Previously on Grey’s Anatomy, Derek (Patrick Dempsey) realized that he needs to start dating, George (T.R. Knight) and Izzie (Katherine Heigl) had bad sex, Meredith’s dad Thatcher (guest star Jeff Perry) was drunk.
Tonight’s Grey’s Anatomy is all about growing up. Or, not growing up, as the title suggests. Derek and Halfrek (Kali Rocha) open the episode by having drinks at the Emerald City Bar. As if they are in a high school cafeteria, this catches the attention of everyone else around. Meredith glowers at them from across the bar.
At the hospital, Bailey (Chandra Wilson) posts a sign indicating that, effective immediately, she will be the new chief resident, and she does a little happy dance. Halfrek gives Bailey a congratulatory hug and offers her condolences to Callie (Sara Ramirez). Hopefully, at least one night has passed since the opening of the episode at the bar, or else all of Seattle Grace’s doctors have shown up to work buzzed.
In keeping with tonight’s theme, the patients who are brought in today are victims of a high school bus. There’s a girl, named Tricia, whose face is bleeding and has broken bones. She’s the captain of the cheerleading squad and insists that nobody is going to touch her face until she talks to the head of plastic surgery. Then, the most horrific case is brought in. It’s a boy named Danny who has a pencil going all the way through his eye, into his brain. I’m squeamish about things going into eyes, and I screamed more about pencil boy than I did in “Let the Truth Sting” when Alex stuck a needle in that kids brain through his eyeball. What is with Grey’s Anatomy and eye injuries this season? Finally, there is the principal of the school named Marcus who is brought in with minor injuries. Actually, I’m not sure if they ever mentioned that he was the principal, but since D.B. Woodside played Principal Robin Wood in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I’m going to say that he’s a principal here too. Anyway, apparently, he was Bailey’s crush in high school. He calls her Mandy, and they flirt while she stitches him up. Bailey is giddy like she’s never been before—it’s quite unnerving, actually. She used to do Marcus’ homework for him when they were in school together. George notices that there might be something wrong with his heart.
Tricia finds out that she has a broken leg and a broken coccyx. When Callie tells her about her broken coccyx, she says, “You mean, I broke my ass?” This leads to an awesome couplet courtesy of Seattle Grace’s resident assholes:
Alex (Justin Chambers): “That’s one way to look at it.”
Mark (Eric Dane): [whispering] “Don’t look at it.”
Mark, by the way, is excited to be working on a hot cheerleader’s ass.
Hahn (Brooke Smith) diagnoses that Marcus has atrial fibrillation. She chews Bailey out for flirting instead of writing up Marcus’ case, which naturally doesn’t sit well with Bailey.
In the cafeteria, Mark, Richard (James T. Pickens) and Hahn are eating lunch when they notice that two high school girls are staring and giggling. Mark thinks that they are giggling because he is such a hot specimen, so his ego takes a beating when he finds out that they’re really staring because he looks exactly like one of the girls’ dad. Elsewhere in the cafeteria, Cristina (Sandra Oh) tells Callie that things aren’t going well in Gizzie-land. They are avoiding each other and are barely talking. Callie gloats.
Pencil boy Danny, it turns out is something of a loner, and has a girl best friend named Marissa who is also a loner. We can tell because she’s wearing a sweater with a messed up cat head on it. Lexie doesn’t understand how to relate to outsiders such as these because she had a great high school experience, being prom queen and valedictorian and all. Izzie understands, though, because she was trailer trash girl who got preggers in high school. Izzie is always the best at relating to her patients, even though she sometimes makes it all about herself. Not today, though. I liked her today. Someone else who is relating well to her patient is Callie, who looks fantastic today. She consoles Tricia the cheerleader that after she gets out of the hospital, she can go back to enjoying just being a cheerleader, just as Callie is now going to enjoy doing surgeries now that she doesn’t have her chief resident administrative duties anymore.
