Given the fact that Grey’s Anatomy is a pretty popular show with the people who view my blog and I have to admit that I can’t seem to get enough of Grey’s Anatomy lately, I’ve decided to start writing thoughts posts for the show from time to time. I meant to get this posted a lot sooner, but my schoolwork has been keeping me very busy lately. Just so everybody knows, I only started watching Grey’s Anatomy regularly several months ago when I bought seasons 1 through 7 on DVD and season pass on iTunes for season 8 in order to catch up on watching Grey’s Anatomy. At this point in time, I’ve watched up to the fourth or fifth episode of season 5, so I ask you to be patient with me if I get a few details on the characters’ backgrounds and storylines mixed up. That being said, here are my thoughts on the episode.
All things considered, I loved this episode for the most part. I thought that it had a really good balance of drama, humor and heartbreak. I really liked the beginning of the episode when Meredith, Derek and Zola were all in the car together and Zola was making the sounds various animals and how Meredith and Derek thought that Zola was simply trying to roar like a lion before they saw that there was a lion in the middle of the street and that she had seen it. I love how the writers wove the whole thing about the lion roaming in the streets into Meredith’s opening narration as well as several of the characters’ storylines in the episode by having the girl who owned the lion and her boyfriend who saved her from being attacked by her lion be patients at Seattle Grace Hospital.
I loved the conversation that the guy, Paul, had with Richard about how felt like he was a “wussy” because he screamed after his girlfriend, Naomi’s, lion, Kirby, bit his arm after he instinctively stuck it in the lion’s mouth in order to stop it from attacking Naomi, but Richard told him that he wasn’t a coward for screaming, he was a hero for stopping the lion from attacking Naomi and that he wouldn’t be brave enough to do what he did. Unfortunately, Naomi didn’t see Paul as a hero for trying to protect her, instead she blamed him for animal control taking Kirby away, and they both started fighting with each other.
Later, Richard showed Jackson a closet full of objects that they’ve removed from patients over the years and explained that sometimes the people they treat are really smart, and sometimes they are idiots, but he prefers to treat the “idiots” because they probably wouldn’t have to remove something like a lion tooth from the body of a patient who was smart. I have to admit that like Jackson, I have a morbid curiosity to know what the story with the Christmas lights was even though I’m sure that it would be really gross. I have to say that I loved all of Jackson and Richard’s scenes together in this episode.
One thing that really stood out to me as I was watching this episode was the fact that Meredith didn’t really have a storyline of her own. She pretty much spent the episode trying to help Christina deal with the fact that Owen had told her that he had cheated on her at the end of last week’s episode. Christina spent pretty much the entire episode avoiding Owen who was trying to talk to her by working with Teddy on an experiment that involved cleaning or growing heart tissue, something like that. To be honest, I didn’t really understand what Christina was doing for Teddy’s experiment.
Owen ended up talking to Bailey about the fact that he cheated on Christina, and she basically told him that it isn’t really her place to judge him and that he’s human and he made a mistake. At the end of the episode, Owen tried to talk to Christina again as they ate breakfast and she ended up throwing her bowl of cereal in his face. I have to say that I love that Christina did that. Owen totally deserved that and whole lot more.
I hope I don’t sound completely heartless when I say this, but I honestly didn’t really care about Christina’s storyline or what she was going through in this episode, because I’ve never really been a fan of the character Christina. Christina is too cold and insensitive towards people for my taste, and her storyline in the previous episode (episode 8x17 One Step Too Far) where she had to take a man off life-support and the man’s husband of many years was having a really time bringing himself to do it only reinforced that opinion that I have of Christina. Frankly, I’ve always thought that Dr. Gregory House on House has much better bedside manner than Christina does.
Honestly, I don’t know why she married Owen in the first place. Like I said, I haven’t seen the part of the show where Christina and Owen met, fell in love and got married, so I’m not sure what it is about Owen that made her fall in love with him in the first place. Given how she acted with Burke when they were together and how she reacted when he left her at the alter, Christina doesn’t seem like the type of person who should even get married in the first place, at least that’s how I see her. In order for a marriage or any relationship for that matter to work, both people in a relationship need to be willing to compromise with each other sometimes, and Christina has never struck me as someone who’s all that willing to compromise with the men that she dates. To me, her career as a doctor is the most important thing in the world to her, and sometimes her ambition as a doctor consumes her.
