Recap: Grey’s Anatomy: The Last Temptation of the Pomp

Well, I am not sure what I can say about the last three weeks of Grey’s Anatomy except that it is now over. I’m sure that they had grand plans when they first came up with this story arc, and when you look at all three episodes, there were a lot of good parts. Unfortunately, out of the three hours of programming, there just weren’t enough of the good moments to make up for all of the moments that were mediocre or worse. For most of the time, I felt like I was watching a paraody of Grey’s Anatomy. There was no subtlety and almost everything was so over the top it became comical. The rest was just confusing, but thankfully we did receive more questions than answers when it was all over.So, I’m not going to write down what Meredith is saying, because it’s just become too annoying during this arc, but I can summarize. She is talking about miracles and how they can’t be controlled. For example, I thought it was a miracle I didn’t throw my television out of the window because I was having difficulty controlling my anger about these latest episodes.

This was our not-so-subtle hint that there is a miracle about to happen on Grey’s Anatomy. Or it was out not-so-subtle hint that there was no chance of miracle on Grey’s Anatomy. We don’t know, because it can’t be controlled.

Depending on how much you like Ellen Pompeo and her character, the miracle most people were talking about this week is the life and death of Meredith Grey. There were some people in the hospital that already thought that it was too late and there was nothing more that they could do. Dr. Addison went to go check up on her Jane Doe patient, and Dr. Bailey even wondered aloud whether they had already done enough.

I guess it is the mark of a good hospital show when the doctors do everything they can to save a life and bring a person back from the brink of death. I’m not saying that’s the case, but I think that is what Shonda Rhimes had going on in her add. She was probably also thinking that it would be even better if they were trying to save one of their own, and it would really give them a way to talk about death, especially with how scary and damaged Meredith is.

With all that in mind, Dr. Webber tells the doctor’s not to stop. “This is Ellis Grey’s little girl!!” he exclaims, as if he suddenly became Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver and the doctors were having trouble doing their resuscitation calculus on pale blue chalkboard that was Meredith’s body. I’m not saying I didn’t understand his emotion, but did he think that somebody would suddenly remember a resuscitation technique they had been holding back until the chief invoked the name of his crazy mistress? That’s not exactly what happened, but after telling his people that “She is not dead until she is warm and dead” (much like I was saying last week), their first goal is to raise her body temperature and then go from there.

A lot of people assumed that Meredith wouldn’t have any chance surviving because at the end of the last episode, she woke up in a hospital room and Denny Duquette and Kyle “Hottest Bomb Squad Member EV-AR” Chandler. For those of you who may have started watching the show this year, this is not good news, because both of those characters are dead. The first thing that came into my head when I saw this scene was that Meredith was delusional and all of this was simply an effect of her brain having a lack of oxygen. Even Meredith herself couldn’t believe that any of this was going on, and believed that this was all a side effect of the drugs that they were giving her as they tried to bring her back from the brink.

It turns out neither of those scenarios was the case. Grey’s Anatomy brought us into the afterlife. I shit you not. I thought this could have been an interesting way to discuss how people deal with death, but instead, it was simply used as a vehicle for Meredith to discuss her motivations during her life. And you know what? Even that wouldn’t have been perfectly fine if this whole thing didn’t waste our time the entire episode.

A couple of other people who died in the hospital decide to visit Meredith while she is in her state of limbo, but they were before my Grey’s anatomy time. One of them was a woman who was impaled on a pole or something with what I am assuming was her boyfriend and another was a nurse who died of some disease while she was there. They were really only their for variety because it was Denny and Kyle “Still Waiting For A Hotter Bomb Squad Member” Chandler who did all the talking.

For some reason, they were running out of time, but Meredith didn’t want to listen. What the hell was going on? No use asking me. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for really abstract discussions of life and death, but I really needed some explanation. I know that Grey’s was a popular show before I started watching, but I couldn’t have been the only person who was wondering why the girl who died with the pole in her chest just started bleeding from the stomach, then fell over and started to convulse. What the hell? Cut to the chase! We’ve been waiting two episodes for them to get to this point, so they better start explaining themselves before I have an aneurysm.

While Meredith was having her internal struggle while still struggling trying to stop the bleeding from that one girl’s internals, they had to at least pretend that other things were going on in the hospital. You might be wondering what happened to Izzie’s patient from last week. You know, the one that was in such bad shape she was forced to drill holes in his head with nothing but a thin layer of dura separating the drill bit from rescuing his life and or perhaps blinding making him forget everything he’s learned since 1975. Remember, this was the guy that perhaps saved Izzie’s career. I was thinking that she would want to keep tabs on this guy. Isn’t that Izzie’s thing? That she cares about her patients? It doesn’t describe Izzie on this day, because she is still spending most of her time pissed off that George is married to Callie!

I can understand why Izzie might not be completely comfortable with Callie. Dr. Torres was always a little bit of a free spirit, and the girls never quite understood what she was all about. I think part of it stems from their need to infantalise George as much as possible. They truly never thought of him as an adult, but rather looked at him like some sort of puppy who would pee on the kitchen floor if they weren’t there to tell him what to do. Callie doesn’t see George that way, so the people around George think it is wrong.

