Grey's Anatomy Episode 6-14 – Review

This episode opened with The Clash’s Magnificent Seven, so I love it already. Meredith’s VO talks about the origin of the scalpel, and says that since it has reinvented itself, so do the surgeons that use it. Which is illustrated by Derek driving with Mer up front and Yang and Hunt in the backseat, presumably to a fancy restaurant. Mer and Cristina grumble that they don’t “do” Valentine’s Day, while the men try to talk them round. Just as several ambulances speed by, and they get paged. Mer and Cristina grin like frat boys at a wet T-shirt party as Mer’s VO talks about moving backwards instead of forwards.

Callie and Arizona show off the Valentines (necklaces) they exchanged to Bailey, who grumps that Valentine’s is stupid. Cut Hot Gas Man from last week, who smoothly tries to ask Bailey out. She turns him down flat, and Callie and Arizona giggle like junior high schoolers and tell her that she should totally go out with him. Bailey looks like she’s going to start throwing things, and it is a testament to her admirable patience that she does not.

Oh, and Lexie’s blonde and Mark likes it til he realizes it’s her, and Lexie’s indignant about something yet again, you know the drill.

The multitude of ambulances arrive just as the Rescue Team does, Mer and Cristina looking as though this is turning them on far more than a night of overpriced food and uncomfortable lingerie could. It helps that Callie is declaring injuries such as “penetrating cavity” and “sucking chest wound”. I was almost expecting her to tip a saucy wink to the camera. Derek and Hunt, meanwhile, are pissed, particularly Derek as he’s in charge of this mess. As he surveys the chaos, his annoyance changes to panic.

Meredith and Alex (yay, I love Mer/Alex scenes!) are working on a couple of victims of the disaster (which was a restaurant collapse, FYI); the male half of which seems to be stalking the lady. He slips Alex some money to be put in the bed next to her, and Alex bets Mer the $50 that the man will make a move on the woman, which she doesn’t believe. Later the man – the restaurant’s head waiter, aka Emile – tells them how he watched Mrs Banks come into the restaurant he worked in every week and order something adventurous off the menu, and he fell in love with her. Then she started coming with her boyfriend, who became her husband, and now he orders for her. There’s a touching line about how he put the boyfriend’s engagement ring inside her creme brulée for him, and had to watch from the kitchen window as he proposed and she said yes. And if her husband, who’s now in surgery, dies, she’ll be alone, and he just wants to be there for her … Boy, do Mer and Alex feel mean now.

Another patient is a shy dishwasher named Frankie who has had his arm sliced off. He tells Lexie he doesn’t want to be the freak with one arm people stare at. And Lexie’s V-Day gift is, why, yet another person whose suffering she can compare with her own! Avery gets this week’s Win for taking one peek at the new ‘do and commenting, “Wow. Trauma Room Barbie.” Lexie and Teddy are sold separately.

Callie’s carrying out a post-op ultrasound on Sloan, back from the Private Practice set, who tells her she’s putting her baby up for adoption. She hasn’t told Mark, and tells Callie she can’t either. But she totally will, because she’s Callie and a) she’s not the type to take crap from an 18-year-old princess, and b) when has she ever been able to keep a secret? Of course she tells him, and Mark is very nice and wants to adopt the baby himself, which Sloan agrees to – but Callie later catches her sneaking off with her suitcase. Sloan makes some kind of half-assed moral argument that somehow wins Callie round, and she gives the mutineer a fistful of cash and sends her on her way.

Avery has the misfortune to be working with Lexie on the arm case, and she whimpers more about Mark and how he forgot about her. Avery tells her that if she wants to be unforgettable, she can’t just change her hair, she has to change herself and stop being such a mouse. If only someone had said that three years ago when she came on the show. Avery pushes Lexie into suggesting a radical procedure to save the guy’s arm to Hunt and Mark.

Derek uses the recently rehired April Kepner as his stool pigeon, taking care of admin stuff for him. Unfortunately this means a lot of strain on Meredith’s part, as Kepner (who looks confusingly like Lexie, couldn’t the casting directors have been a little more diverse here?) follows her around like an over-eager puppydog, asking what she’ll be wearing to some medical conference/breakfast thing, going through her closet for her and – worst of all – addressing her as “Mrs Shephard”. Meredith glumly reflects on her future as being the Chief’s wife as she and Alex eat Valentine’s chocolates and watch over their patients: Emile dies of an unnoticed brain problem, while Mrs Banks tells Meredith that she knew about Emile, but he didn’t say anything and her husband did. She also calls on his claim that she and her husband “never talk any more”, which had worried Mer as she figured that’s how marriages inevitably end up, by saying that you get to a point where things don’t have to be said. I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds nice, and it makes Meredith feel happier. So much so that she decides to give life as the First Lady of Surgery a go, and shows up to Derek’s important breakfast thingy.

And we get a freakshow moment as Lexie’s radical procedure turns out to be attaching Frankie’s arm on to his torso, so that the blood supply will keep it alive while the wound heals. Frankie is horrified for some reason, until Lexie calms him by pointing out that it’s only temporary, and PS, there’s a claims lawyer floating around, so make the best of it. Anyway, the bottom line is, change is good; whether it’s bleaching your hair or having your arm grafted onto your stomach.

And, in Lexie’s case, having sex with Alex yet again, because she’s blonde now, and blondes are fun and badass. I don’t really care where this is going, just so long as Izzie doesn’t show up again.

The lesser plotlines, in a nutshell: Arizona teases Bailey about Gas Man Who Really Should Have a Name By Now some more, until Bailey finally kicks her out on her ass and says yes to the Gas Man; and Teddy lets Cristina back on her service and decides to give her best-friendship with Owen another crack.

Finally, I like that the Valentine’s episode ends with the lines, “Mrs Shephard? You’re going to have to make up for this with a lot of sex.” Derek, smirking: “Yes, dear.”

Hee.