Grey’s Anatomy – Don’t Stop Me Now

By: Krista Ann Freego

April Kepner’s (Sarah Drew) expression here is pretty much how I felt through the majority of this week’s episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.” If I had to sum up this episode in one word or less, I could. That word would be…WORMS.

Usually I do a disclaimer for super sad episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy.” This week, rather than a Kleenex warning, I feel it incumbent that I give a food warning.

Disclaimer: Due to the graphic worm nature of this episode it is highly advised that you do not eat any food in close proximity to watching this episode of Grey’s. Especially not any form of noodle. Truly, this is for your own good. Put the Lo Mein down and step away from it slowly.

The episode starts off with Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Alex (Justin Chambers) discussing what happened between Riggs (Martin Henderson) and Meredith in the previous episode. Meredith is excited about this new relationship, but is dreading telling Maggie (Kelly McCreary) because she does not want to hurt her sister and, even more importantly, she doesn’t want to lose her sister.  There is a montage of scenes between Alex and Meredith where Meredith is practicing different versions of her speech. In the house, in the kitchen, in the car, at work. Alex’s main criticism is that almost all versions sound forced. Alex finally says, “That one.” Though we don’t know if Alex really means that is the best version or if he is just tired of listening the versions of Meredith’s confession that she is now with Riggs. Note: If Meredith had just told Maggie from the get go about the spark between her and Riggs, Maggie probably would have been happy for Meredith and their sistership would have been fine and mostly unaffected.

Meredith decides that she is going to tell Maggie today, as soon as she is done with the press conference regarding her miraculous plane save. However, during the question and answer portion of the interview, Riggs is literally glowing and singing Meredith’s praises to the press and gently rubbing her shoulder and allows his fingers to linger a slow decent partially down her arm. It is at that moment that Maggie realizes that Riggs and Meredith are together. Maggie is hurt that her sister kept this from her, lied to her and in her mind betrayed her. Maggie was also hoping that she and Riggs actually had a future as a couple and so I am sure that she is both hurt and jealous to not be the sister that Riggs wanted to be with. But the latter is the smaller part of her reaction. I truly feel the root of the anger is being lied to constantly by one of the people she put the most trust into, her sister. Maggie is still very raw from finding out that everyone, including her mom, were keeping the truth from her about her mother’s condition. People being honest with her is still a very hot button issue for her and will greatly play into how she reacts to the Riggs/Meredith situation.

By the end of the press conference, Maggie confronts Meredith and all does not go well. Meredith does her best to try and honestly explain that she was going to tell her and that she was going to tell her that day, but that she didn’t want to hurt her and wanted to try and tell her in the best way possible. Maggie is on a rampage though and uses her words to inflict the most damage to Meredith. Whenever Maggie is angry at Meredith and wants to hurt her the most she usually goes from some form of dig about how Meredith doesn’t know how to care about other people and that she just runs away and doesn’t know how to be a loving giving person. All of which I think are the farthest from the truth. It is usually those who have lost the most that are the strongest and most loving.

The case is with the worms. April, Bailey (Chandra Wilson), Webber (James R. Pickens) and Catherine (Debbie Allen) are all on the worm case.  April and Bailey join forces to end the fight between Webber and Catherine. Catherine, after much intervention by Kepner and Bailey, actually admits to Webber that she was wrong.  Webber was on cloud nine with all the disgustingness that was the worms. It was nice to see Webber so joyful about medicine again. I love that no matter how many years he has been practicing medicine, he never seems to get bored with it (unlike Bailey with the appendix). It was also nice to finally see this feud end. I think that Bailey and Catherine completely handled the situation wrong and that Webber should have always been a part of the solution, rather than cast aside as the scape goat.

At the time that I was watching this episode, sadly, I was eating lo mein. A very wrong food choice and now a food that I will never be able to consume, ever again.  In fact I was slurping a lo mein noodle into my mouth while Kepner was pulling a worm out of her hair. And thus started my new moratorium on Chinese food.

The worm case started off with the patient (a/k/a worm factory, worm woman, a woman of a thousand worms) vomiting on Kepner, poor Kepner.  Just as Kepner is washing the vomit out of her hair and finds a quite long and vivacious round worm, the other doctors are discovering another round worm that has traveled by way of IV tube out of the patient’s body. (Please excuse me while I compose myself for a moment). So gross.  The patient and her boyfriend are pretty much competing against the worms to see who can make me the sickest, quickest. The patient and her boyfriend are very lovely dovey and proceed to make much of the staff sick. The patient and her boyfriend are even talking about how nothing is stronger than their love for one another and upon the discovery that she is riddled with hundreds of living round worms, her boyfriend slowly retracts his hand from her and suddenly has to get to work for a meeting he forgot about.  Love has no bounds…except worms. The funniest line in the episode is of worm woman who says, “You’re about to deworm me. No one is ever touching me again.”

The cancer case. Alex has a former patient return who has cancer and was told that it is so advanced that she only has two to three more months to live. The patient is pregnant and decides that she wants to deliver early so that she has more time with her baby. Unbeknownst to the baby daddy, the patient signs a DNR.  The surgery was too much for the cancer patient’s body and it is as though she knows that she will not survive long after the surgery. The patient gets to see her child. The baby is healthy and, other than the absence of a mother, will presumably be fine.  Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) shines in this moment. She holds the mother until she passes. Reminiscent of holding her own child for 43 minutes (his entire life) before he died.  After the patient passes, Amelia rushes into the arms of Owen (Kevin McKidd) for comfort. There aren’t any words exchanged between to two. We have no idea if this will have any effect on their relationship with each other, but the fact that Amelia goes to Owen for comfort and that Owen doesn’t push her away and is there for her. I see that as nothing but positive for these two.

Maggie is furious with Meredith. Maggie feels betrayed because Meredith has been lying to her ever since Riggs and Meredith had sex in Meredith’s car.  Maggie delivers one of the most heart breaking lines of the whole episode to Meredith: “You were all I had left.”

Despite the insistence from Maggie that they are over, Meredith refuses to walk away.  “I didn’t want to hurt you. That’s the last thing I would ever want because I care about you more than anything. So, no matter how mad you are, how much you want to shut me out, know this – you are my sister, whether you like it or not. And I’m not going anywhere.”

What I love most about this season are the bonds between Meredith and her sisters.  I hope that we get to see a little more of that with Amelia as the season progresses.

This week there is a tie for big hug. A big hug goes out to Kepner (because any who gets round worms vomited on her deserves a hug) and Amelia (for being there for her patient and understanding her in a way that no one else at the hospital could have).

Grossest part of episode: A tie between all the selfies of the live worms and Kepner pulling a long live worm from her hair.

Greatest hope: There were many for this episode. There is hope that Webber and Catherine go back to living happily ever after. There is hope that Amelia and Owen can find their way back to each other. And there is hope that Meredith can repair her relationship with Maggie. It will not be fixed overnight, but so long as Meredith continues to stay and fight for her relationship with Maggie, I think there is hope that they will be alright when the dust finally settles.