However, whatever they might think about the way Callie and George’s relationship has played out, what in her history has told them that it is not worth even giving her a chance? Sure, she slept with Sloan, but only after George (with his friends’ approval) pushed her away. They get each other, and that is what matters. George used to be intimidated by his brothers and the rest of the family, but I think it really opened his eyes when he saw the way his childhood family treated Callie as opposed to his new med school family.

Anyway, Izzie carries this grudge, and it really doesn’t help when Bailey puts Callie in charge of all the interns. George and Izzie want to stay and help Meredith, but Callie says there are other parts of the hospital that need their help, starting with the clinic, which is trying to help out with the current blood shortage. While they are giving blood, Izzie and Callie get into a fight. They are literally fighting over who they think knows George better. Callie hasn’t known George as long, but it’s clear she knows him pretty well, and she is not going to be run off. She finishes the discussion when she says that Izzie “can’t afford to lose any more friends because so many people around you…” and although she might not finish, you know she wants to say “DROP DEAD”

Later in the day, George confronts Izzie again, and although he didn’t smack her in the face like I thought she deserved, he may have finally put Izzie in her place. Izzie was trying to take a tone of moral superiority by saying that she is not going to lie to anybody’s face, but George tell her that she should hold her tongue, because he doesn’t think he made a mistake. And if he is right, then she is going to end up looking like a jerk. If Izzie is right, then George is going to need her more than ever, but if she continues talking to him that way, he is going to look for another person. It looked like it may have actually sunk in. I sure as hell hope so.

We can easily contrast Izzie’s lack of follow up with her patient with the way Alex has followed the woman he found on the docks. Her face is not looking any less, for lack of a better, more sensitive word, busted, but overall the picture is much better. She is now able to speak, although she is not completely out of the woods. She can’t remember her name, and she can’t even remember whether she has a husband or not. Personally, I was hoping that they would spend less time on her memory and maybe bug Sloan about working on her face for a little bit. If this was The Lord of the Rings she would be the hottest orc in middle earth. And now? Well, even if Clint Eastwood remembered his glasses, she wouldn’t be looking so hot.

Izzie and George wanted to help the other doctors with Meredith, and Alex is hoping she pulls through because she always helped him believe that messed up people can make something of themselves. Where does that put Christina? At the 99 cent store apparently! We have seen how many of the interns have dealt with loss, and we know that Christina doesn’t deal with it very well. Meredith may be that person for Christina, but she could barely stand to be in the same room with Burke when he was shot, and she couldn’t bear to deal with the possible loss of her best friend either. Therefore, she decided that her time would be better served with inexpensive tsotchkes, lots of booze, and advice from our favorite gay bartender.

And then there is Derek. It was decided that it would be better for Derek to stay out of the trauma room with Meredith, saying he was in “no condition” to be there. I don’t know, he looked OK to me, but they decided that he would spend the day as a civilian, meaning he would be subject to the same uncertainty, anxiety, and vending machine nourishment that everybody else in the waiting room had to suffer through, but not after he got a few licks on the person he thought was responsible for this whole mess.

That’s right, Ellis Grey is still in the hospital, waiting for her heart procedure. She is not doing so well herself, and although Derek does get in there and get a lot of his chest, it’s not like it’s going to do him much good. He blamed Ellis for what happened to Meredith. I actually thought he was going to throw in a quick left jab and then a roundhouse, but Addison stopped him before he got too worked up. I know Derek is not really himself, but you really have to be pissed off in order to get upset at somebody who has such an advanced case of Alzheimer’s, which wasn’t the only thing that was bothering Ellis at the time. Her heart condition was causing more complications, and you were wondering if there would be a race to see which Dr. Grey would die first.

And what about that other Dr. Grey? She was still in her fantasy land. I feel really bad for those of you who were not fans of Denny Duquette because while the doctors were trying to warm Meredith up, he was trying to figure out the circumstances surrounding Meredith’s death. This whole exercise was about Meredith and whether she had tried to kill herself. No, really! She said that she fought hard, and nobody believed her. Remember, there was that whole thing with the tub, and at the time, I thought it was kind of ridiculous. But did they really mean for that tub incident as a suicide attempt? Where they insinuating that Meredith gave up on life and decided to die?

Basically, that is what all of this bullshit was about. Meredith didn’t fight, and the dead people surrounding her told her that she didn’t deserve to be there. She had to fight and join the world of the living once again, if not for her than for poor Derek Shepherd. Meredith admitted that she stopped fighting because she thought it would be a lot easier if she was gone, but Denny, who knows about fleeting love, knows what this can do to a person. Denny told Meredith to think about Derek and what this would do to him, saying that it would break him and that he would never be the same. If Meredith wanted a miracle in her life, she had found it in Derek Shepherd.

