Grey’s Anatomy: Remember When We Were Number 12?

It’s another Thursday night and I sit down fully prepared for more self centered arguments, painful whining, un-mistakable sexual undertones and misleading logic. And that’s just from the Vice-Presidential debates! Thank you Sarah and Joe for interrupting an hour of Meredith whining for an hour and a half of your own. But fear not readers, the week off didn’t go to my head. Let’s jump right in, the WATER feels fine! (That reference will make more of a SPLASH later in the recap.) Welcome to GREY’S ANATOMY

Subtlety is kind of my thing

We kick off the show as Meredith narrates with the sage advice of not fixing things that aren’t broken. Advice her plastic surgeon obviously ignored. She explains this to her psychiatrist as she serves her the “it’s-been-fun-it’s-not-you-it’s-me-let’s-still-be-friends” break-up speech. Now that Derek has moved in, what could possibly go wrong? Well, that makes sense, as long as you have a man in your life you’ll be happy, right? That’s certainly how I was raised! Luckily, Derek doesn’t have too much to unpack because there’s very little room for his things with all of Meredith’s baggage. BURN.

The psychiatrist, realizing that it’ll be back to the casting couch if she get’s away, desperately tries to convince Meredith that she’s about as stable as Kirstie Allie’s weight. But since Meredith is having none of it and bids her adieu.

Back at the McDreamy/Skeletor love shack, McD whips out the tape measurer to measure Izzie’s room. He’s lived in a trailer since the series began and now he needs an additional room?! $10 says it’s purely for hair products. McD lays down the law that if he’s moving in, the frat house is shutting down. It’s not just Meredith’s life anymore, it’s their’s to share. Well, she’s so selfless I’m sure there will be no issues with this whatsoever.

We then cut to the first Meredith/Yang conversation of the episode. Meredith asks her friend to fill her in on every detail of her life, no matter how minute. Kidding! She starts right into discussion of Derek moving in. Yang anxiously looks for an ice stake she can impale herself with but is unsuccessful. If Yang were to go deaf, I wonder how long it would take Meredith to realize?

Elsewhere in the hospital, Sloan reveals that he’s in on the whole lesbian romance thing…well, he knows about it, he DESPERATELY wishes he was in on it. No such luck unless Noxema girl invites some Proactiv chicks over. And the Chief finally lives up to his name and begins to lay down the law. As he begins to run through the new set of rules, each new rule seems to speak directly to one of our favorite former interns: no personal relationships (he’s looking at you, Meredith), no emotional involvement with patients, no shortcuts, no stealing hearts from other heart patients only to later kill the patient. You would think some of these are basic rules of the workplace, but we aren’t dealing with brain surgeons here. Oh, wait. I mean, rocket scientists?

“I’ve got the sausage if you’ve got the buns”

Now begins the portion of the show where we begin to meet the patients, or, as I like to call it, patient roulette. You know one of them will die, it’s just a question of who. First patient has chronic debilitating headaches. Is it bad to hope Meredith gets the case? Next on the wheel of “who’s gonna die this hour” we meet Alex’s patient as he completely busts ass in a puddle of water. The final patient is a very sweet cancer patient who is being treated by Izzie and thinks she is the absolute coolest. Well, until she cuts the cord and kills you of course. The Chief, seeing Izzie has a new patient BFF, sticks Meredith on the case, because nobody in their right mind would make friends with her, cancer or no cancer.

Throughout the patient introductions we get ominous water drop foreshadowing. The foreshadowing feels unnecessary since the past 2 week’s previews have looked like the last hour of Titanic on ABC, but I appreciate a good build up as anyone so I’ll let is slide. Also, amidst all the new rules, patient roulette and the sky beginning to fall, George is getting his second chance at his intern’s exam! Lexie has been eagerly helping him with this exam and wishes him luck.

Questions 1: Do you like Lexie more than just a friend?

In the land of the soon to be evicted, Izzie finds an amazing apartment listed on the bulletin board. Apparently, Meredith’s underwear isn’t the only place of multiple inhabitants that gets posted there. After falling in love with it instantly (is Izzie capable of any other way?) she goes to Alex to see if wants to live there with her. All of a sudden donating $8 million to a walk in clinic that even homeless people don’t want to use doesn’t seem like such a brilliant idea, huh Izz?

Alex is performing an MRI on his slippery when wet patient from earlier.

More water begins to leak while the patient is in the machine. Now, I didn’t get an A in Physics in high school, but I do know that water + electrical outlets does not a good time make. The Chief is immediately on damage control and declares this guy king for the day. The man seems pretty unfazed by the event and blames all of this on his terrible luck. He begins to ramble on about all the terrible things that happened to him.

You didn’t play the lottery with these numbers did you?

Meanwhile Lexie is trying to prove her self worth and approaches Sloan with an experimental surgery idea she has for the headache guy. An experimental surgery at Seattle Grace? What next, sexual tension in the elevator? Sloan takes Lexie’s idea to McD and Yang which involves Sloan digging into the guy’s noise and Eureaka, they discover the problem. No way, I pick my nose all the time when I’m hungover and it never helps.

Did you try hair of the dog?

We also get an update on our cancer patient, who is apparently a masochist as she asks Grey about her love life. She then asks Lindsay Lohan how to quit drinking, VH1 about how to program reality TV with quality people and Shonda Rhimes how to avoid using “seriously” in scripts. Just the usual patient/doctor banter. Nothing keeps the doctor professionalism like telling someone the person who works on your brain here also lives in a trailer and bangs interns in the elevator.

