When Alex‘s younger brother, Aaron, shows up at Seattle Grace-Mercy West with a hernia, it‘s up to Alex to get Bailey‘s approval for his pro bono surgery. Matters are further complicated when Aaron discloses that his family has not heard from Alex since he arrived in Seattle, and parts of Alex‘s past long kept secret are revealed to his friends and fellow doctors. Meredith and Derek discuss children. Teddy and Mark have sex for the first time.

Whoa. "Sympathy for the Parents" was a good episode. It was really good episode.  Maybe "best of the season so far" good. To answer the question as to why it was so good, I think it comes down to emphasis. This episode had the classic Grey‘s Anatomy structure of focusing on the characters we really care about (in this case primarily our Fab Three: Meredith, Cristina, and Alex) as they grapple with their professional and personal lives.  The Mercy Westers were noticeably MIA.  Other new characters (I‘m talking about you, Teddy Altman) were woven into the tapestry of the show rather than being shoved down out throats.  And as much as I‘ve enjoyed some of the narrative and structural experiments this season, it was both comforting and effective to be enveloped in the traditional storytelling that
Read more »