Tonight on Grey’s Anatomy, Cristina (Sandra Oh) is still bugging the hell out of Derek (Patrick Dempsey) by monopolizing Meredith’s time. She wakes them both up by hopping into bed with them, bearing the news that Hahn (Brooke Smith) is gone. She no longer works at Seattle Grace. Derek is peeved by the intrusion but gets up to answer the door. The visitor is Sadie (guest star Melissa George), who is Meredith’s old friend from med school and who was her Cristina before Cristina was. She’s kind of a rebel, but we’ll get to that later. She took a break after med school to work in a morgue, but today is her first day as an intern at Seattle Grace. Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Sadie call each other Death and Die, respectively, a story that Meredith is unwilling to share with Derek. (Cristina is all, “Her name’s not Death. It’s Mer.”) After Sadie bogarts Meredith, Cristina sulks in the kitchen with Derek about getting kicked out of bed. She also spends the entire rest of the episode being rude to Sadie. Aww, Cristina is jealous.
Elsewhere in the frat house, Izzie (Katherine Heigl) is still having a hard time letting go of Denny (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) because he stubbornly won’t leave her alone, despite being, you know, dead. By the way, Izzie still has that brown sweater that she knit for him back when he was still alive. Alex notices that there is something on Izzie’s mind and actually shows compassion by offering to talk about it with her. He’s not even a jerk about it, either. I guess if Izzie has visions of Denny walking and talking even though he’s dead, then it’s not too much of a stretch to believe that Alex (Justin Chambers) can be nice.
The Life and Death Brigade, also known as the secret intern society wherein they practice medicine on each other, is still going strong, but it’s leaving its mark. Namely, Lexie (Chyler Leigh) and her fellow interns all have cut-up forearms that they cover up with bandaids. Cristina notices this and tells Meredith that Lexie might be an emo teen girl cutting herself, and asks her to intervene.
Callie (Sara Ramirez) is completely torn up about Hahn leaving – Hahn apparently didn’t even say goodbye to her – but she won’t talk about it. She’d rather talk about blood and mangled bodies. Lucky for her, the patient of the week is a man who got crushed in a garbage truck. He is actually impaled by his own femur. Major McHottie (Kevin McKidd, who is now a series regular), the attending on the case, uncharacteristically pages Derek and Mark (Eric Dane) for help. Cristina and Mer are the residents on the case, and Sadie is their intern, giving Cristina ample opportunity to make snide remarks Sadie-ward. The doctors unfold him and in the process, the guy wakes up and starts screaming bloody murder. Grey’s Anatomy never ceases to gross me out. The man, named Timothy Miller, is homeless and says that he can’t live if he loses his leg. He doesn’t want surgery if they can’t save his leg. Major McHottie, respecting his wishes, cancels the surgery.
Since Seattle Grace can’t seem to hang onto a cardiothoracic surgeon, Richard (James Pickens Jr.) is reviewing candidates to take the now vacant spot. The surgeon he’s wooing to fill the position is one Virginia Dixon (played by Mary McDonnell). She is “a little bit different” according to Richard, because she has Asperger’s Syndrome and isn’t good in social situations. She doesn’t pop like Christian Clemenson’s character on Boston Legal, but she likes to rattle off facts about heart surgeries, whether apropos to the conversation or not. She is here today to perform a heart transplant. Izzie, who is seeing Denny everywhere, and Alex are the two residents on the case.
Izzie preps the transplant patient, a Navajo man who doesn’t want a new heart because he doesn’t want to be haunted by the soul of the deceased girl who donated the heart. Dixon can’t deal with this man, but of course, Izzie understands all too well what it feels like to be haunted. The man wants his old heart back after the surgery to perform an Indian de-ghosting ritual, but since that is technically not allowed, Dixon won’t go for it. Bailey (Chandra Wilson) goes behind Dixon’s back to ask Richard to make it a rule to respect all patients’ religious or spiritual beliefs. So because it is now a rule, Dixon goes along with it.
George (T.R. Knight) is in like one scene in the entire episode, and that is to walk in on the interns practicing stitches on each other. He’s all, “Oh, I want to hang out with you too!” but Lexie curtly tells him to go away. Bye-bye, George! See you when you get a storyline!
Derek and Mark get mad at Major McHottie for canceling the surgery. The major says that he’s just respecting the patient’s wishes, but Derek and Mark insist that they can’t just leave their patients to die. Callie works on a plan for piecing together a new leg out of titanium for Timothy.
