The big deal this week: Webber’s out, Shepherd’s in. The goss is that McDreamy stabbed the former Chief in the back and took his job, and Derek knows this, so he tries too hard to be a Good Boss.
But even when he’s gone, Richard still isn’t gone. He must have heard that Hunt had declared a Seattle Grace Scowling Olympics, and he’s going for gold. Derek and Jennings try to persuade the big guy to sign forms for retirement and rehab, but he just looks at McDreamy like he wants to knee him in the groin and bash him over the head with a breeze block while he’s bent double. Lucky for Derek, he only has to endure a few more seconds of murderous glaring before a nurse runs in the inform the new Chief that there’s a situation. It says something for James Pickens Jr’s acting that, even though I’ve wanted his character to get the nads/breeze-block treatment for a long time now, my heart still went out to him when we got a shot of his expression after reflexively answering “Yes?” when the Chief was called for.
Anyway, Chief McDreamy’s situation is thus: Meredith and Bailey’s patient woke up on the table while they had her open and were rooting around inside her intestines, and she’s in a state now. (I don’t blame her. It did look pretty gross.) Mer, Bailey and the anaesthisiologist are hopping from foot to foot, afraid that they’re going to get the pants sued off them. Which seems like a rational worry to me. Waking up faced with a mountain of your own innards isn’t the sort of thing you usually just laugh about and wave away, at least not right away. (I might after a while, because come on, it is a pretty neat story.)
Bailey’s Gas Man (because I am not typing out that real name over again) wonders what they’re going to do, but Bailey washes her hands of it, saying he did it, not her, and launches into an anti-Gas-Men speech about how they get paid bucketloads of money to sit on their behinds while “someone else does the real work”. I wouldn’t have believed such prejudice of Bailey, but hey, the lady’s under stress. More so when she goes to check on Lesley the waker-upper, and she panics and won’t let Bailey touch her. Her freaking-out causes her wound to re-open and start leaking gut juice.
Teddy’s snubbing Cristina and Mark’s snubbing Lexie. Lexie whines to Callie, who mentions that Mark slept with Addison more than once. Lexie storms off to … whine elsewhere.
Hunt and Cristina are giving me a sense of deja vu in this ep, with the awkward sex scenes, and later a scene where they have one of those violent kisses in the room with the great big fans. And I really couldn’t care less. And hey, how come a ceiling fan can trigger Hunt’s PTSD while hanging out in a room like that doesn’t?
Derek pays another visit to Richard, who greets him with open arms and a smile. Not. Instead, he bellows at McDreamy that he stole his job out from under him while every nurse in the hospital has their ears glued to the window. Derek admits that he wanted the job, but not to end Richard’s career. Richard continues to refuse to sign the papers and leads to a brief shouting match before Meredith scurries in and tells them to shush because people are watching, like they’re two five-year-old fighting in a supermarket.
Meanwhile, Bailey’s hot Gas Man swaggers in and singsongs that he’d like an apology: Lesley has a rare condition that means she metabolizes anaesthesia too fast. He smiles warmly at her as she looks wrecked, and the chemistry is tangy. KISS THE HOT GAS MAN, DAMMIT.
And finally, some comic relief. Cristina comes limping across Alex’s path, and he announces to Lexie that Yang has burns on her girl parts. Hee. Cristina hisses that she does not, just as Meredith pops up: “You paged?” Cristina pulls a curtain around them, followed by Meredith: “OH MY GOD!” Ha. Yang has burns across her rump, which she managed not to notice because she was busy getting busy. She tells Mer that Owen’s being very caveman-like, “which is hot. Kind of disturbing, but mostly hot.” She intuitively muses that maybe he’s still pissed that she offered him to Teddy like a peanut butter sandwich. Just as the curtain is ripped back and Alex and Lexie stand there sniggering. Alex: “Hot cross buns!” WIN. Meredith has to run, so Lexie is left in charge of tending to her overcooked buns. Cristina does not like, and I don’t blame her, as Lexie never ever loses an opportunity to talk about her and Mark. Like now, for instance, when she says wistfully that Mark used to give her sex injuries all the time, and weeps. Because that’s not disturbing or anything.
In Derek’s Office of Power/Frat House, he and the boys slam some dunks on his new basketball hoop while discussing the Richard situation, the potential lawsuit following a patient regaining consciousness on the operating table, the dissoltuion of Mark and Lexie’s relationship following their mutual infidelities, but more important, HUNT’S TOTALLY GOT A HICKEY ON HIS NECK.
