Grey’s Anatomy – Don’t order the egg rolls

Owen Hunt is a really good character. He’s tough, sensitive, smart and a bit unorthodox at times. He was willing to marry Cristina Yang and not be cowed by her gruff exterior and emotional withholding. He’s cool with it.

But who knew that, even after he’d just been appointed chief of surgery — a career-making role — he’d tremble like a first year resident in the face of Miranda Bailey’s anger? Guess Bailey’s still got a bit of that season one ferocity goin’ on.

It was endearing — refreshing to some extent — to watch Chief Owen attempt to contort himself into a pretzel in order to try to ingratiate himself to Bailey, who’s barely containing her simmering rage about the fact that the Chief resigned. (Owen is almost the polar opposite of McJerk, the withholder, in that Owen tries to work as a team, with people, as opposed to parading around like he’s the only person on the planet whose feelings and opinions matter.)

In addition to tiptoeing around Bailey, whose anger Owen didn’t quite understand, Owen was also super-cautious around Cristina who, in the last episode, had an abortion even though he’d wanted her to have the baby. It took a bout of food poisoning to get those two to lower their defenses, for Owen to regain his confidence, and for them to be real with one another. And having them grow closer while curled up on the bathroom floor suffering from food poisoning seemed just right.

Meanwhile, the Meredith-McJerk estrangement continued, as Derek continued to not just undermine Meredith at the hospital — scolding her during her first solo surgery and then only tepidly applaud the successful completion of Meredith’s operation (which she did by going against his aggressively barked orders). But he was nasty and selfish when he finally deigned to return to their home and their bed after spending some time away. Fine, let him be all angry with her at the hospital, refuse to work with Meredith because of the damage her actions caused to his clinical trial and to his reputation as a researcher; he has a right to feel betrayed by that. But he’s still walking around like it’s all about him, confident that he’s the good guy and she’s the bad guy while he’s intentionally trashing her reputation in the hospital. Did the writers have some falling out with Patrick Dempsey or something? His character is a real tool these days.

As for the other storylines, I’m sorry, but I have a very hard time believing that both Cristina and Teddy would both forget how to do an appendectomy. Whenever Cristina hasn’t known something in the past, she’s gone off and researched it, hyper-researched it in fact. She could’ve easily just looked it up to refresh her memory instead of quizzing the interns. This seemed like a ham-handed way to have Cristina and Teddy bond.

Confidence waned for the other fifth year surgeons on their solo procedures as well, while Richard Webber displayed renewed verve for life and appreciation for the gift that Meredith gave him: The possibility of more time with his wife while she’s lucid. Putting a premium on their time together seems to have put a bounce in his step. It’s good to see him smiling and not stewing in stress. That’s now Owen’s job, when he’s not eating bad egg rolls.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Sep 30, 2011 @ 14:32 EST5EDT