Recap: Greys Anatomy: Meredith’s Fallen and She Can’t Get Up!

Grey’s Anatomy has never been a show to shy away from grandiose special episodes, and since I became a fan of the show after the CODE BLACK episode last year, I have to say that I was really looking forward to the latest disaster scenario to hit Seattle Grace. Unfortunately, I think my Tivo was broken, because instead of recording the latest Grey’s Anatomy, I instead sat through an episode of the Seattle Grace Fun-Time Happy Hour and Disaster Scenario Comedy Review. I know, I know, perhaps I am being a little too hard on this last episode, but after a few weeks where I really enjoyed a lot of the acting and the stories, I think we took a few steps back. And one of those steps backward was particularly tragic for one of our favorite doctors.First, let us start with Meredith’s rules of engagement for this latest episode. “Disappearances happen in science. Disease can suddenly fade away. Tumors go missing (doesn’t anybody wonder where they are). We open someone up to discover the cancer is gone. It’s unexplained, it’s rare, but it happens. We call it misdiagnosis. Some say we never saw it in the first place; any explanation but the truth. That life is full of vanishing acts. If something that we didn’t know we had disappears, do we really miss it?”

Well, who knows what that means, but I can tell you that Meredith was saying all of this while she was lying in the bathtub. It’s been a while since we got a really great classic Ellen Pompeo staring into nothingness shot, and this one was perfect. So much emotion to project, but so very little movement of the face. Oh, how we’ve missed the classic shots of The Pomp.

Anyway, Meredith slinks into the tub, and is looking up from the bottom up through the surface. Derek catches her in this state and summons all of his McDreamy power to pull Meredith out of the tub before she can, uh, well, I’m not quite sure. It was sort of a strange move on Meredith’s part, but it doesn’t seem like she was that distraught over anything. Yes, her mom was back to her old state and about to have surgery, but having Meredith’s mom in the nursing home is pretty normal for her.

Meredith didn’t appreciate that Shepherd was acting like Meredith was trying to drown herself and suddenly started yelling at him for wanting to stick around and be her “knight in shining whatever”. As ridiculous as it was for Derek to assume that Meredith was trying to kill herself, I thought it was just as ridiculous for Meredith to start complaining that Derek was around too much. I liked their boring, happy existence, but I guess this is just a little bump in the road. Still, after all that Meredith has been through, you think she would be happy when Shepherd says that he wants to be there for the happily ever after.

If you really want to see relationship problem, you have to deal with Burke and Christina. The two of them looked really happy after deciding to get married last week, but it’s been a long time since I would have called these two a couple. They are two people who are together because they have apparently forgot what it’s like to date people without egos as big as their own. The latest dram in their lives centers around telling people at the hospital that they are engaged. Burke wants to tell everybody, but Christina is more worried about what Meredith will say if she isn’t the first one to know. OK, I guess she has a point, but since when is Christina so worried about what other people think of her? It sounds a lot like something George used to do.

While the interns are all getting dressed for the day, complaining that they have to spend time being trained on triage, Christina has a couple of chances to tell Meredith, but backs out. When Christina was deciding whether or not to tell her best friend about Burke’s hand, I can see where the ethical dilemma and the whole “doing something that could get you fired” would have Christina hesitate. But marriage? Have the interns become so judgmental that not even Christina can talk to them anymore?

My only guess is that Christina doesn’t want to pile anything onto Meredith while her mother is waiting for surgery. You can tell that Meredith is bothered because about something, because of the turtleneck she was wearing. I know it was sure as hell bothering me. Unless your job description is “traffic cone”, why would you ever wear that color? Does she use it to help her see X-rays better or something?

So I would say that Meredith is in need of a makeover, so hopefully we’ll have an intervention. Meanwhile, Dr. Webber has already decided to give himself a little bit of a makeover, and it has become the source of great laughter among attendings, and it’s only his first day. TO tell you the truth, it was one of those situations where I knew something was different, but didn’t really notice it. When they said, “You’ve changed your hair!” and started laughing, I thought he had rocked the baby-fro before. Then I realized that he decided to dye his hair, and I started laughing as well.

Dr. Webber wants to get back into the dating pool, and I say good for him. I understand that grey hair might make you look slightly older, but really, what is he expecting? Besides, if he is trying to make himself look younger, he should try buying a Porsche first and then go from there. Burke, Sloan, and Shepherd start giving the Chief shit about his hair, and for some reason Addison starts defending him. I don’t know why the Chief is still taking all of this shit from the attendings. Don’t they still want to be Chief of Surgery? Shouldn’t they all be kissing his ass on how good they look?

