Ham! Eggs! HUMPTY!!

So, how about that Rick Santorum? I mean, uh, how about that Grey’s Anatomy? Sorry about the late recap, folks—but it’ll be worth it because I threw in a bunch of ELECTION HUMOUR.

Meredith opens by gracing our eardrums with some throaty talk about commitment. Apparently, if you’re a surgeon, when you’re in the O.R. and you whip out the scalpel and make the first cut into a patient, you’re committed to finishing what you started. Hey, NO SHIT.Cristina, it seems, now handles literally all of Burke’s affairs. She’s running around like a little fascist, dominating the surgical board, scheduling procedures, and demanding residents bring her coffee, all to the other interns’ disbelief. Meredith defends her, saying that she’s just helping out Burke. But when Cristina picks up the marker and starts writing on the surgical board herself, they realize she really is taking control like goddamn Nancy Pelosi. Alex jokes that if sleeping with Burke gives Cristina this kind of authority, maybe he should try sleeping with Burke too. Ooh! Maybe you could do a threeway with Ted Haggard!

“I’m important!”

In the locker room, Cristina remains distant from the other interns and even more uptight than usual. She declines a happy hour invitation because she has to study for Burke’s upcoming surgeries. Actually, she probably just realized at last that the interns go to THE SAME FUCKING BAR EVERY TIME. In the hall, George approaches Callie and pleads with her to talk to him. She bellows briefly and then thunders off.

At the rustic mountain trailer, Dr. Shepherd steps out of the shower to discover that some woman named Nancy has barged in unannounced. This scares the crap out of him, and just as he’s recovering, The Pomp comes in as well. Apparently women just don’t knock anymore. Anyway, Meredith is hurt, oh so hurt, etc., and leaves before Shepherd has time to explain. “That bitch Nancy” finds this amusing and guesses correctly that Meredith is “the slutty intern” she’s heard about. Who is this Nancy and why does she suck so much?

“I’m naked!”

In the elevator at SGH, Izzie babbles endlessly that she’s feeling so great about her first day back at work. Great. Great! SHUT UP. After she leaves to talk to HR, George and Meredith stop the elevator and play some bizarre confessional role-playing game in which George impersonates Cristina and Meredith impersonates Izzie. It’s annoying as shit. Especially when George thinks it’s McFunny to McImpersonate McCristina by McInserting McMc in McFront of every McGoddamn word he says. See! NOT FUNNY. Anyway, they whine mutually about romance and vow never to date again. No great loss to society there.

Dr. Burke meets his first patient for the day—a guy with a heart tumor who’s been told he needs a “cardiac autotransplantation.” Cristina, practically sweating glee out of her pores, explains helpfully that this so-called “Humpty Dumpty surgery” involves removing the guy’s heart, cutting it open, scraping out the tumor, then stitching up the heart and putting it back in again. Burke remains cautious, as the surgery is “risky”—wow, I never would’ve guessed—but Cristina keeps interrupting, saying the guy is a perfect candidate. In fact, she’s already scheduled the surgery for this afternoon! Okay, this ambitious-Cristina thing is starting to turn her into a bit of a caricature. DIAL IT DOWN A NOTCH PLEASE.

Over in Webber’s office, the chief informs Bailey that Izzie’s being placed back under her authority. Bailey would rather see Izzie assigned to a different resident, but Webber stands firm, saying that some people have concerns about Bailey’s judgment post-Denny. Bailey is stunned by this revelation—admittedly, it’s shocking, given that there wasn’t a GIANT FULL-AUDITORIUM MEETING ABOUT DENNY last week or anything—but Webber says Bailey will never put those concerns to rest unless she takes responsibility for Izzie.

A young pregnant woman arrives in an ambulance, but Dr. Montgomery is baffled because the woman’s not due for a few weeks and nothing looks emergency-worthy. BUT OH HO HO. Turns out the woman has two uteruses. Whaddya think of that, MICHELLE MALKIN?!??

Bailey finally meets with a very nervous Izzie. Izzie understands that she has to undergo counseling, extra volunteer work, forcible straightjacketing, and so on, but she’s just thankful to be back. Bailey, though, has some extra rules. Izzie can only observe: she doesn’t get to speak to patients, be alone with patients, perform procedures, go near the O.R., or even play with her hand puppets without hospital committee approval. So has have to shadow a different doctor every day til she re-earns trust. Her first shadowee? THE POMP.

