Grey’s Anatomy – Going backward to move forward

When we left McDreamy at the end of last week’s Grey’s Anatomy, his Post-It wife had begged him to cut it out with the speeding recklessly around Seattle and getting busted business because the last thing she really needed was to have to constantly worry that he’d wrap his car around a pole someplace and wind up in the morgue.

After thinking he’d died during an operation after having been shot in the chest by a gunman, after which she offered herself up to be shot instead of Derek and then suffered a miscarriage, Meredith didn’t need any more unnecessary drama.

So in this episode, entitled “Superfreak,” Derek seemed to have calmed down, stopped acting like a nutcase on the freeways and was looking to pay Cristina back for saving his life when a serial killer held a gun to her head demanding that she stop operating on him. I like this version of McDreamy better than his driving-at-the-speed-of-light version, the one that was flailing around looking for a place into which he could channel his angers and fears. The broken, dispirited Cristina seemed to fit the bill nicely.

About Cristina … I’m completely buying her trepidation, her withdrawal, her complete disinterest and loss of ambition, the reluctance to cut because the last time she did so, not only her life, but the lives of her boyfriend and best friend were in grave peril. The scene where Derek tried to get Cristina to re-live that operation, to recall it in order to get past it by having her operate on a cadaver was a strong scene, but what impressed me the most was that it didn’t have the magical effect of suddenly snapping Cristina out of her funk. (By contrast, Alex “conquering” his fear of the elevator when the Chief made him ride on it until the elevator became boring and not scary, had a pat resolution feel to it.)

It would be exceeding daring for the writers to actually have Cristina — who’d previously suffered another trauma when she was younger, watching her father bleed out and die in front of her — decide not to return to surgery, especially since she was a hardcore surgeon in the pilot episode way back when. I suspect it’ll go the way of the post-Denny Izzie story when she quit surgical work after Denny died. Once she felt emotionally healed, or at least she’d stopped baking a bazillion muffins and curling up in the fetal position on the floor, Izzie once again donned her scrubs and returned to surgery.

One other note on “Superfreak:” I loathe the Amelia Shepherd character, no matter how dark and twisty the writers try to make her seem, no matter that she popped up on both Grey’s and Private Practice on the same night making it an Amelia double-feature. I get that her appearance served as a mechanism to tell the story of how when she was 5, Derek protected her, saved her life, as their father was robbed and shot to death in front of them. That’s a powerful story, and it dovetails nicely with Cristina’s, but we really didn’t need the belly-baring Amelia to show up and then sleep with McSteamy, who, by now, has bedded all the women around Derek except for Meredith, on whom he made a move the day he first arrived at Seattle Grace.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Oct 08, 2010 @ 11:00 EST5EDT