Grey's: What God has joined together, let Shonda put asunder

Some brief thoughts on the last "Grey's Anatomy" episode until the strike ends coming up just as soon as I eat some eggs...

Dammit, they went and did it. Shonda and company went and split up the only happily married couple left on the show. Not that it was a shock after all the "Bailey's career is disrupting her marriage" subplots throughout the season, but I actually held out hope that, cheesey as it might have been, Tucker's accident might have brought her and hubbie back together. Can't have that, though, can we? Married people are boring. Obviously.

And yet in spite of that, I quite liked the rest of the episode. Turning the narration over to Bailey certainly helped, as did giving Chandra Wilson so many great scenes to play: running through her morning routine over and over to figure out whether she left the gate open, telling off Hahn (even though I think Hahn was absolutely right to toss her out and Miranda is too consumed with grief and pain to realize that), letting the Chief talk her into bringing in the healer, etc.

The healer storyline itself could have been the sort of cutesie-poo "Grey's" material I hate, but the casting of Glenne Headly and the scenes with Karev gave it enough gravitational pull that I didn't mind when they brought her in to save Tucker. (That scene, with all the characters out in the hall watching, gave the ep enough of a season finale feel that it almost seems okay they're shut down for a while.) And the Mrs. O'Malley story had Callie at by far her most likable (both in the scene where she complains to George about the baby clothes, and in the one where she talks about her brief stint in the family) since the whole quickie marriage thing happened last year. Sure, the latest Mer/Der break-up was a predictable snooze, but in an episode with this much Bailey -- even if part of it has to do with an arc I don't care for -- I can easily tune out those two.

What did everybody else think?