Right afterward, Meredith and Izzie literally run into Dr. Shepherd. The aforementioned “Nancy” is there too, and she’s completely snotty and horrible. So it’s not much surprise that she turns out to be SHEPHERD’S SISTER. Anyway Sister-Shepherd makes some condescending comments about Meredith and Addison, prompting Izzie to note that “McDreamy’s sister is McBitchy.” Haha!! I just LOVE that McHumor.

“I’m awful!”

Burke is royally pissed at Cristina for accepting this Humpty-Dumpty surgery, since the surgery would be impossibly risky in light of his gimpy hand. He asks Cristina whether she’s “up on the Humpty”—bravo, screenwriters—but she claims she’s done all her research. At this point, Bailey comes up and asks Burke whether it’s true that other doctors are questioning her judgment. He says people just like scandal and gossip, but his response is distant and distracted and not very comforting.

Meredith’s first patient is a young woman—seemingly the lovechild of Meredith Vieira and Punky Brewster—who burnt her hand while studying for the bar exam. But this girl is nervous and overexplaining the injury, which sets off Izzie’s crazybitchdar. Sister-Shepherd, meanwhile, tells Shepherd she came to Seattle as an intervention, cause one of their other sisters heard about the incident of Meredith’s panties up on the bulletin board. He’s not in the mood to fill her in on his scandals and suggests she go back to the East Coast to tend to her OB-GYN patients. Great, so his ex-wife and sister are vag-lovers. Vaginas for everybody!

Speaking of, George LOVES the two-uterus patient. Her fiancé tells some anecdote about how the first time he saw this girl he “knew she was ham.” You know, cause when you have a plate of ham and eggs, the chicken merely contributed some embryos, whereas the pig’s OWN FLESH is right there on the plate—i.e., the pig decided to COMMIT. Great story! Oh hey, here’s another great story: Isaiah Washington walks into a bar with Barney Frank and George Allen…

“We’re waspy!”

Dr. Sloan gives Alex a bunch of menial tasks, like changing his license at the DMV and restocking his cuticle cream. Vajayjayjayjay girl’s fiancé, meanwhile, is calming her kicking unborn baby by recounting Washington Redskins glory tales. Yep, that Jack Kent Cooke humor never fails to amuse. Observing this, Alex says that indeed he read a couple articles about how voice patterns can calm a baby.

In our domestic-drama twist of the evening, Dr. Montgomery discovers that double-uterus-girl’s babies were conceived six weeks apart. Apparently the couple broke up when the fiancé said he wanted to get married, so the girl went and dropped her drawers for some other guy. Oops! She apologizes profusely, but the fiancé, upset that his girl may in fact not be the finest quality ham, walks out.

“I’m acting!”

Out in the hall, Dr. Webber is trying and failing to sew a button onto his last clean shirt. He asks Bailey and Montgomery to do it for him since, you know, they have vaginas. Bailey is offended, saying she has SURGICAL skills and NO OTHER SKILLS WHATSOEVER.

Dr. Sloan examines bar-exam-girl’s hand, and her burn is way deeper than it should be for a mere accident. When Sloan says they’ll have her fixed up in time to take her exam, the girl freaks out. Izzie notices this—one would hope so, since the girl is an even more obvious liar than Dick Cheney—but Meredith, off in selfabsorptionland, doesn’t notice a thing. When Izzie mentions what she saw, Meredith knocks her down and says Izzie’s job is just to observe, not talk. But Izzie persists, reminding Meredith that their patient’s health is at risk. Meredith replies kindly that it’s HER patient, not their patient. I can’t believe Izzie doesn’t smack the bitch.

When Bailey passes by the surgery board and sees that Burke has a Humpty-Dumpty procedure scheduled, she quickly writes her name in as the resident on the surgery because she’s never seen that procedure firsthand. Cristina basically shits her pants, since the last thing she and Burke need in the O.R. is Bailey watching them like a hawk. George, meanwhile, tries to talk to Callie again by way of the failsafe ham/chicken anecdote. This fails to impress our favorite busty chicana, who thinks George is calling her a pig. She walks away.

“I’m smoldering!”

Over lunchtime, the interns hide in a patient’s room—some old guy who just sleeps all the time and allows them peace and quiet. Cristina, studying intently, gets pissed anytime Izzie or anyone else tries to strike up conversation. She gets exasperated, leaves the room, and then runs into the Humpty-Dumpty patient’s wife, which stresses her out even more. In a panic, she runs over to the surgical board and erases Bailey’s name from it. OOH.