Remember when Callie was trying to talk to Christina about George and Christina nearly had a heart attack? Well, Ms. Iphegenia is not having any more luck this time with Dr. Bailey. Callie is trying to figure out how she should go about being George’s boss at work, but letting him be the boss in the bedroom. Personally, I don’t think it is really that bad to talk about, but how should Bailey know? She’s the one who hasn’t been having sex with her students. Callie should be talking to Shepherd and Burke for tips, don’t you think?

And how is life in the O’Malley household? I have to give props for George for sticking up for his wife. Izzie is completely heartbroken, and will do anything to get George to come back. The only problem is that she still wants the old George back and not the one that is married to Callie, she thinks that she is being nice by asking him back to his old room, but George believes she is just being condescending.

Overall, life for George and the Missus is great, but he still has to work on their working relationship. The interns are all tooling around during their triage lessons, and it looks like the only thing George wants to do is play, hide the pink thermometer. Bailey, Torres, and (very suddenly) Dr. Sydney, are trying to tell the interns how important triage is. And wouldn’t you know it, in comes Dr. Webber to let everybody know that they were called in for a mass casualty event and it is going to require all of them to leave immediately. and NO THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

Each of the intern loads up their triage kits. Basically, the purpose of triage is to identify the most serious medical conditions so they can be treated first. You have to do this all without the help of labs, x-rays, or time, so it does take a touch of skill. Unfortunately, the ambulance they are riding along in has to load up with supplies, so one of the interns is going to have to stay back. Bailey decides that Christina is going to stay back, which really pisses her off. This could go either way. Christina is the smartest, so she would be great at triage, but she is the smartest, so she would be great when everybody was coming back from surgery and needed to be operated on. In the end, I guess Bailey thought that Christina’s personality may could cause more injuries than it was worth.

Once again, this was all starting to give me a little bit of an ER kind of feel. Every now and then, ER has to come up with a new even where dozens of people die, just so they have an excuse to show lots of gross shit happening to people. Without a doubt, one of the people who are working for the hospital will be put into some kind of danger, and we are left wondering who is going to live and who is going to die. Would Grey’s prove much the same? Yes, but unfortunately, they are making this thing last a lot longer than I could have imagined.

As this episode was moving along, I really was starting to enjoy it. Since I have only watched about half of the GA episodes in existence, I liked the way they seemed to be looking at the personalities of all of the characters. Yes, we always see them as they are working and that sheds light on their personalities, but there was a lot of dialog that centered on their lives without talking about the careers, especially among the interns.

For example, as the interns started finding their patients, it gave us a little microcosm on their careers and what they brought to the table. Alex is not considered the smartest intern, but he has always enjoyed saving people, and the more risk and thrill that is involved when saving that person, the better. Karev finds a woman that had a pylon fall on to her and at first, Alex thought the woman was dead, and put the tag for a dead body on her. That would be his bad triage skills showing through. When she moaned and moved her hand, he moved the pylon off of her to reveal a woman with “the worst crush injury he has ever seen”.

Just looking at her face, you could tell it was going to be really bad; it didn’t even look human. It was almost as if Hannibal Lecter had started eating, but got gassy in the middle and gave up. Alex made his rescue by going into an area that was supposed to be off limits, and although his initial diagnosis was incorrect, he made up for it later when he was able to correct a problem he had with her blood pressure. Complicating the matter further was that this woman was pregnant, and although she couldn’t speak, you could see in her eyes the only thing she wanted was to make sure her baby was OK.

George? He has always been known as the caring one, the person who is high on bedside manner. He found a woman who was looking for her son, even though her more immediate concern could be that her intestines wanted to break out from the side of her abdomen. George promised to find her son if she went to the hospital, and that is exactly what happened.

Izzie is smart and she generally knows her stuff, but there are times when she can feel a little over her head and that feeling wasn’t going to go away with the case she drew. A man came from inside the ferry to ask her to help his friend who was trapped beneath a vehicle. Izzie can’t move a car on her own and recommends that they contact search and rescue, but there is a backlog, so Izzie joins them.

As soon as I saw this guy, I didn’t think he had a chance. He had multiple internal injuries and even if he was freed in the next couple of seconds, he was losing so much blood he could die on the way to the hospital. At first Izzie didn’t know what to do, and although she was doing a good job controlling the bleeding and even reset the guy’s broken arm, she looked like she wanted somebody else to be doing it the whole time. We left the scene with the guy losing consciousness and Izzie having no clue how to save him. She usually responds best when the pressure is on, but I have no idea how she is going to get this guy out. ER would dictate that this guy gets amputated, but is Izzie up to the challenge?

