Grey’s Anatomy – Meredith sticks with the truck, cabin & spoon

I’ve been very much into this whole Alzheimer’s clinical trial storyline. Each week, we’ve had the chance to see another small glimpse into Meredith or Derek and how their palpable fear, stubbornness and love drives the work that they’re doing, as though they’re on a religious quest on whose success rides their very future. The patients and their families who are participating in the trial are reliably heart-rending to watch, but I always wait for what new thing I’m going to learn about one of the central characters.

In this installment of Grey’s Anatomy however, it was insight into Meredith and the Chief that I found the most interesting.

Richard has been pouring over Ellis’ diaries, falling in love with her mind all over again, unearthing chestnuts of wisdom and discovering the beginning of what he thinks is a brilliant potential clinical study to cure diabetes. In his excitement about this, he wanted Meredith to drop the Alzheimer’s trial and instead work with him on her mother’s diabetes study. And he was very adamant about it, trying to pull as many emotional levers with Meredith as he could — calling the diabetes work Meredith’s “birth right” — to get Meredith to work with him, plus it’d get great PR, a daughter carrying on her mother’s research.

It was refreshing to see that Meredith didn’t get all mopey and maudlin about her decision, as the Meredith a few seasons back might have, particularly on a day when her dad to whom she’d given part of her liver was, ironically, admitted to Seattle Grace. Instead, she gave the situation serious thought then came to the rational realization that her mother was probably keeping such detailed diaries because of the fact that she was fearful that she was losing her mental faculties due to Alzheimer’s. So to Meredith, it made the most sense for her to continue to seek a remedy for the ailment that took her mother away from her. Our Meredith is growing up.

Meredith’s display of maturity seemed to be a stark contrast to her dad Thatcher’s recent decision to date a twentysomething, tattooed AA gal pal. But in the face of this news, Meredith maintained her cool while Lexie had a temper tantrum because the people in her life, like her father, like Mark, weren’t behaving the way she wanted them to. All Lexie could do was to lash out, to be angry and to gobble down peanut butter cups from Avery, whom Mark has unwittingly and stupidly pushed into a potential flirtation with Lexie. (I hate the way Mark treats his underlings, always have. He always screws them out of stuff. Except in this case, where it’s being heavily foreshadowed that Avery and Lexie are attracted to one another.)

The McCalzona troika is going to have some comedic potential if the writers handle them and their unusual situation correctly. The whole voting thing on whether Callie could have coffee, the making her drink that hideous green goo kale and apple juice which would’ve made me sick if I’d had to drink that during my early pregnancies, and the “you’re going to eat good stuff” dictate that they were laying on her was deftly played against Callie’s internal struggle over wanting autonomy over her own body to do what she wants but knowing she has to make decisions with her baby’s health in mind.

I sincerely liked the scene near the end of the episode when Callie walked into the apartment, holding her one cup of coffee, and declared that she, the baby and her vagina had three votes to Mark and Arizona’s two so that if she, the baby and her vagina said she could have one cup of coffee, she would, oh …  and the three votes also wanted Mark to give her a foot rub. Go. Callie.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Feb 11, 2011 @ 10:29 EST5EDT