Here Today; Gone the Next
US Screening 5 Jan 2012. Australian Screening 26 April 2012
The return of Grey's Anatomy in the new year in the United States was well worth the wait for fans. Suddenly, the title of episode ten was even better than the previous episode. Many fans judged it as the best of season 8 so far.
Flashbacks of previous episodes were shown, and we were taken to the accident scene where Alex and Meredith had just left the ambulance to discover an over-turned van and bodies sprawled all over the road. Teddy was still in surgery; Owen having just made the decision to lie to Teddy about Henry’s death. Bailey, Owen and Webber are still arguing about whether they should tell Teddy the truth.
Meredith and Alex jump straight into action to try and save the family of six who have just crashed into them. Meredith convinces the teenage daughter that she must hold the baby and squeeze the ampule bag that is keeping the baby breathing. Three adults, the father, mother and grandmother and two children have been seriously and critically injured. However it isn't until after talking to the father that Meredith realises there is a child trapped near the van. As she is trying to free him, headlights appear in the distance. Knowing that they have little chance of spotting them, Meredith runs into the road screaming and waving at the vehicle to stop. It does, thankfully and it appears that it is another ambulance. Help has arrived.
They get back to the hospital and Meredith takes on the responsibility of caring for this family. The grandmother died at the scene, and shortly after the mother goes into cardiac arrest. Meredith runs into the trauma room to help, telling the ER residents to keep going as the daughter is watching. In the end Meredith takes over and tries numerous times to bring the mother back to life, but to no avail. The father, and two children are taken to surgery. One child has a shard of glass in her eye and the other child has a lacerated liver. The father is in a bad way, internal bleeding and a broken pelvis.
The child with the glass in her eye made way for a really gross surgery. I had a hard time watching the doctors removing glass from someone's eye; and I wasn't the only one. However I will say that the whole procedure looked completely realistic, If I didn't know better it seemed like the real thing to me. Lexie's scenes were pretty awesome too. I loved it when she realised that Julia was a nice person and a good surgeon.
Meredith and Alex jump straight into action to try and save the family of six who have just crashed into them. Meredith convinces the teenage daughter that she must hold the baby and squeeze the ampule bag that is keeping the baby breathing. Three adults, the father, mother and grandmother and two children have been seriously and critically injured. However it isn't until after talking to the father that Meredith realises there is a child trapped near the van. As she is trying to free him, headlights appear in the distance. Knowing that they have little chance of spotting them, Meredith runs into the road screaming and waving at the vehicle to stop. It does, thankfully and it appears that it is another ambulance. Help has arrived.
They get back to the hospital and Meredith takes on the responsibility of caring for this family. The grandmother died at the scene, and shortly after the mother goes into cardiac arrest. Meredith runs into the trauma room to help, telling the ER residents to keep going as the daughter is watching. In the end Meredith takes over and tries numerous times to bring the mother back to life, but to no avail. The father, and two children are taken to surgery. One child has a shard of glass in her eye and the other child has a lacerated liver. The father is in a bad way, internal bleeding and a broken pelvis.
The child with the glass in her eye made way for a really gross surgery. I had a hard time watching the doctors removing glass from someone's eye; and I wasn't the only one. However I will say that the whole procedure looked completely realistic, If I didn't know better it seemed like the real thing to me. Lexie's scenes were pretty awesome too. I loved it when she realised that Julia was a nice person and a good surgeon.
Meredith overseeing her patient's well-being
Meanwhile Teddy is still operating on the woman with the screw in her heart and is not winning the battle. She pages Owen and asks him to find Cristina, as she needs another set of hands and she needs that to be Cristina. Owen tracks down Cristina and orders her back in the OR to help Teddy. At first Cristina refuses, and then she realises that Owen has not told Teddy about Henry. Owen insists that Cristina has to go help her, that there is no choice.
Realistically; Owen is right. Telling Teddy about Henry is not the normal protocol and keeping the truth from a surgeon in the middle of an operation would happen in a real life situation. However, every effort would be made to replace Teddy, so they could break the news as soon as possible. Sending another surgeon in to help Teddy is normal protocol too. Instructing other staff not to break the news would happen in a real life situation. So realistically Cristina would have to stand by Teddy's side and not reveal the truth. When Teddy asked Cristina about Henry, I thought it was pretty clever of her to change the subject and take the piss out of April Kepner, although I did feel a bit sorry for April.
The scene between Teddy and Cristina in the scrub room was brilliant, probably Sandra Oh's best scene this season. If that girl doesn't get an Emmy award this year, something is wrong. Kim Raver's performance was awesome too, especially her scene with Henry's body in the OR. It was dignified and terribly sad, I was reaching for the tissues quite a few times during this episode.
Lexie realises that she likes Julia, much to her dismay
A little later on it becomes clear that the father of this family is probably not going to wake up. The oldest child requests they stop trying to revive him and let him go. Meredith tells her it's not as simple as that, however the young girl reveals that she just turned eighteen that morning and she is now the head of the family and should totally make a decision about her father's care. This would happen in real life, however probably not as fast as events seemed to take place in this episode. It is likely that the doctors would have spent days doing tests and making sure that nothing could be done, before withdrawing life support.
Meredith explains to the daughter exactly what to expect when they turn off the machines and offers to give her some privacy to say goodbye, however the girl does not want to be alone and asks Meredith to stay. This was yet another tissue moment, and classic Meredith Grey taking care of her patient. It was obvious from this scene that Meredith's doubts about her ability to be a nurturing mother are unfounded. She is nothing like Ellis Grey.
Derek and Julia agree to remove the glass
All this talk about what would happen in real life verses fiction comes from all the criticism fans dumped on Owen after he lied to Teddy. I felt this was unfair and that Owen Hunt was in an impossible situation. Towards the end of the episode it would seem that Cristina is also angry with Owen, but that could have been because Owen insisted that he should have been the one to tell Teddy about Henry. Cristina was right when she said it didn't matter, that Teddy knows now and that's what was important.
The episode ends with Derek and Meredith getting Zola back. While I'm happy to see the McFamily re-united, the lack of an explanation irritated me, especially since they were told just twelve hours or so earlier that they would not be getting her back. Given the crap that prospective, adoptive parents have to go through to get a child, it all seemed too easy to me. Perhaps the show-runner Shonda Rhimes wanted to leave all this to the viewer imagination, but I have a feeling that fans like myself will want an explanation. The other disappointment was that Jackson was not forced to take responsibility for his stuff up in surgery, Callie ended up taking the fall as the incident happened in her OR and she felt it was on her to make sure her resident did the surgery without mistakes. I am not a fan of Jackson, but this outcome did make sense and probably would happen in a real life situation.
All in all this was a great episode and for mine, the best of the season so far. Stay tuned for my review on This Magic Moment episode 11 of Season 8. Many viewers criticised this episode as being a little too cliche.
To read more about Grey's Anatomy, Please visit me at http://janelle-coulton.suite101.com/
Copyright © 2012 Janelle Coulton
Photos courtesy of http://www.tvfanatic.com/
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