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Grey's Anatomy: Some Kind of Miracle
(S03E17) So, I'm watching this climactic ferry-accident-arc episode, and there's a lot of stuff going on. Meredith is still cold and dead. She's also dealing with patients from her past in some sort of afterlife, all of whom are encouraging to fight for life. Izzie and her passive-aggressiveness is called on the carpet yet again by Callie. They start a bypass on Meredith to warm her up, since according to Webber, she's not dead until she's warm and dead. She's still in limbo. Derek is yelling at, then trying to save Ellis. At one of the commercial breaks, I thought to myself, "Whew. Glad this is almost over."
Then I looked at the clock on my microwave, and it said it was 9:38.
This was not a good thing.
I'm just going to say this right now: This did not need to be a three-episode arc. Not at all. Two episodes would have been more than enough to show this major transition in the lives of Meredith and the rest of the crew at SGH. Making this arc two episodes would have saved viewers from what a lot of them thought was a drawn-out disaster scene in the first episode (though I actually liked that one), and the drawn-out mess that was this third episode.
But, of course, Shonda wanted to get the discussion going, didn't she? I mean, the buzz this past week was strong:
They wouldn't kill off Meredith, would they?
Did she purposely go under?
Why did Izzie say that to George at that time?
The answers to these questions were all provided:
Of course not.
Yes.
Because Izzie really needs to be less of a self-absorbed runt (fans of 30 Rock will know what I mean).
The "limbo" sequences, with Dylan, Denny, Ellis' dead scrub nurse, and Skewer Girl were boooooorrrrrrinnnng. I mean, they were endless. Why? Well, because we knew how they were going to turn out. The patients of Meredith's past (and Doc the dog) were there to try to make her realize that a) she stopped fighting in that bay, and b) she needs to go back and fight and live the life she deserves to live. Now, the alpha-male banter between Dylan and Denny was pretty funny. But it was all too brief. The rest.... ugh. I just don't even want to go into it any more, because writing about it is going to put me to sleep.
Well, let me say one more thing about it: if this is what it takes to make Meredith into a less whiny, mopey character, if this cuts back on some of the "dark and twisty," I think fans of the show will have thought that the limbo episode was worth sitting through. At least that's my hope. "I had intimacy issues, which seems so stupid now," she says to her guardian "angels." Now that she realizes she has things to fight for, and that she no longer has to fight for Ellis' approval, things might start looking up in her life. I mean, I'd much rather see Ellen Popmeo's smile than her frown, wouldn't you?
Oh, and Ellis... her death seemed inevitable. It was good that Derek was actually able to get things off his chest to her, then distract himself by trying to save her. But, it was no big surprise when Meredith saw her mother wandering around in her limbo world. And, whether Ellis' spirit actually told Mer that she was anything but ordinary or if it was just all in Mer's head, it doesn't matter; Mer has been set free. That was a very gratifying scene to me. So was the scene where Webber talks to Ellis' body, even though it was a bit creepy that she would still be lying in her room hours after she died.
The best part of the episode was how everyone else reacted to Meredith's situation. It was all authentic, all of it. Derek is so distraught he sits with the other victims' families for a while. Makes sense, since that was what he was at the time. Webber, Burke, and Bailey keep trying and trying, because this was more than just another patient on the table. George tells Izzie that he needs her, for getting through this and for getting through his sudden marriage. Addison realizes that what Derek and Mer have was nothing like what she and Derek had, prompting her to tell Mark that if he's serious about being serious, he needs to refrain from sex for 60 days. More on that later.
But if any Emmy nominations come out of this episode, there has got to be one for Sandra Oh. Seeing tough, unfeeling Cristina dealing with the prospect of losing "her person" was fascinating. She runs away and buys out the 99-cent store. Then she gets drunk. Thankfully Burke got her to come back. And the look on her face as she stood at Meredith's feet, mentally urging her to fight was a remarkable piece of acting, as were the tears she shed when Mer finally woke up and tried to say something.
Alex is starting to bond with pregnant Jane Doe, isn't he? Wonder where that's going to go. Also, it seemed weird to see Addie and Mark having that sex discussion after all this intensity and trauma. But it was funny when Mark said that Addie should also refrain, to which she said, "who am I going to have sex with?" Cut to Alex. It was almost like a Lenny and Squiggy moment right there. I wonder if we're starting to see the setup for the Addison spinoff episode we're going to see in May.
So what we have here is half of a good episode, stretched out into something that was hard to sit through. Was it worth it? Maybe, if the Izzie-Denny cosmic shoulder brush in the final scene gave you the same chills that I got. But I'm not really sure all of this hullabaloo was really necessary. If this is a true turning point for the series and its characters, it'll be considered a landmark episode. If the characters go back to their annoying selves, it'll just be yet another "title character goes to limbo" snoozer. I hope it becomes the former.
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