Lesley’s still recoiling in Bailey’s presence and asks Meredith to do her repair surgery instead. Meredith decides that the best person to seek advice from is her alcoholic ex-mentor whom she helped get fired. He just ignores her, so she plays the you-boned-my-mommy card to get him to do as Derek says and sign the rehab papers.
Alex makes a glorious return to paeds with Arizona, treating a boy whose father believes he is just faking symptoms in order to cut school. Alex proposes a look-in surgery, which causes the father to turn blue in the face roaring about medical bills, so Alex shouts in his face as Alex does. The surgery shows nothing, but he does start bleeding out afterwards so Alex must perform a badass impromptu surgery. It turns out the boy had a tear in his heart, and Alex fixed it, but the dad is still furious, so Alex shouts in his face some more before Arizona makes him apologize. It’s the standard Alex formula: he acts like an asshole because he cares, an attending gives him a firm talking to, but ultimately he’s right – but somehow, with Alex, it never gets old.
Lesley’s surgery, take 2, and Bailey finally gets her turn her do some over-the-surgical-mask smouldering with the gorgeous Gas Man (even with most of his face covered he’s still hot). The two of them take flirtacious digs at one another while poor Meredith roots around in Lesley’s ruptured bowels. He explains to her that he hates the sitting-down part of his job, as he likes to stay in shape so that he can lift his “big bucketloads of money” – hee – while she explains that she only yells when she’s scared. “Some people whimper or duck, I yell.” Him: “Was that an apology?” Her: “Closest thing you’re gonna get.” And sweet love blossometh there, over the open colon.
Callie gets on to Mark about his Lexie-snubbing (which is a pretty good idea actually, and I would patent it if I were him, as I think many people would like to practice that right about now), and he defends himself, saying that he’s just being – Callie: “Hypocritical? Sexist? Immature?” Yep, yep and yep. He whines that she dumped him, so she doesn’t get to jump into bed with someone else, a rule that I was not aware existed.
Bailey goes to see Chief McDreamy, who’s being Chief McMopey after his tough first day. She suggests that he just apologize to the patient, as situations can often simply be resolved with an apology. Wow. Do you think this applies to any other aspects of Derek’s life?
She then goes to see the last Chief, who’s still brooding in the conference room. Was he just sitting in there all day staring at the desk? It seems so. Anyway, she’s on a roll and makes me love her a whole load more when, following the Chief’s admission that he is an alcoholic but doesn’t want to give in to Derek and Jennings, she doesn’t bat an eyelid but tells him that if he wants to beat them, stop fighting them and sign the papers. I love that it’s Bailey who talked him round, I love that she’s happy now and I LOVE that she gets a shot at love as well.
Teddy pages Cristina to come help with Alex’s surgery, as she considers Avery sub-par (this whole ‘everyone from Mercy West is automatically useless and a jerk’ thing is really starting to piss me off, by the by). Cristina and Hunt are once again otherwise engaged, and when she gets beeped, Hunt asks her to stay instead. Surprisingly, Yang does not ignore him and run off mid-coitus with her draw’s round her ankles, but stays. Later, Teddy scolds her, and Cristina blames Owen, who kind of takes issue with this. He feels she doesn’t let him know her properly; when she denies this, he brings up the Burke thing. I loved this scene, and not just because it mentions Burke; the dialogue lets not only Hunt, but us, see a little deeper under Cristina’s skin. She explains that when Burke was around and they were in love, he took little bits of her, until she was doing things she never would, like risking her job or agreeing to get married. And she has no intention to let that happen again, except that, when she failed to come running to Teddy when Hunt asked, it did. And Sandra Oh’s dry, bitterly earnest delivery shines through in the confrontation scene. Well done Ms Oh.
Derek’s talk to the residents, served as a voiceover for the concluding scenes, is also dealt with well: we watch as he apologizes to Richard, who pauses but walks away; as he apologizes to Lesley, who seems to take it with better grace; as Mark and Lexie meet in the Elevator of Fate, the tension causing Lexie to burst into tears and Mark to look as though he might be finally realizing what a jerk he’s being; and as Derek rehires April and Megan, but not Olivia. It’s meant to be suggested that these two were fired as a result of Richard’s merger mess, but only Megan was a victim of the cutbacks fiasco. April was technically fired for killing a patient as a result of negligence. It’s not really the same thing. But then, Derek was willing to rehire Izzie Stevens – a doctor so bad she makes Dr Nick on The Simpsons look competent – merely as a bribe for his wife, so maybe holding his judgment up to that of a normal-thinking person is unfair.
Next week: Meredith and Derek go out. Gas Man goes to ask Bailey out. Lexie goes blonde. And THERE WILL BE DRAMA.