Uterus² girl, meanwhile, starts hyperventilating. (Seriously, it’s hard to get through a day on Grey’s Anatomy without some good hyperventilation.) She’s freaking out about her fiancé’s departure and is overacting mightily. At this point I realize she looks suspiciously like Ruthie from Real World: Hawaii. Cheers!

At lunch, Sister-Shepherd gives Shepherd a hard time about Meredith. He gets defensive, saying Meredith is wonderful and smart and, best of all, has curves like a racetrack. Sister-Shepherd exhorts him to forgive Sloan: the man is just a cad, and practically every woman she knows has slept with him, UP TO AND INCLUDING BARBARA MIKULSKI.

Meredith asks Cristina if she’s mad at her or something, since she’s been such a clammed-up bitch recently. Cristina says she has bigger things in her life right now and storms off yet again. At this point, Bailey walks by the surgical board and sees that her name has been erased. Of course she thinks that Burke did it because of doubts about her judgment post-Denny. This hits her very hard.

Doublemint uterus girl’s fiancé approaches George, who informs him that they’re about to deliver one of her babies by C-section. Of course the first thing the guy asks is whether the baby being deilvered is his legitimate child or his fiancée’s ILLEGITIMATE BASTARD CHILD. George rolls his eyes and exhorts the guy to be ham. Not eggs! This ham/eggs thing really is retarded. Dr. Seuss covered it fifty years ago. It’s done.

Dr. Sloan catches Alex doing research on uterus.com, prompting all sorts of mockery about how Alex claims to want a career in plastic surgery but instead is an OB-GYN at heart. Alex says he’s sick of doing menial tasks for Sloan, but Sloan basically admits that Alex needs to kiss up if he wants any career favors. Boooooo Sloan!

At this point, some poor nurse delivers what must be the worst-delivered line ever in this series, telling some other nurse named Tyler that “Addison Montgomery needs two units of B-postive blood in L&D. Stat!” I wish I had a video clip, but if you still have this episode on TiVo, go back and savor it. Great screenwriting and great delivery are a powerful combination indeed.

Meredith assures bar-exam-burn-girl that she won’t need skin grafts and can thus take her exam. The young woman asks how severe the burns would need to be in order to qualify for skin grafts. Meredith finally notices that this girl is probably, like, PRESIDENT OF HER LOCAL SELF-MUTILATION CLUB, and asks some more probing questions about how the girl burned herself in the first place. Finally unable to resist, Izzie butts in and asks point-blank whether the girl burned her hand on purpose. She says it’s okay if she did—after all, all of us get JUST A LITTLE CRAZY from time to time—and the girl finally fesses up. She just can’t face the prospect of failing the exam for a fifth time.

We then move to the inevitable scene in which two dramatic surgeries are going on at the same time and we cut back and forth between them. Dr. Montgomery commands George to keep the baby in one uterus perfectly steady, because any motion while she’s removing the other baby could tear the uterine wall. We see that Alex has ditched Sloan and scrubbed in on the C-section, since he’s evidently dying to get his hands all up in some double-barreled uterus.

In the other O.R., Dr. Burke and Cristina have Humpty-Dumpty’s heart out of his chest. The procedure goes well: Cristina clearly has done her homework, as she’s performing magnificently and basically running the whole surgery herself. Burke is impressed but does look a little annoyed also, since his ego is bigger than Dennis Hastert’s waistline these days.

Back in Dr. Montgomery’s O.R., George’s baby starts moving around, and he can’t keep it still. Clearly wishing to calm the situation, Sister-Shepherd (who as an OB-GYN herself is watching the surgeryl) starts SHRIEKING about how OH MY GOD GEORGE IS SENDING THE BABY INTO DISTRESS. The situation threatens to turn into a crisis until Alex runs over and starts playing sports announcer and recounting in his best radio voice the story of George Foreman and Muhammad Ali’s “Rumble in the Jungle” fight from 1974. So hetero. Anyway, Alex’s voice calms the baby (just like he read in his article!), and the baby stops moving, enabling Dr. Montgomery to continue with the C-section.

