Dissecting Grey's Anatomy: Hillbilly Picnic Edition
Well, well, well friends—and by "friends" we mean people with whom we have established an imaginary, one-sided rapport—we're just about at the end of the line, season-wise, and you know what that means: Time for the writers to trot out the hottest, most cutting-edge, gripping, edge-of-your-seat plot points imaginable. Shish-ka-bob train passengers? Done it. Between-the-sheets shockers? Done it. Peeing without washing your hands? Bingo.
(Before we delve too deeply into the sterilization shenanigans of the Seattle Grace gang—cause you know as well as we do that nobody follows the jump—we issue the friendly reminder that next week's two-hour season finale will take place on Monday night, not Sunday. Which, following the same logic, means the recap will be posted Tuesday, not Monday. Actually, we could post Monday, but it would be entirely wild conjecture and hypothesis and wishful thinking and not really based on too many facts...which may not be entirely different from what we normally give you, now that we think about it.)
So Meredith kicks off the episode with her superimposed narrative stylings, waxing on about how we all go through life like bulls in a china shop—chip here, crack there, we're damaged goods who give as good—or bad—as we get.
Meredith has kept on keeping on with McVet, and tells Izzie about how she's been a good celibate girl and despite her four dates—two of them sleepovers—with the good doctor, she's remained decidedly celibate. Unfortunately, she's also remained decidedly impersonal, refusing to divulge deets about her family or relationship history for fear of coming off all scary and damaged. A retainer-wearing Izzie says she feels like a proud mama.
At which point George's personal Dr. Feelgood, Callie, enters the bathroom, topless, and lets loose with...er, she deposits...uh...she pees, okay? She pees. In front of the girls. And then leaves. Notably, without washing her hands.
Back at the hospital, the gang's all there and a car accident brings in five patients—four of them are a Southern family whom Nazi very graciously coins the Hillbilly Picnic, and the fifth—hey, it's Harold or Kumar—who is an intern at another hospital who fell asleep at the wheel after a 30-hour shift and was responsible for the accident.
Momma and Big Jim, the poppa, are okay, but their pregnant daughter and son-in-law are slightly worse off. While the husband simply suffered a leg injury, his young wife is in much worse shape—catastrophic damage to her organs. So the whole team scrubs in for a five-on-one surgery, with She-Shepherd, McDreamy, Chief, Nazi and Burke all manning various regions to try and save the baby and with any luck the mother. It doesn't go so well. They abandon post halfway through, after the patient reaches something called the triangle of death—and they decide to leave her open, cover her in saran wrap-like plastic, and wheel her up into ICU while they wait for her to get better enough to resume surgery.
They eventually opt to go back in, but it quickly takes a turn for the worse. Alex, who's been once again named Captain of the Vagina Squad and ordered to man the baby, runs to get Addison before it's too late but she's stuck in surgery. He takes matters into his own hands, loses the 'tude for a split-second and delivers the baby via c-section. She's alive. The same can't be said for mama.
And just when we thought Alex had redeemed himself, he lets loose with some sarcastic comment to Mrs. McDreamy over how wonderful the baby's life will be sans maternal parent. We hate him.
In the meantime, Meredith is left out of the action, having been assigned to watch over Harold or Kumar and get a CT scan to make sure all is well. When she lollygags around before the test, she gets a tongue lashing from a clearly distraught/jealous/Alex-channeling McDreamy, which we would disapprove of did we not so wish the evils of the world on Meredith.
She gets the test done, but fails at task number two, which was to make sure she didn't lose her patient. Turns out, he wandered into the auditorium part of the O.R. to watch the docs operate, unsuccessfully, on his victim. Unfortunately again, McDreamy spots him and once again, lets loose a verbal storm on Meredith, telling her to take responsibility for her actions for once in her life. Sensing agitation, she says she never should have told him about George, to which he replies that he's glad she told him about not only George but McVet and maybe she should hookup with Alex next, cause rumor has it he likes to sleep around too.
Meredith fights back, saying he doesn't get to call her a whore. He dumped her and he doesn't get to judge how she put herself back together. He looks slightly remorseful but still says that the thing between them is officially, finally over. Meredith seconds that. Thank god.
Once back with her patient, she implores George, who's dealing with the Big Jim and Momma, to allow Harold or Kumar to apologize. He does, and just when it looks like BJ might let loose and, well, kill the bedridden chap, it turns into a tearfest. Very touching.
Izzie has spent the day reneging on interning Callie, thanks in part to the no washing of the hands fiasco, and instead is with Denny, who gave her her own earful about not understanding what he's going through and what it feels like to be stuck in bed indefinitely and faint when he tries to go up stairs. So she lets him feel her up and his spirits seem to lift a bit.
Cristina, meanwhile, is feeling perky, but needs to do damage control on Burke after falling asleep during the act.
George ends up getting a bit of a talking-to from Callie, as well, saying that he needs to stick up for her when it comes to his high school-mentality roommates. For the record, she washed her hands, but in the kitchen. She wouldn't have walked into the bathroom topless if she'd known the gals were in there and she just wanted to get out as quickly as possible.
George makes slight amends with Meredith, actually speaking to her for the first time since their bedroom debacle.
Meredith ends up the episode at McVet's place, where she learns how he can give her a run for her damaged money. The last person he slept with was his wife, who died in a car accident. His mother died painfully of cancer and his father has since turned to the sauce and may as well be dead as well, but he tells her that he thinks his luck is changing cause he met her and she likes to birth horses and eats his cooking. And he gets, for the first time, to first base.
She closes up the episode saying that we're all damaged, it seems, though some more than others. We carry it with us from childhood and pass it on as we grow up, giving as good as we get.