Personally, I think it’s her strong sense of ambition that keeps her from being compassionate towards her patients. I’ve always thought that Christina was a major ice queen who doesn’t like to be seen by others as being vulnerable and tries to always keep her emotions in control so they don’t interfere with her work as a doctor. Jackson basically said the same thing about Christina in this episode when he said that she was “cold and dead” after she told everybody to leave the research lab so she could work like he had suggested to Alex that he act “cold and dead” when it came to dealing with Morgan being so dependent on him. I don’t know where things are with all the contract negotiations with all of the original cast members at the moment, but if Sandra Oh ends up not signing a new contract and she leaves the show, I won’t be all that sad about that. Before Grey’s Anatomy started, I saw Sandra Oh in a few movies and I liked her in those, I’ve just never been a big fan of the character Christina. Speaking of Alex, I’m glad that he told Morgan that he can’t make her decisions for her and that she needs to stop feeling sorry for herself about Tommy having so many medical problems.
I found the last scene of the episode with Meredith and Derek talking about what would happen if Derek ever cheated on Meredith and she made him promise that he would never cheat on her rather interesting rather interesting given how their relationship started. I know that in Derek’s mind his marriage to Addison was over once she cheated on him with Mark and that he basically tried to act like Addison didn’t exist, which is why he didn’t tell Meredith about him being married to Addison, but he was technically still cheating on Addison.
I have to say that I really enjoyed the scenes between Derek and Lexie where he told her that if she still has feelings for Mark and wants to get back together, then she needs to tell Mark how she feels now since Mark had told him that he was thinking about asking his girlfriend, Julia, to move in with him. I can’t believe she couldn’t even get the courage to say anything to Mark at the end of the episode when they were in the elevator together. Instead, she told Mark that she just remembered that she had some charting to do. I was really hoping that she would have at least said something to Mark about how she feels.
I have to say that I absolutely hate Eric Dane’s most recent haircut. I just think it makes him look like he’s a lot older than he actually is. It’s definitely not a good look for him, but I digress.
My favorite storyline from the episode was definitely Callie wanting Arizona to tell her about all of her ex-girlfriends after she watches the weird hug between Arizona and Coleen. I thought that storyline had some pretty funny moments, especially the scene in the hospital cafeteria where Arizona is pointing out all of her other exes who are in the cafeteria with them as well as telling her about all the other women that she’s been with. Although, I have to say that I find that whole scenario rather unrealistic. I think the odds that that many of Arizona’s exes would be in the cafeteria together at that moment are slim to none, especially after they did that whole storyline several seasons ago where a bunch of nurses that Mark had slept with had started an organization in protest against him after they realized that he had slept with a lot of the nurses at the hospital. I’m guessing that she was making up pretty much everything that she was telling Callie in that scene as a way to egg her on, because if she really did sleep with all those women who work at the hospital, I’m sure that word would eventually get around and probably causes her coworkers to confront her about it. Also, I doubt that there would actually be that many women working at the hospital who are either gay or bisexual.
I have to say that I loved the scene where Mark reminded Callie that it’s probably difficult for Arizona to have to look at pictures of him holding Sofia on her refrigerator every day since he’s Sofia’s dad. I thought it was hilarious when Mark referred to himself as the “golden boy” of Seattle Grace hospital. I always love it when Mark acts really cocky. :)
I thought it was really weird that Callie basically just wanted to have sex with Arizona when Arizona was trying to tell Callie that sometimes it’s hard for her to know about her exes. I think that Callie should have given Arizona the chance to tell her how she feels. It doesn’t seem very mature or healthy for a couple to just have sex instead of trying to work out a disagreement that they might be having. Maybe they were going to talks about their fight in more detail later, or maybe they really were ready to move past their fight about Arizona’s exes.
