Grey’s Anatomy Recap: Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Fam, I should have known. When Owen and Teddy decided to open up their marriage, it felt like one of those moments when you’re driving and look up and see someone headed right for you, and all you can do is watch it happen. I knew — we all knew — this would be a total disaster, but I feel foolish for miscalculating the how and why of the disaster. I thought it would be Owen who couldn’t stomach the idea, but of course the reality is much worse. Instead of hurting Owen’s feelings (which, yes, obviously, I’d welcome), this is going to crush Teddy’s.
Frankly, I feel cheated. For months, this show played in our faces and teased us with the possibility of Teddy hooking up with Sophia Bush, a.k.a. Cass Beckman. They hinted at a couple’s spa day. They steeped the romantic tension in lingering stares. Then, Teddy asked Owen if they could give non-monogamy a try, and it seemed like we were a go for steamy massages and hot hookups. Wouldn’t you know it, this week sent Teddy off to a medical conference with Bailey while Owen hung back and (surprise, surprise!) ran into his old friend Nora, who tried to kiss him just a couple weeks ago. But just when it seemed that Teddy and Cass were ready to make our dreams come true, Teddy pulled back. To that I say, why? Seriously, why?!
While I greatly respect Teddy for wearing a lacy teddy to an all-day medical conference, I cannot fathom what made her pull away from Cass at the very last minute, after hours of longing looks and leg nudging, and one seriously steamy elevator make-out session. She even got to watch Cass fix another slideshow, and we all know she loves watching Cass fix slideshows. (Is this the nerdiest form of foreplay on earth? Probably — but it worked for them, and we’re not here to kink shame!) And yet, just when things were getting serious, Teddy pumped the brakes and said she’d realized this would not fix her marriage. To that I say, who cares?!
Does this hookup really need to fix the marriage? Do I care about the marriage? I do not! And the worst part — the shittiest layer to this whole crap cake — is that of course Owen went about things differently. After hemming and hawing and yelling at the couple’s therapist for even suggesting he and Teddy open things up, he did not hesitate before jumping into bed with Nora, who stopped by the hospital with a friend who apparently had a bunch of food stuck in her esophagus. (Evidently, medical issues are their weird form of foreplay.)
I hate this. Owen gets what he wants while Teddy denies herself? This is my worst nightmare. I need to crawl through the screen and join Bailey and Teddy in draining the hotel minibar. If nothing else, I hope that when Teddy finds out about Owen and Nora, she jumps right onto Expedia dot com, books herself a room, and calls Cass to reenact this whole thing and do it right the second time. Until then, I am in misery.
But there is some good news this week: Blue finally wakes up.
As his amnesiac ex, Molly, wheels in for brain surgery, her ex-fiancé, Dave, shows up to warn Blue that she hasn’t told him everything. Because of course she hasn’t. It turns out, she’s kind of obsessed with trying to recover her memory (you don’t say!!!) and last time that failed, she had a complete breakdown. Blue’s initial response to all of this is predictably bone-headed: “She picked me — get over it.” But then, he starts talking with Molly after her surgery and realizes that Dave is 100 percent right to be worried — and he has been 100 percent deluded.
At first, it seemed like Molly had recovered a memory of going to Big Sky with Blue. But then, it turns out that the memory was actually about a trip with Dave. That is not the problem; like any well-balanced person, Blue doesn’t care too much. The issue is that after discovering this, Molly immediately begins begging to try more experimental procedures or even a clinical trial. She doesn’t feel complete without her memories, and seeing Blue in the hospital all those months ago was the first time she’d begun to feel like herself. In other words, Blue realized that Molly was mostly dating him because of her fixation on the past.
I have no doubt that Molly loves Blue, but this was never going to work. Their relationship has the vibe of Karev and “Ava” years and years ago — something emotional and idealistic that mostly works in a fantasy world but would suffocate when faced with practical realities. There’s always a chance these two loop back around and find a way to make it work, but at this point, it feels like time for Blue to move on.
Other than breaking up Blue and Molly, this whole ordeal also teaches Simone an important lesson that every resident eventually learns in neuro: You cannot freak out, or you will be kicked out of the OR. Neuro procedures are always the scariest, because the surgeons are basically poking around in a little black box and staring at brain waves and hoping their patients don’t wake up partially lobotomized. So when Simone gets to assist on Molly’s surgery and Blue tells her not to let Amelia push too far, she gets jumpy. Each time Amelia presses forward, Simone practically begs her to stop — a big no-no when your patient is awake and listening. Amelia is a great mentor, though, so after properly scolding Simone for bringing personal baggage into the OR, she also tells her that they would be presenting together at grand rounds — the latest feather in Simone’s surgical cap, right after her first solo procedure.
Simone’s not the only one ~learning and growing~ this week. Last week, Millin asked Winston to be her mentor, and he agreed. For a minute, it seemed like she regretted that decision when instead of letting her assist on a CABG surgery, he tells her to fish all of the undigested food out of Nora’s friend’s esophagus. Yum. But then, his true motivation is revealed: All of that esophageal practice in the skills lab is so that Millin can do her first — deep breath — transesophageal echocardiogram, which basically means sticking a scope down someone’s throat and looking at their heart. I’m going to have nightmares about this idea for at least a week, but they seem to agree it’s cool as hell, and I love that for them.
Adams, on the other hand, is still suffering. His classmates are all doing cool things like poking people’s brains and sticking cameras down people’s necks, and he’s stuck repeating his intern year, all for trying to save someone who was about to be dead anyway. It’s definitely a short-straw situation, and his unofficial mentor, Nick Marsh, seems to recognize that. Adams’s holdover situation feels especially unfair this week, as he saves a kidney-transplant patient from sepsis by catching his kidney thrombosis early.
Unfortunately, Nick is not the one Adams needs to convince that he doesn’t deserve to be held back (which will certainly hamper his medical career). Instead, that decision-maker would be the famously stubborn Catherine Fox. When asked how she might be persuaded, her husband, Webber, tells Adams a long story about a trip to the Maldives that basically boils down to a big, fat, “it’s not gonna happen.” Judging from Adams’s look when he meets his friends at the bar, this is not going to be the last we hear of this — and if someone doesn’t cut him some slack soon, I’m beginning to worry he’ll decide it isn’t worth sticking around, even for Simone.
The OR Board
• I’m really loving Marcus as a new face at Grey Sloan. He’s just the right blend of well intentioned, quirky, and subtly obnoxious. I’m hoping that over time, he becomes more of a character and less of a Gen-Z punch line — although, please, I beg, never make him stop saying “surge” instead of “surgery.”
• If Owen and Nora are really going to be a Thing, I’m going to need her to become a real person with interests and feelings besides liking Owen. For right now, she’s got the personality of an underwatered houseplant, which only makes me resent this whole ordeal more.
• This is not a new observation, but it’s wild how much Amelia has grown as a character. I wasn’t crazy about her whole Wonder Woman pose phase, but through the years, she’s come into her own both as a surgeon and mentor. I never thought I’d say this, but I could see her becoming chief of surgery one day? Then again, maybe not — she does still love pushing boundaries. We’ll see!