I know that this is supposed to be a really moving moment, and I did think it was sort of sad the way Denny was talking about the only thing he has left of Izzie are brief moments where they might occupy the same space, and he can almost feel her, almost smell her, almost know what it’s like to be with her. If Meredith gives up, she would be losing all of that. Unfortunately, I was trying to come to terms with the saintly Derek Shepherd that Denny was portraying. He was the optimist, he was this, he was that. I’m sorry; Derek Shepherd is no better than any of the other ego-driven asswipe attendings that populate the place.

Forgive me for saying this, but most of the loss he has experienced has been his own fault. If there was anybody who was going to be broken by this, it was Christina. Derek is tough and experienced. Christina is the one that this could destroy. Should Meredith be thankful she found a guy like Derek? Yes, but if there is anybody she should fight for to come back from this and survive, it should be herself.

Christina was still in complete denial about Meredith’s condition. For all the shit that Burke and Christina go through, there are times when you really see how they understand each other and why they agreed to spend the rest of their lives with each other. In this case, Burke finds Christina at the bar, who is drunk and playing sodoku, which might sound like a ton of fun for a lot of people, but really should not be how you should spend your time when your best friend is fighting, or at least watching others fighting, for her life. Burke is there to remind her of this, and at first Christina says that it is just too much for her to handle after what happened to her father, but Burke is not going to let her off so easy. What would be harder? Watching her friend die, or realizing at some point down the road that she should have been saying goodbye to her friend instead of sitting alone getting drunk at a bar.

As I was watching the episode, I was constantly thinking of ways that they could get Meredith out of this jam. How were they going to explain this one away, and how would they explain this one away without making her any more scary or damaged. We basically admitted that she has given up on life. What could convince her to fight?

And then I heard the words, “Code Blue”. They were used to describe Ellis Grey, who was suddenly critical. Then it hit me. Ellis would die, go to this strange afterlife thing where Meredith was, and tell her daughter that she loves her. Meredith, finally having closure with her mother, would want to fight for all the people she left behind, walk back into the light, and be miraculously saved by the medical staff that was working on her.

Not surprisingly, that is almost exactly how it went. Oh, there was a little bit more drama, but I am going to save you the annoying speech Denny gave, and the way Meredith and her mom met up in the afterlife. Actually, the great Ellis and Meredith reunion was a pretty good moment, but it was like thirty seconds in a sea of material that was otherwise kind of embarrassing. Meredith admits she has intimacy issues, realizes it’s stupid, meets her mom on the way out, then it’s all OK.

I would have been a little bit better with all of this if it weren’t for the AWFUL scene going on around the real life Meredith outside. The big problem? Their resuscitate Meredith scene was about as convincing as Sara Ramirez saying “That was great!” at the end of that dove commercial during the Oscars last night. They were unable to get her temperature up until they tried coronary bypass. But even when she was 98 degrees and rising faster than Nick Lechey, she was still dead. However, that was only because they needed Christina to make a dramatic entrance, and, after everybody had already given up, scream “TRY AGAIN!! TRY AGAIN!!” Although I can’t say that I couldn’t relate to her. I often yell the same thing a couple of times a week, inevitably before the person gives up and tells Pat that they want to buy a vowel.

One more round of medicine and Meredith wakes up. She is even breathing on her own. There is still the worry that she might have permanent brain damage, but after a commercial break, she comes back and Christina tells her she is marrying Burke, and everything is happy again. Derek catches up with her a little bit later, she already knows that her mother is dead, and I would like to describe the rest of this scene, but it was excruciating and we had heard enough from Denny how much of a miracle Derek is, so there is no need for me to slam it down your throat.

That was painful, yes, but the way they wrapped it up with Ellis makes me think that there is at least going to be some closure in that area. George and Izzie are still on the outs, because she still doesn’t realize why she hurt him so much and why he can’t trust her, but at least Burke and Christina seem to be happy again. We also got a little bit of a hint about what will happen a little ways down the road. We might actually be talking about the hospital a little more as it looks like the battle for chief resident is going to be heating up, which should be a nice little battle as the attendings duke it out for chief of surgery.

The biggest battle, besides the one for Meredith’s scary and damaged sanity, is going to be the one over Addison Montgomery. At one point, when Derek was getting all smooch schmoopy with Meredith, Addison remarked to Sloan that Derek never felt that way about her when they were married. This gives McSteamy the excuse to ask the She-Former Shepherd if she wants to be a couple again. She says find, but he has to prove to her that he is over his “hump anything with a vagina and a pulse” phase by abstaining for sex for 60 days. Once he has pulled off this Josh Hartnett-like mastery of his domain, she will give him a real chance to be a couple. And what about Addison? Does she have to give up sex as well? She questions who she would even have sex with. Cut to…Alex Karev. Yes, this is going to get interesting.

Well, I thought this episode pretty much sucked, but it couldn’t have sucked so bad if it wasn’t for the two episodes that came before it. It is nearly impossible to make up for that kind of mess, and this episode just couldn’t do it. I think most of us just want to pretend these last three weeks never happened and hope the show comes back stronger than ever after sweeps.

What did you think of the episode?