My second favorite storyline from this episode was definitely Teddy’s. At the beginning of the episode Teddy was at a support group for people who were grieving the deaths of their spouses. It was definitely a little insensitive of Teddy to start laughing at the woman who was talking about how the doctors had apparently told her that her husband had “minor blockages” that ultimately turned into congestive heart failure, which he ultimately died from before she rather callously explained to her what congestive heart failure was, but I did find Teddy’s reaction to the lady telling the group this somewhat amusing. Despite the fact that the writers didn’t give this storyline very much attention in this episode, I still thought that it was very affective in how the story was told by having Teddy treat an elderly man who had a heart attack after seeing the lion roaming around Seattle when he was on a vacation with his wife that their kids gave them for a present for their 50th wedding anniversary.
I thought it was rather ironic and sad that he came out of his heart surgery just fine only to have Teddy discover that his wife had died while she waited for him to get out of surgery in the waiting room of the hospital. That’s what ultimately prompted Teddy to do the assignment that the counselor who’s leading her grief group had given them, which was to find a moment where they could be alone and say the words “I am a widow” out loud several times. I thought Kim Raver did a great job in that scene. Like I said, I’m in the process of catching up on watching Grey’s Anatomy by watching the DVDs and I’m at the beginning of season five, but I have seen a few other episodes from this season, and I have to say that I love the character Teddy and the way that Kim Raver plays the role. I’ve been a huge fan of hers’ ever since she was on the show Lipstick Jungle.
Side note, I think Kim Raver is really hot. I can’t believe that she is 43 years old. I probably would have guessed that she was about 35 years old. I’ve always been really bad at guessing women’s ages, and I usually end up guessing that they are about five to seven years younger than they actually are. My being attracted to Kim Raver continues the ongoing trend of me having a major thing for women who are in their forties. Most of the actresses that I have crushes on are in their forties, but I digress.
My biggest complaint about this episode is that I feel like the writers were trying to do too many storylines for an episode that was only an hour long. I feel like several of the storylines in the episode weren’t able to develop all that well since they were trying to pack so much into the episode. There was the whole storyline with Bailey, Jackson and several of the other doctors treating the woman who owned the lion that had been roaming in the street, as well as her boyfriend. They also had the whole storyline with Christina avoiding Owen after he told her that he cheated on her at the end of the previous episode, while Owen was desperately trying to talk to her; Teddy’s storyline with trying to come to terms with Henry’s death as she treats the old man who had a heart attack after seeing the lion in the street while he was with his wife; Alex avoiding Morgan after he realizes that she’s become too dependent on him; Mark considering the possibility of asking his girlfriend to move in with him, while Lexie wonders if she should get back together with Mark, and there was also Callie’s storyline where she was grilling Arizona for details about all the women she’s dated after she watches the weird hug between Arizona and Coleen.
I know that Grey’s Anatomy is basically an ensemble drama where there’s always a lot of different storylines going on in every episode, but for some reason this episode just felt a little too chaotic for my taste and like the writers were trying to include as many storylines into the episode as they possibly could. Don’t get me wrong, I loved this episode, it’s just that I feel like some of the storylines in this episode were a little underdeveloped and that could have been expanded a little bit by taking out one or two of the side storylines.
Alex’s storyline was definitely one of the storylines that I thought wasn’t done all that well in terms of the outcome of Tommy’s surgery. I think it would have been nice for them to mention how his surgery went even if Alex was trying to keep his distance from Morgan after he realized that she was becoming too dependent on him. Although, I read some plot summaries for the upcoming episodes, and it looks like they are going to have some more things happening with the whole ongoing Alex/Morgan/Tommy storyline as the season comes to an end.
As much as I loved the whole storyline with Callie wanting Arizona to tell her all about her exes after witnessing Arizona and Coleen’s inappropriately long hug, that was one storyline that could have easily been cut out of the episode without really taking anything too important away from the episode, because it didn’t really have any impact or progress their ongoing storyline. That storyline was essentially filler, I really enjoyed that storyline, but it was definitely filler in an episode that already had a lot of storylines going on.
All in all, I really did love this episode for the most part. I thought that this episode had a great blend of drama and comedy. As I mentioned earlier, the only real complaint that I have about this episode is that I felt like there were too many storylines going on in this episode, but otherwise it was a pretty good episode.
That being said, I give this episode a rating of a B+.
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