(S02E25) Boy, oh boy. I've gotta tell you, for the first 55 minutes of this next-to-last episode (Day one of what ABC calls the "two-day season finale"), I wanted to just reach through the screen and crack some skulls, as the Jerky Boys used to say. Izzie's so emotionally involved with Denny that she's willing to risk his life and her career just so he gets a heart Burke and Alex are wrangling over at another hospital. Denny, who is ready to check out after all of this exhaustion, allows himself to go along with Izzie because he cares for her so much. Derek is so jealous and angry with Meredith's involvement with McVet that he basically ignores Addison, who is his actual wife. And Cristina is so busy smarting that Burke for chosing Alex over her for the transplant harvestation, that she's seriously going to use his work decision as a criteria for breaking up the best thing that's ever happened to her. Work lives and personal lives are intermingling to the point where any shred of medical realism Grey's had left was being destroyed.

Then the last five minutes of the show just sucked me right back in. Now I want to see tomorrow's season finale so much, I could plotz.

The last five minutes is where all the silliness perpetrated by the doctors at Seattle Grace comes together into one of the more climactic endings this show's ever had. The medical case that surrounds all the stories, about the victims of a restaurant shootout where the shooter, a disgruntled employee, escapes, brought out the regulars' plotlines quite nicely. A pregnant but brain-dead girl whose parents want the pregnancy to come to term creates the argument between the Shepherds about Meredith, which plays out on a balcony over the nurses' station... where everybody, including Webber and Meredith, are listening. A man who uses his fiancee as a human shield brings out the worst in Cristina's "career vs. love" dilemma. A busboy with a broken leg generates tension between Callie and Meredith, Callie snapping at her when she wants an opinion about Doc, who McVet says has bone cancer.

I feel bad for Addison, by the way. She said it so brilliantly, that the only two people who don't know that Derek and Meredith are in love with each other are Derek and Meredith. At least not until Meredith has Finn level with her about Doc; they hug and she says "I love him so much," and we all know she's not referring to the dog.

Through it all, George is the rock, as always. When Callie complains about Meredith's query about the dog, George calmly defends her, saying "she's family." He then says, "and if you want to be part of the family, you'll be more accepting." She loves him so much (and tells him as much near the end of the episode), she tries to help Meredith with her Doc problem (the dog, not Derek). Awwwww... She's a keeper, George; don't let her go.

He's also a rock with the brain-dead girl's parents. He uses the "stick by your family" defense to say to them that she'd probably rather be kept alive to donate her organs rather than do it to have the baby. And, when Izzie calls him in to watch for people while she cuts off Denny's LVAD (more on this in a second), it's all he can do to not lunge and try to stop her.

Ok, Izzie and Denny. She finally tells him what everyone knew for months, that her motives for keeping him alive are as much selfish as selfless. She loves him and doesn't want to lose him. When she was proposing this highly unethical procedure to Denny -- cutting off his LVAD so his stats get worse and he gets the heart Burke is trying to get -- I really, really wanted him to say no and leave it at that. He was almost there. But friggin' Izzie somehow convinces him to go along, even though he could die. Why, Denny? Izzie's nuts! You really want to risk your life just so you won't break her heart? Is she *that* important to you? In the real world, he'd have booted her out long ago.

But it's going to be all right because Burke, who's inexplicably playing along with as much as Izzie reveals (she even calls him "Preston" on the phone, which tells him she's doing something not so kosher), will be back to check the labs and bring them back to the other hospital. So, everything's safe. Problem is, Burke arrives at Grace at the same time as the restaurant shooter, who's looking for the asswipe manager that fired him. Let's just say that, as Izzie cuts the line to the LVAD, Burke suddenly becomes... indisposed.

And we're ready to go for tomorrow. Still plotzing. Can't wait.

(Oh, and the tile of the episode, referring to how many seconds the "other guy" got on the UNOS list ahead of Denny, keeps with the song title pattern, as it's the name of a song and album by The Cure. I wonder if they found the song based on the script or changed the time from 15 or something so it would match a song title? I wonder...)