During Danny’s surgery, Derek discusses that once Danny grows up and leaves high school, he won’t have to worry about cliques. But a nurse in green scrubs chortles that even though the employees of Seattle Grace are ostensibly adults, that doesn’t mean the cliques have gone away. Derek rather cavalierly pulls the pencil out of Danny’s eye, but that causes and artery to burst, which causes his brain to swell, which puts him in a coma from which he’ll never wake up. Maybe Derek should have been more careful! He needs to tell Marissa the bad news about her best friend. He chickens out at first, but finally gets the nerve to tell her.
Richard catches Bailey filling out Marcus’ patient forms, a flagrant violation of the rules. Then, all of a sudden, Marcus starts seizing up, which requires immediate surgery.
Cristina spends the day kissing Hahn’s ass, until Callie advises her to back off and not annoy her. Cristina freaks out that Hahn is doing a pulmonary embolectomy on Marcus, but she can’t go because that would be brown-nosing. But the minute she gets a page from Hahn, she goes running. Well, she oscillates between eagerly race-walking, and playing it cool. But in the end, the eager brown-noser prevails.
Marcus makes it through his surgery alright. He tells Bailey that she’s always been his angel and thanks her for getting him through the day but, without skipping a beat, he asks her to finish his paperwork for him. If this were an after school special, this would be the time when Bailey finds out that he can’t read. George is indignant that Marcus is taking advantage of Bailey after having his life saved by her and tells her to give him a Bailey-patented long speech, but she doesn’t have it in her.
The nurse who talked to Derek about cliques finds him in the hallway and says that she admires how seriously he takes his patients, but he has no idea who she is, confirming her claim that there are cliques.
Thatcher is also admitted to the hospital and needs stitches because he put his hand through a window during his drunken antics. He asks Alex to go fetch his daughter, Dr. Grey. But Lexie (Chyler Leigh) is still embarrassed that Alex witnessed the drunken outburst from the last episode of Grey’s Anatomy, so she refuses to help. Against Richard’s orders, Alex bring Meredith in to deal with her father. While she stitches her father up, he apologizes for blaming Susan’s death on her. He tells her that today is Susan’s birthday, which explains the drinking and disorderly conduct. He drunkenly apologizes for not knowing her when she was in high school and speculates that maybe that’s why she turned out so strong, stronger than Lexie. He tells her that he’s really proud of her. Unfortunately, Lexie sees that Meredith is with Thatcher and yells at Alex for not keeping Meredith from finding out about his drunken ways.
Meredith tells Lexie that she should keep a better eye on Thatcher. Lexie responds with a really intense speech about how Meredith she doesn’t know the first thing about what it’s like to have to deal with all of Thatcher’s ups and downs. Meredith begins to hyperventilate after Lexie’s speech and Richard asks her if she needs to sit down for a moment. Richard says that he’s like the nice principal, and that he wants to take care of her, especially since he promised Ellis that he would.
Bailey has a meltdown to Derek in which she releases her anger at the universe and all good-looking men and Marcus. She complains that he doesn’t see her as anything but someone to do his homework for him. Bailey cries the age-old cry that Marcus didn’t ask her to the homecoming dance. Derek confides that in high school, he was a band geek too, and they share a nice moment.
Izzie comes home to find George sitting in the foyer. They’ve had an awkward day in which they’ve avoided each other and had a misunderstanding about breaking up. He confesses that for some reason, he can’t talk to her anymore. She can’t talk to him either, and they both agree that they miss having the other as a BFF.
Derek finds the OR nurse leaving the hospital. Her name is Rose. He apologizes that he should have noticed her during their three-hour surgery. She says that she’s worked with him on 36 surgeries, but today’s was the only one in which he made eye contact. Doh!
As the camera pans over the Seattle skyline (and shows the Seattle P-I globe which is naught but a hop, skip and a jump away from BuddyTV headquarters), Derek and Mark have drinks at the bar. Halfrek approaches to explain to Derek how much of a woman she is and how she has needs which must be fulfilled. She’s letting him down easy, you see. Then, Derek sidles up to Meredith at the bar, and they immediately leave to go have the sex.
-Debbie Chang, BuddyTV Staff Writer
(Image courtesy of ABC)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