WHATEVER WILL SHE DO?

When everybody gets back to the hospital, the residents are waiting. Burke caused a little stir because he told Shepherd about his engagement event though her promised Christina that he wouldn’t. Shepherd confided in Burke about what happened to Christina, and I guess since they haven’t really been friends since Burke lied about his tremor the first time around, Burke felt he had to reciprocate by telling his friend something as well. Unfortunately, Sloan overheard, and he likes to gossip, so soon the whole hospital knows. I really didn’t think it was that big of a deal, and something about this whole thing makes me believe that Christina and Burke are going to have a really bad breakup before the end of the season.

Karev gets back to the hospital with his patient, but Webber takes him off the case and gives it Christina after Alex failed to come up with his treatment plan in enough time. Alex was really pissed, but then Christina was pulled off the case as well. She gave Burke some attitude about telling Shepherd and he told her she wouldn’t be scrubbing in. Revenge? Perhaps, and it came from out of nowhere, but that seems to fit with a lot of what was going on in this episode.

Alex isn’t able to scrub in, but he still visits the patient as they are waiting for her surgery. He promises her that the baby will be OK. I’ve really come to like Alex over the last year. He was such an asshole, but he acts much more like a human these days. I think he’s learning what he really wants out of being a doctor, which you can see in the way he warmed up to obstetrics even though it is not normally associated with the hair-on-your-chest machismo we have come to expect from him, and you can really see how he has learned to take care of all of a patient’s needs and not just their injuries. Sadly, this woman is not gar enough along in her pregnancy to have a c-section, and her major surgery will make it hard for the baby to come to term.

WHATEVER WILL THEY DO?

George’s patient comes in, and while I am not a parent and don’t know what it is like to be missing a child like this, they started playing up the “Patient won’t have surgery until missing family member is found”. George promised to find her son, and she won’t go under the knife until she has details. Ugh. Perhaps they didn’t make this woman’s condition look serious enough, but what is the big deal? I know they can’t operate without her consent, but eventually she’ll pass out from lack of blood or infection until the doctors are compelled to act, or they can find next of kin to give consent. And really, why can’t George just lie to her? If she dies, she wont’ know the difference. If she wakes up and her son is alive, she won’t know the difference. If she wakes up and her son is dead, is she really going to sue the doctor for saving her life?

After unsuccessfully finding an update on the woman’s son, George must decide what to tell her. Her life is in his hands!

WHATEVER WILL HE DO?

Like I said before, Izzie is in over her head, but that is nothing compared to what is going on with Meredith. When she gets on the scene, she meets a little girl, who is crying and has peed her pants, so let’s call her Fergie. Fergie doesn’t know where her mom is and decides she is going to cling to Meredith. Meredith tries to hand her off to a police officer, but Fergie makes her way back just as Meredith is about to help a man who was climbing out of the water.

This girl looks so creepy, I swear her last name is Fanning.

That’s right, some climbed out of the water. How did he do it? I am not sure, but he had an open tibia fracture and was in a lot of pain. Seeing as how I could barely look at this scene, I could understand why Meredith didn’t want the girl to look as the blood was spurting out, but when Meredith accidentally moved her bag a foot too far to the left, she started asking the girl to be her assistant.

If my recap sounds like I was bored, it because I was. As the time wore on, you knew they were simply setting up a cliffhanger with a bunch of patients. And then “IT” happened. “IT” is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I have scene on TV in the last five years. Meredith helped the guy with his leg, but he was still in pain. Meredith gave him some pain medicine, thinking MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, but the man had a seizure and I guess Meredith didn’t have enough to hold her down because she tripped on the edge of the landing and fell into the water.

I know this was supposed to be a really dramatic moment, but I nearly suffocated from my own laughter. Nobody knows where they are. The guy with the leg is passed out and the her assistant is a mute. Hopefully Meredith can swim.

WHATEVER WILL SHE DO?

So, there you have it. A bunch of interns, a bunch of patients. It’s not that I didn’t like this episode, but you could obviously tell they were setting up for a “to be continued” and so I found myself wanting this to be over because I knew the real action would be coming the next episode. I thought it showed promise, but then it turned into a mess. Easily the worst episode I have seen thus far. If anybody was watching their first Grey’s with this episode, they will never be coming back.

What did you think of this episode?