Spoilers for tonight's "Grey's Anatomy" coming up just as soon as I place a call to my psychic... If last week's "Sweet Surrender" was a mixture of parts of "Grey's" I love (Bailey with the dying girl, George helping out Alex) and things that make my teeth grind (Izzie the manic wedding planner), "No Good at Saying Sorry (One More Chance)" was more a combination of elements that are intriguing but underfed and aspects of the show I grudgingly tolerate. Its lows weren't as low, but nor were its highs as high.
The strongest part of the hour, by far, was Hunt struggling to be around Cristina, and Cristina missing the point entirely until she confronted him on the way home. Sandra Oh and Kevin McKidd have been superb whenever called upon in this story arc, and they've gotten more to do lately, but their story here felt a little crowded by all that was going on around it.
Other than that, we had a lot of parent/child conflicts to deal with, as Izzie had to play mother to her own mom (Sharon Lawrence, now specializing in these cougar roles, but seemingly miscast as proud trailer trash), Callie struggled with being financially cut off by her dad, Lexxie welcomed Thatcher's apology while Meredith ignored it(*), Meredith grappled with the Chief over his paternal attitude towards her, and with her involvement in the case of the little girl who shot her abusive daddy 18 times to protect herself and her mommy.
(*) While I can see why Lexxie might be so grateful to have her dad back in her life, I was actually expecting her to be a lot more upset by the apology than Meredith. Thatcher walked out of her life at an early age, and Meredith could basically give a toss about the guy. But he's much closer to Lexxie, and therefore I thought perhaps she'd feel even more betrayed than Meredith. How it played out didn't feel wrong; just not what I assumed it would be.
Now, I know it's a staple of these kinds of shows for the patient's story to in some way parallel the doctor's, but it always bothers me when the doctor then projects his or her emotional needs onto the patient, and Meredith has a tendency to do this every two or three episodes. I liked that the Chief called her out for yelling at the mom, then got frustrated when he let her off the hook. One of the stories of this season has been Meredith starting to grow up and get past her drama queen roots, and I'd like to think she might be able to keep her emotions in check in situations like this. I get that if she actually did things by the book, there might not be enough conflict to tell a story on a dramatic TV series, but this is never my favorite kind of "Grey's" Story.
Beyond that, I found it weird to see Kellie Martin on a hospital show watching a trauma scene as the relative of a patient and not as a doctor (and/or not being stabbed by David Krumholtz). Work's work, and her stint on "ER" ended, what, nine years ago? (Wow. Time flies.) But I spent a lot of time feeling nostalgic about "ER" last month, and so now every time I see Martin I think about Lucy Knight.
Two episodes to go in the season. I'm hoping the show goes out on a high note.
What did everybody else think?
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