Cristina, uncomfortable with Dixon as her potential cardiothoracic mentor, demands that Callie tell her why Hahn left. Callie is dodgey, until finally, Cristina pries out of her the fact that they were girlfriend-and-girlfriend. In quintessential Cristina bluntness, she says, “Wait, so are you a lesbian?” Well, it doesn’t matter whether Callie was just a once-bian or a twice-bian or a full-on lesbian, because Hahn is gone and it’s over.
Meredith, at Derek’s prompting, tries to ask Lexie if she’s doing okay, or whether she’s a secret cutter. At that, Lexie tells her interns that they have to halt their operations for a while until the suspicions die down, but Sadie, who is a new recruit into the secret intern society, nixes the idea. She wants to take more risks, not fewer. She takes off her scrub top and cuts her back with a scalpel. See how she’s a rebel?
Mer gleans from Cristina that Mark might have his eye on Lexie, so she asks Derek to ask Mark to keep his Little Sloan out of Little Grey (Lexie). She doesn’t want Mark to go all man-whore on her little sister. He agrees to because he’s touched that Mer actually cares about her little sis. His conversation with Mark is very funny – Mark says it’s not Little Sloan, actually. It’s Big Sloan.
Izzie asks her patient about how to get rid of ghosts. There’s a nine-day ritual involved get rid of the ghosts, in which you have to burn all the belongings of the deceased that are made of fabric. Metal can be cleansed, but not fabric. What this means to Izzie is that she’s gotta get rid of the sweater she made for Denny. Also, this means that the patient wants her off the surgery because he doesn’t want her ghost running around while his chest is opened up. During surgery, Izzie watches from the viewing gallery. Denny’s there also, insisting that he’s real. He says that he can touch her and that will prove that he’s real. You know, I’ve always liked Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but I never noticed until now how damn attractive the man is. I don’t mind this Izzie-is-going-crazy storyline as long as we get to see Jeffrey Dean Morgan every week. (Incidentally, I don’t actually think she is going crazy. She probably has a brain tumor that is making her see things, or something.)
Down in the OR, the heart that they just detached starts beating on its own. Very strange. This puts Dixon in a tizzy because it doesn’t make any sense. But anyway, it’s good news because that means that the man won’t have to have an LVAD or any other machines. Good thing, because you know how Izzie gets when she sees an LVAD wire.
Derek finally convinces Timothy to get surgery. Little Grey assists and the attention Mark pays to Little Grey for correctly executing a difficult suture doesn’t go unnoticed by Meredith or Derek. Richard pops his head in to see how the surgery is going. When he learns how well Lexie is doing, he compliments Cristina for being such a good teacher. He hints that she may be getting to do the first solo surgery.
Unfortunately, the patient dies, and Callie freaks out. She succeeded in making a new titanium skeleton for him, but everyone else failed keep him alive. She finally begins to grieve at losing Hahn and weeps and weeps, and it’s incredibly sad. Cristina and Mark clear everyone out so that they can let Callie cry on their shoulders. Then Cristina, figuring out what the interns are doing, tells them to shut down their secret operation. Of course, it doesn’t really happen because next week on Grey’s Anatomy, the interns’ secret practice sessions get out of control.
At the end of the episode, Bailey thanks Dixon for her work, but Dixon is no dope. She says that she may have significant impairment in social situations, due to the Asperger’s, but she knows when she’s being manipulated, and she knows what Bailey did.
Back at home in bed, Derek wants Mer to tell him the stories about Sadie. She agrees as long as he swears himself to secrecy.
At the bar, Callie, Mark, and Cristina have drinks. Mark apparently really does have eyes for Little Grey. Cristina runs after Major McHottie outside the bar. He flinches when he notices her there. She expresses that she’s sorry that they lost their patient today. He rudely yells that he doesn’t need her to be sorry, and then roughly kisses her. This guy really has great people skills, no?
Izzie apologizes to Denny about all their lost chances. She wants to let him go so that his soul will be at peace. She says goodbye. Alex watches all of this. He finds her at home fondling Denny’s sweater. Whatever it is that she’s going through, he knows he can help, so she asks him to burn Denny’s clothes. But it doesn’t work because Denny is waiting for her upstairs. She freaks out even more but finally decides to touch him to test his corporealness. Woah, she’s really on the crazy train now. The episode ends with them in a major liplock.
-Debbie Chang, BuddyTV Staff Writer
(Image courtesy of ABC)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
