worriedly how Denny’s feeling as they wheel him into the O.R., but he remains emotionally distant, apparently having taken Alex’s advice. He mentions he’s written a will and says Izzie has to be realistic about his chances. Despite her Christian pleas, he insists on calling her Dr. Stevens.

George, apparently now a sex offender, follows Cristina into the women’s restroom. He’s figured out that she probably has the cap somewhere on her person, most likely down near her MOST HOLY OF HOLIES, so he tackles her in front of the sink. Just as George has his hand all the way down Cristina’s shirt and is mounting her from behind, Dr. Torres walks out of the stall and asks whether he’s aware this is the ladies’ room. He responds with a sheepish “yes ma’am,” and she leaves. Cristina notes that, dude, he called her ma’am, there’s no way she’s sleeping with him now. HA George sucks.

When Izzie learns that Cristina’s holding Burke’s surgical cap hostage, she freaks out because she wants Burke to have every possible juju on his side while he’s prying Denny’s ribcage open. So Izzie tracks down Cristina, literally pulls her aside into a room, and commands that THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS HER to give Burke the cap. Cristina thinks this is all a joke and says Burke doesn’t need damn hat. After all he’s Isaiah Washington. The argument escalates until Izzie resorts to physical threats, saying “I grew up in a trailer park and I am not above kicking your little pampered Beverly Hills ass… AND I DO MEAN PHYSICALLY KICKING YOUR ASS.” This made me laugh out loud, HEARTILY.

So Cristina surrenders and gives the cap to Burke. But she insists he doesn’t need it—the reason she kept it, after all, was to remind herself that she wants to be a competent surgeon like Burke, who doesn’t need luck or juju or serendipity or MAGIC 8 BALLS to get through an operation. He admits she’s right—but puts the cap back on as soon as she’s gone.

Meredith is still trying to convince her stalker patient to go for the surgery. She adds that she called the patient’s “boyfriend” and he said he actually hasn’t been her boyfriend in a while. Ah, such tact. At the other end of the tact spectrum, Izzie asks Alex what the hell he said to Denny to make the poor guy think he’s dying. Hmm, Izzie, maybe the DICK CHENEY VALUE PACK OF OPEN-HEART SURGERIES he seems to need has something to do with it. Alex says as much, which prompts Izzie to break up with him on the spot and declare that Denny, even in corpse form, is far more man than he. Burke catches the end of this spat as he walks in and says neither of them can scrub in, because whatever hocus-pocus is going on between them, he doesn’t need it in their O.R. He won’t even let them watch from the gallery: he wants their bad energy as far away as possible. Oh GREAT here he goes with the energy shit again.

As the surgeons start their various surgeries, they all whip out their superstitious rituals once again, with the exception of Dr. Webber. Ooh, Webber in action! Exciting exciting. Meredith interrupts Bailey to tell say that lightning stalker spleen lady has started bleeding out. But the patient STILL refuse to consent to an operation. So Meredith tells the blatant falsehood that the patient’s “boyfriend” called and wants them to operate. Bailey declares a Code Blue. What’s that, the code for LIES?

Out by the board, Izzie waits nervously to hear some results, especially worried because a couple nurses mention that patients are dying left and right. In front of Izzie, Alex bets a nurse $20 that it’s Denny who bites it. Damn, when they lay on the Alex-as-asshole stuff they really lay it on thick. We learn that the stalker girl died. Call me callous, but THANK GOD. Then Webber walks out of the O.R. with a horrified look on his face that makes us think Mary Kay Place is dead body #6. Actually, Webber announces she made it through—we learn that the OCD patient died instead. NICE.

In Burke’s O.R., things go poorly, as Denny’s heart once again proves weak of constitution. Afterward, we see Izzie crying against a wall… because Denny is ALIVE!!! Ooh they’re being tricky this week. Denny asks why she’s crying. She responds she just cannot fall for a patient. Asshole coworkers, sure, but a patient just seems like a bad idea. Denny laughs and says well good luck with all that, which prompts Izzie to plant a big wet sloppy one on Denny, breathing tube and all.

George walks into the locker room and once again makes a show of avoiding Meredith. Bad-mood Alex can’t take this anymore and says George is a sad, whiny excuse for a man. Fine, he got laid and it went badly—a real man would move on and not mope around so much. Alex can’t stand it and says if it wouldn’t get him thrown out of the program he’d smash George’s head right into the locker. I hope you’ve been lifting weights Alex because that head is HUGE.

This incident apparently inspires George to grow some cojones at long last. He approaches Dr. Torres to apologize for not calling, but she gives him a taste of his own medicine and flat-out ignores him. Undeterred, he whips out his cellphone and calls her right then, from just a few feet away. When she answers, George finally comes out with the line we’ve all been waiting to hear: “Callie. Congratulations. You’re still in the running towards becoming America’s Next Top Model.” Actually, he says hi, this is George, he shoulda called sooner, sorry, cause he loves to watch her set bones and he spends only a few short minutes a day in the women’s restroom and he really likes her and he’d love to have her set his own bone sometime, would she be into that? From the look on Dr. Torres’s face, that’s a yes.

As everyone leaves the hospital, Burke gives his lucky surgical cap back to Cristina. She-Shepherd keeps handing out the goddamn cocoa-juju and tells Meredith she’s sorry to hear about her patient. Damn she is desperate for goodwill. Meredith takes a sip but throws it out again as soon as She-Shepherd is gone.

There have been a lot of good episodies recently, but I think I liked this one the best. The confrontation between Izzie and Cristina was a riot, and it was a nice episode for Webber also. And all the annoying patients died! What more can you ask for. The thing I don’t get—and this’ll probably prompt all manner of hate mail—is how Izzie got so into Denny. I mean LADY he’s charming and all but he just lies there in the bed. It just seems a little unrealistic to me. Also, I didn’t like how George was acting like a psycho toddler all episode and then at the very end he’s suddenly all sympathetic and endearing. Nonetheless, I thought this was a great hour of television.