When I start becoming fonder of Sex and the City than Grey’s Anatomy, folks, you know the show is in freefall.
Srsly. The problems are SO EASILY FIXABLE and yet they cannot sort them out. This article will come across as more than a rant than a review, but hang in there while I vent my spleen, which is overdosed on teh saccharine.
First of all, welcome back after a long break. The same amount of time hasn’t passed in Grey’s world, because when we left off, Sloan Jr was tumbling into Mark’s apartment in the throes of labor. The very freakish-looking baby pops out in about 30 seconds, which means Sloan has either had the shortest labor ever, even by TV standards, or she’s been running around the city like a headless chicken with contractions for the past 8+ hours, instead of checking herself into a hospital. There’s the obligatory is-something-wrong-with-the-baby moment, but no, he’s fine and ready to be foisted on to his adoptive parents. Except that Sloan’s kind of having second thoughts, to Mark’s relief. Arizona, who’s developed an alarming hatred of infants lately, balls him out, and Callie’s still all mopey because Arizona won’t have one of their own either. So there’s all this tiresome back-and-forth AGAIN about babies, which consists of this:
Callie: I want a baby. They’re like happiness in a diaper.
Arizona: Ew.
Callie: OK. I mean, they’re not that great anyway.
Arizona: I’m glad we’ve talked about this.
Callie: Yeah … except actually, I really really want one.
Arizona: OMG WE ARE SO NOT TALKING ABOUT THIS.
Callie: Maaaark :(
Mark: I want to keep my grandchild more than anything in the world because he completes me.
Sloan: Too bad, I’m giving him up.
Mark: ‘Kay honey.
Aaarrrghh.
And Mark has a mini-breakdown and several narm-rich speeches but lets her give the sprog away in the end.
Moving on, Meredith finally gets a semi-subplot and April Kepner finally gets a semi-purpose as the latter forms an embarassingly obvious and creepy infatuation with “Chief Shephard”, which Meredith feels slightly threatened by. And that’s it. The only highlight of this is Mer’s new BFF, Jackson Avery, taking the complete piss out of the situation, cooing “Ooooh, Chief Shephard, spank me!” to Meredith at every opportunity. Jackson is quickly becoming my favorite character, and I don’t even like him that much.
And there’s some crap about a fishing boat accident with another run-of-the-mill asshole dad/passive-aggressive son team, and the point of this is that Lexie saves the day but Alex disses her, and Bailey advises Lexie to put her foot down about this because no matter how good his lovin’ is, she doesn’t deserve to be treated like crap by him. And so Lexie goes home and bends his ear about it in what would be a Crowning Moment of Awesome, but instead just feels desperately contrived because Alex has never treated Lexie like crap before this episode.
Also, Chief Shephard brings in heart surgeon #479419, and Cristina cracks jokes about “falling in love” with him again, and yes it’s stopped being funny by now, and everyone’s like “OMG I can’t believe this surgical legend is here” even though they seem to go through no shortage of surgical legends and Cristina has kissed every legendary ass, and Teddy flips out because she knows he’s here to replace her, and there’s more wangst between her and Owen and they OMGalmostkiss! and Owen’s all mature about it and tells Derek to send her ass packing to make his life easier but she’s all YAY I’M STAYING and believe me, I just made it sound much more interesting, and grown-up, and well-paced than it really was.
No mention of Bailey’s boyfriend.
No sign of Richard until a ten-second appearance at the end of the episode.
At this stage, I’m pretty much just watching it because I have too. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for a last-minute turn-around like the last season, but unlike the last season, it just seems to be getting worse instead of better.
OMG NOES :(