In his office, Dr. Webber has resorted to using his suturing tools to sew on his button but still can’t manage it. Shepherd, impossibly rugged and masculine yet still sensitive and domestic, puts Webber out of his misery and sews the button on. These two old seamstresses then lament the sad states of their respective marriages. Shepherd whines that he has four sisters and no brothers, and that until all the adulterous fucking, his friend Sloan was the only brother he ever knew. Speaking of, Sloan kindly informs Alex that when he decided to scrub in on the uterus/uterus surgery, he essentially forfeited his career in plastics. Schwing!

Bailey confronts Burke and asks why he erased her name from the surgical board, saying she didn’t realize he was one of the doctors who had doubts about her abilities. Cristina overhears all this with horror. Though Burke initially denies losing faith in Bailey, he ultimately covers for Cristina and admits that he erased Bailey’s name because he just couldn’t use her in that procedure. Oof. Bailey says she understands but is hugely wounded.

In the lounge, Sister-Shepherd tells Shepherd that the double uterus surgery was ever so fun: “Two uteruses, so unbelievably cool, and a cute baby to boot!” An annoying line, so annoyingly delivered, and by a brittle, snobby bitch to boot! She assures Shepherd she’s leaving Seattle that day and exhorts him to take time off from dating—apparently he hasn’t been single in years, which means he could benefit from some space so he can figure out what he wants. Though he resents her advice, Shepherd thanks her for coming out to visit.

Meredith and Izzie, meanwhile, drag the crazy burn victim up to the psych ward for observation. Though the girl initially panics and tries to leave, Izzie calms her with some “treats” from her pill bottle and convinces her that she’s not crazy, she just needs help. In a tender moment, Izzie clasps the girl’s hand, and we realize that Izie has GIANT MAN HANDS.

“I’m damaged!”

Coming out of the fog of anesthesia, Our Lady of the Two Uteri asks repeatedly what happened, whether her baby’s okay, and where her fiancé is. It gets annoying as shit until finally on the third time around the fiancé shows up and asks how BOTH their babies are. So apparently he’s up for adopting the poor bastard child. How generous!

Sloan approaches Callie and says she looks like she could use some cheering up—and he’d be happy to offer his firm, tumescent cheering-up services anytime. She retorts that their wild monkey sex wasn’t cheerful—it was dirty. But OOH, we see that Alex overhears this conversation, so now he knows Callie’s been sleeping around. OOH.

Then seemingly everyone in the cast kisses and makes up. In the stairwell, Shepherd assures Meredith that he wants things between them to work out, but he needs time to take some space. Webber approaches Izzie and compliments her for taking initiative and empathizing with the burn patient, even though she wasn’t technically allowed to. And Callie tells George she’s sorry she was rude to him and that she understands the importance of pigs, eggs, and ham. It’s true love. Anyway, George has such a PROFOUND, SENSUAL effect on her that she needs him to stop chasing her until he’s truly ready to catch her. HEY, why wasn’t I invited to the APOLOGYFEST AT SGH TONIGHT.

“I’m fucked.”

And finally, Cristina sits in the locker room, looking totally miserable and panicked. Meredith tells her that whatever the problem is, she’s there to talk about it whenever Cristina’s ready. Cristina appreciates this. Later, as Cristina’s writing something else on the surgery board out in the hall, Bailey walks by. At one point she sees Cristina erase something from the board, then suddenly puts it all together—that it was Cristina who erased her name. A look of angry disbelief crosses Bailey’s face. And with that, the episode closes, with a final word of advice from voiceover-Meredith that we have to “choose our commitments very carefully.”

I thought this was a good episode—a great ending especially. I also like how Alex is all about birthing these days. But the show seems to be lapsing into formulaic territory. It’s the same every week:

1. ten minutes of humorous banter
2. ten minutes presenting patients
3. fifteen minutes of moral/ethical handwringing regarding the patient’s procedure and/or any domestic dramas that may be involved therewith
4. several tense moments spent cutting back and forth between two surgeries that are then interrupted by commercial to provide suspense about which patient(s) live(s)/die(s)
5. an indirect revelation of which patient(s) died and which one(s) lived
6. a tidy denoument that ties up loose ends or introduces new twists
7. and let’s not forget the final musical montage.

Anyway, I still really enjoy the characters, but I hope the writers vary the formula a bit, because it’s getting a little repetitive. Hopefully the next episode—the great outdoors masculine camping trip—will do so. Anyway, how’d we like it?