I’ve got to admit, I’m a little confused about the details of Thursday night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy. The Chief is making plans for a million dollars before he has it? The residents are wearing navy scrubs, but only for one day? What? It seemed like this was a bit of a filler episode, which is fine. We’ve had a string of doozies and I’m looking forward to the post-shooting docudrama that will take place in next week’s episode.
Still, though, I thought it was a pretty good episode with lots of different elements.
A Million Dollars, Baby
Like I said, the attendings were competing to convince the Chief that the imaginary million bucks should be spent in their department. You don’t need to play a doctor on TV to know that a million bucks is the medical world equivalent of finding a twenty dollar bill in your coat pocket. It’s nice, but it doesn’t change much. Which is why I liked Bailey’s proposal the best.
Bailey wanted to hire an extra night nurse and fix a few broken machines. Basically, she told the Chief, this money was taking them to the grocery store, not Paris. This is not money that you can change the face of medicine with.
Other people had higher hopes. Owen wanted everyone to go through trauma training in case another crazed gunman took over the hospital. It was a compelling case actually, especially since he said if Bailey had had such training Charles’ death could have been avoided. Derek wanted to discover a cure for Alzheimer’s. It was a little far fetched considered the small amount of money, but he was confident that other donors would chip in. The real story here though is his fear that Meredith with suffer from early onset of Alzheimer’s like her mother did. Every time she can’t find her keys or forgets what day of the week it is, he wonders.
Meanwhile Sloane wanted to pour the money into a burn unit and a state of the art plastic surgery department (the latter would fund the former), Arizona wanted the money for tiny humans, and Callie wanted to put the money into inserting cow ligament into human legs. Or something.
What was really fun was watching Callie commit psychological warfare on her opponents. She convinced Mark that he relies too much on looks and charms, and that got into his head so he bombed. She convinced Teddy it was necessary to prepare a report with a table of contents. She convinced Arizona that she would cry. Instead Arizona got mad, and ended her presentation by talking about wanting to hit someone and then saying “Let’s just circle back to the sweet little children.” But Callie screwed up too, confessing to the Chief that Arizona is better at everything and she wanted to be best for once. “So you want me to give ortho a million dollars to level the playing field in your relationship?” he asked. Ummmm, nope.
Anyway, it looks like Owen won, so yay! Trauma training for all!
The Student Becomes the Surgeon
I’m lucky. I haven’t had to spend a lot of time in hospitals. So I have no idea how I would react if I was told that my surgery, or the surgery being performed on a loved one, would be done by a newbie. Gah! I get Derek’s point – everyone needs to start somewhere. But no one wants to be that first one! Or the second or third, really! But since all the residents were wearing navy scrubs that day, it was a bad day to check into Seattle Grace.
Alex was in charge of the surgery on a teenage boy who had boobs. Yep, the kid had breasts. The poor thing. I’m sure some of his female classmates would have killed for his rack, but he was getting the crap teased out of him. His mom and Arizona inexplicably argued against the surgery, but Alex stood up for him. And performed the surgery without a crisis or error.
Avery wasn’t so lucky. He pulled a genius move on Meredith in order to score a tricky brain surgery with Derek, and then he botched it. Oof. I like Avery, and not just because of his eyes, so I was actually rooting for him to succeed. I mean, the idea of making Meredith think he couldn’t do the test out the tool on an egg so she wouldn’t practice was pretty crafty. I like crafty. And while Avery was pulling a Fail Whale in surgery, Meredith was performing an emergency surgery all by herself. With no mistakes. Impressive.
The patient who probably got the shortest end of the stick though was the guy who got April and Cristina. He needed new lungs, but no one could decide if he was a viable transplant candidate. April was doing her best, but cardio isn’t her thing. And all Cristina could muster was “I don’t know”. I’ve got to hand it to Grey’s writers for sticking with the PTSD storyline. It’s a bit dull, but totally realistic. I think I’d have been annoyed if Cristina was hunky-dorey a month after the shooting. But come on. It’s time to give us a real step, not just a baby step. Cristina’s baby step this week was FINALLY voicing an opinion about the potential transplant at the meeting. It was a step up from the patient calling Cristina “sourpuss” and asking if perhaps she was autistic.
What did you think of the episode, Grey’s fans? Did you laugh as much at the attendings’ presentations as I did? How about this exchange:
Callie (in a weird, fake low voice): “You’re thinking, ‘I don’t want some cow ligament in my leg, that sounds wacky!”
Chief: “Is that supposed to be my voice?”
Callie: “No! That’s the voice of the average Baby Boomer.”
Ha! Funny. Also, did you wonder why it appears that Lexie is the only resident? What, did they only admit one person into the program that year? Did all the others get shot? (Too soon?) Why was she so busy? Did you feel a little bit bad that Cristina unintentionally threw April under a bus? Have I asked enough questions yet? Give me some answers!