Throughout the episode we’ve been treated to Sloan dropping lesbian innuendoes on our newest lesbian couple, since apparently he’s Callie “person.” That makes me a little sad for Callie that Sloan is her person, since they didn’t even have good chemistry when they were hooking up. Dr. Hahn broods Sloan’s knowledge at lunch and she is now wearing lipstick! Apparently Hahn recognized that the audience was having trouble figuring out who was who in this new budding romance, so a little lipstick helps us clear things up. You’re the fem, she’s the butch; got it. Disagree with it, but I got it.

The next scene is my favorite Grey’s scene since Meredith spent the whole episode unconscious. Basically its lunch time, Meredith talks about herself, Lexie feeds George from a fork, Yang whips it out to see whose is bigger, they all bitch about patients we don’t care about and Alex slaps them all. Alex wins for time best spent at lunch.

You deserve this most!

Not that Grey’s Anatomy would ever be accused of being formulaic, but at exactly 30 minutes into the show (I literally stopped the DVR just to make sure) the intro portion of the show ends and the problem portion of the show begins. To further illustrate this point, the music begins to turn ominous, signaling doom for one our patient friends in exactly the next 14 minutes. On cue, the shit literally hits the fan…well, at least the fan on the floor below as the hospital begins to flood.

Bailey, who has warned the Chief the entire episode of taking this water drip foreshadowing more seriously, urges the Chief to redirect patients to another hospital for surgery. Chief, still intent of bringing Seattle Grace back to its days of surgical glory, refuses. You can’t cry over a little spilt poo water.

Everyone prepares for surgery because certainly nothing bad will happen during a flood. Lexie is offered a seat at the grown up’s table and given an opportunity to scrub in on the headache since she figured it out. She declines this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help George do paperwork. Well, of course you choose the man over yourself! My mom taught me that long ago while we were baking a pie anxiously waiting for Pa to come home so we could fetch his slippers.

Bad luck dude is terrified as he goes into surgery. I wouldn’t be worried about your surgery because you have bad luck. I’d be worried because in this crappy hospital (did we mention it’s ranked #12?) you have already slipped in water, been electrocuted by the MRI machine and now the hospital is beginning to flood. Maybe you don’t have bad luck, maybe you’re just a moron.

Hahn and Alex begin to open bad luck up and laugh about how paranoid he is while Bailey watches on. What happened to those episodes where she is running a free clinic and trying to get the residents in line? Now she has time to hang out in the observation room? Hmm, could Chicken Little’s warning be about to come true? Under Bailey’s watchful eye the sky literally falls as water and ceiling crap literally fall into bad luck’s body. Hopefully colonics are covered by his insurance.

Damnit, once the bandana gets wet it’s never the same.

Now that bad luck has a stomach full of ceiling and post it notes, Chief finally sees the severity of the situation. He orders the hospital to close up shop and get the surgery patients somewhere where asbestos won’t fall into their insides. While pulling out staples and insulation from bad luck’s stomach, they find a tumor or a stress ball. After determining it’s a tumor they discuss how fortunate they were that the ceiling fell into his stomach or they wouldn’t have found the tumor. Wow, way to be glass half full doctors! Just like bad luck’s stomach.

Since apparently there isn’t enough drama, Yang takes this brief moment of quiet to confront the hospital shrink. Yang barrels in there saying what we are all thinking. “Why the hell are you letting someone who is batshit crazy drop out of therapy. If I have to listen to this Meredith/Derek crap one more time, I’m going to kill myself, do you want that on your hands?” The shrink begins to turn the issues on Yang and makes her feel like it was her fault. Is that what shrinks do? They turn your issues around on you to make you feel like you are at fault to keep you coming back? I do that in arguments all the time, I didn’t know people would pay to hear me do it.

The colon cancer patient, upon learning that she is getting far worse, begins to probe again into Meredith’s love life. Seriously, haven’t you suffered enough? Upon learning that Meredith, a masochist herself, has decided (again) to end things with McD, the colon cancer girl goes a little Rain Man yelling “It’s no fair” over and over again. Interestingly enough, this was the same reaction that Mark Spitz had this summer when Phelps won his 8th gold medal.. (get it? more water jokes)

Why do you only unload your crap on Asians? Leave us alone!

Finally, we are treated to post work-bar scenes to get conclusions on all of today’s issues. First, we catch up with the only couple on the entire show with any chemistry, Sloan and Lexie. Sloan discusses his lost surgery and tests Lexie’s photographic memory. We then find Izzie talking to Yang about moving out of Burke’s House of Hate into the bulletin board apartment complex and Yang is all systems go for moving in….with Torres. Ouch. Izzie did steal her husband though, so really an apartment for George…on second thought, Torres wins.

And once again, we begin to wrap everything up. Meredith has a healthy confrontation in the elevator with her shrink saying the world is a terrible place so really why bother with therapy. After this confrontation, Meredith finds McD and argues that it’s her life and the frat house stays as is. Derek, knowing he’ll never get what he wants when it comes to this chick, concedes letting Izzie and Alex stay to bake and contract STD’s.

And finally, after the titanic afternoon, the Chief gets hands on with his favorite intern George and proctors his exam.

Did you mop in here? Everything looks so shiny.

So I’m still feeling good about the initial predictions. I like Hahn and Torres, but there is currently zero chemistry between them. I’ve always been an Izzie/Alex fan, but I’m hoping she hasn’t heard his faux Italian accent circa “The Wedding Planner” or that could be a deal breaker. I am totally beginning to dig on Sloan and Lexie. And I wish they’d just make Derek and Meredith work. They don’t always have to have problems. Just my opinion? Thoughts?

Well, it was wet and messy but hopefully it left you satisfied….That’s What She Said.