Dissecting Grey's Anatomy: Season Finale Edition, Part One

Nazi and McDreamy are busy in the meantime with about 13 gun shot wound patients who were on the receiving end of a shooting in their restaurant. The gunman was after the annoying manager, who happened to be the only one not seriously injured. And lest you think our Capeside analogy was apropos of nothing, the irritating bossman, who gets appropriately silenced/chewed out by Nazi, was Joey's sleazy English professor. Full circle, folks, full circle.

Meredith helps too but not before asking Callie to tell her about the success rate of bone cancer surgeries in dogs, to which Callie insensitively gives her an earful about when's the appropriate time to pose such questions (e.g., not when she's treating multiple gun shot wounded patients). George gives Callie a circle of trust-type conversation, and says she needs to treat his makeshift family nicer if she has any hope of joining it, so Callie makes nice with Meredith via showing some x-rays of bone cancer and giving her the dire stats.

Burke is still ticked off at Cristina for, as far as we can tell, falling asleep whilst en flagrante delecto. At least, we think that's the reason. He seems to be harboring quite the grudge for that one single act, when it seems to us there's plenty else he should have gotten angrier with her for in the past. C'est la vie. He boards a helicopter to a separate hospital to pick up a heart for Denny and chooses Alex over Cristina to accompany him. Mucho bad move, doctor boy. Karma's gonna getcha! And how.

But on to the plot point de resistance: Izzie's slow—well, not so slow—descent into madness. Really, we think they jumped from harmless Scrabble playing patient-crush to fatal attraction (literally) a bit too soon. Cause Dr. Model is insane.

First off, she tells Denny the excellent news that Burke has boarded a copter to retrieve a new heart, earmarked for his truly. Such jubilance! Such joy! Such...a disappointing development. After Burke gets to the hospital, he learns there are two hearts being given out that day, and the second one is going to his former college rival. Unfortunately, right before he puts scalpel to skin, he learns the muscle in his organ donor is dead, rendering the heart useless. He runs into the other O.R. to stop the harvesting in hopes of persuading his rival to give him her heart instead.

She, of course, is not having it. So they call up the transplant list HQ to see who's rightfully next on the list and it turns out it's not Denny. It's not Denny by a margin of 17 seconds.

Speaking of contrivance, Izzie picks now as the time to call and check in with Alex, who tells his former would-be whatever the dire news. Izzie won't have it and kicks into panic mode (well, panic mode or psycho mode, whichever you prefer), telling Alex that Denny's vitals are rapidly decreasing and that he's in big trouble. Alex picks up on the professional impropriety, says he won't lie for her, and passes the phone over to Burke, who, apparently blinded by his desire to one-up his formal rival (that, and his blind rage courtesy of Cristina) takes Izzie on her word. He orders her to run some tests and call back with the results in an hour. If Denny's condition really is as bad as she says, he would trump the other heart patient for eligibility.Ya see now, this is what we would call a jam. A jam of her own deranged doing, mind you, but a jam nonetheless. And therein lies the problem. In order to ensure Denny gets the heart, she's gonna have to have proof via charts and graphs and official hospital documentation that his vitals rapidly dropped and his ticker is in dire need of replacement. She can't lie about it and he can't fake it. Which means she has to make it actually happen. Which means she's gone mental.

So she pulls all sorts of equipment into Denny's room, tells him the sitch in between bouts of hyperventilating and incoherent don't-leave-me-or-I'll-never-forgive-you tirades, and he ultimately agrees to let her STOP HIS HEART. Again, where was the moment that sent Izzie over the edge for this guy where she's willing to risk her career, and her lack of jail time, in order to get him a heart that he'll probably get soon anyway? We must have missed that episode. (Oh wait—we never miss an episode...but what's a giant character leap among friends, hmmm?)

So she speaks again to Burke on the phone, who at this point is getting suspicious over Izzie's vague description of what's happening to Denny, and he decides to leave the hospital he's at and head back to Seattle Grace to verify first hand what's going on. He leaves Alex to man the heart with instructions to tackle any doc who so much as looks at a scalpel.

Back at homebase, Izzie calls on Georgie to man the door to Denny's room, not allowing anyone to come in and not telling him what she's doing there. When he sees the set up and the tearful goodbyes/good lucks between Dr. Kevorkian and Denny, he slowly, horrifyingly catches on to what's going down, only to have his protestations silenced by the suddenly possessed Izzie. Before she cuts the tube, and effectively stops Denny's heart, she repeats that it'll be okay, Burke will arrive any minute to save him and it'll be fine. She cuts the tube.

Unbeknownst to her, Burke has arrived at the hospital. But so has the shooter that let loose on the restaurant. Not only has the annoying manager been shot dead, but Burke is looking in dire straits. He's been shot and is lying in a pool of blood on the ground outside the hospital.

Oh Denny, we hardly knew ye. And Burke? Nothing, and we mean nothing better happen to you.

At the end of the episode, Meredith heads back to McVet, and learns the real low-down on her dog. It's not good. She starts crying on his shoulder, saying she really loves him. She really, really loves him. Of course, the dog is hardly the "him" to which she's referring. Damn you, McDreamy.

She wraps up the episode by saying that most of the seven deadly sins—dry lust, coveting—result in hurting mainly yourself, and often times a few others. But anger is the worst, the mother of all sins. Not only does it drive you over the edge, but when it does, it takes a lot of people down with you.

The season finale wraps up tonight. We apologize in advance for any city-wide shrieking. Sometimes we just can't help ourselves.

Read Season Finale Edition, Part Two.