Episode 10: Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head.

Raindrops. You can say that again. I’m one season in, and it’s been on my mind that I should quit writing this blog. I’m writing whiny post after whiny post about a show that I hate, all for a paltry two hits a day. But today was a turning point. I’m not quitting anytime soon. I am rapidly moving through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief (more on this below), and it’s kind of fun to be publicly documenting it. This episode, the first of the second season, was far more interesting than any of the first season duds.

We found out at the end of last season that McDreamy is married. He is married to, and separated from, a smokin' redhead named Addison Adrienne Forbes Montgomery Shepherd. She is a neonatal surgeon, and a super-hotshot at that. While she and McDreamy were still together and living together in New York, she had an affair with McDreamy’s best friend, prompting McDreamy to leave her and move to Seattle. Addison has now arrived to Seattle, ostensibly for work, but we all know where this is going. On first seeing McDreamy with Meredith, she says of Meredith, “She seems sweet, which is what you were going for, right? The anti-Addison?”

                              McDreamy’s Ex. Attractive, mean, adulterous redhead. 

 
I actually have some experience with attractive but mean adulterous redheads, and I, too, hope for someone sweet on the next go-around. So I get that he went for sweet. Otherwise, though, Meredith is whiny, anorexic, boring, and a surgical intern, and I can’t imagine he’ll overlook these drawbacks for long. Not while he has the hot Addison trying to win back his affections. (Note to future self: be smarter than McDreamy is about to be: If she shows back up, don’t take her back.)

The real star of this episode is a type of brain surgery called a “standstill operation.” I’d never heard of this before, and when I tried to google “standstill” the only hits I got were Grey’s Anatomy episodes. Still, this type of surgery is a legitimate medical entity; it’s a brain surgery that can only be performed while the patient is cooled into hypothermia and the heart is stopped. It seems like it was more popular in the 90s than it is now, but it isn’t totally unheard of. Burke and McDreamy do the operation together, and, for once, Burke’s patient lives.

Cristina hasn’t told Burke that she’s pregnant, and before she gets a chance to, he breaks up with her. We’re meant to think that Burke has finally realized that dating an intern is a mistake, but some part of me thinks that the minute his surgical outcomes improve (they have been abysmal until now), he no longer needs sex with an intern to fill the void. Cristina ends the episode bereft, drinking in a bar with Meredith.

My favorite moment of the episode is the last scene, when Cristina tells Meredith that she has made her the emergency contact at the abortion clinic.

Cristine: “I needed to designate an emergency contact. That’s why I told you I’m pregnant. I put you down as my emergency contact. You’re my person.”

(Grey leans in and puts her head on Cristina’s shoulder.)

Christine: “You realize this constitutes hugging?”

Grey: “Shut up. I’m your person.”

I have heard people say before that the most interesting relationships on this show are the friendships, and this was one of the first moments on this show where I felt any deeper interest in any of these characters. Maybe it was the cute chatter, but maybe it’s because friendship is a theme that certainly resonates with me right now-I have amazing friends who have been there for me in a major way, and I’m so lucky to have the support I’ve had. Sorry, friends, that I’ve been so bitchy and negative these last weeks. And thank you, thank you, thank you for being my people in spite my flaws.

Best lines:

Bailey: “Who’s Dr. McDreamy? I’m doctor McDreamy. I’m tall, handsome, I like to lean against things and ponder the difficulties of dating beautiful women. Come on, I’m trying to be a surgeon here.”

Burke: “I noticed we’re both off tonight. I made reservations. I have a favorite restaurant.

Yang: “None of those were questions.”

Chief: “I just had brain surgery. I’m surrounded by fruit baskets.”

Alex: “Surgery is the only specialty where we don’t waste time getting to know the patients.”

Best line I’ve heard this week, actually from the movie Date Night: “You think I want to spend the rest of my life stealing wheelchairs for a living?”

ps: Those Kubler-Ross stages of grief? The ones we all learned for Psych 101 and in medical school? You know, the ones that were a theme of every single episode of "Touched by an Angel?" Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. They ring so true and I do feel like I'm moving swiftly towards acceptance here, which I was feeling really good about. Well, I was feeling pretty good until I reread an article from one of last year's New Yorkers: "The trouble is that [Kubler-Ross's theory] turns out largely to be a fiction, based more on anecdotal observation than empirical evidence" and oh, also, according to Slate, Kubler-Ross "went round the bend," becoming a believer in reincarnation and engaging in all sorts of odd behavior. Finally, she suffered a debilitating stroke, and was left to die alone. This is from one of her last interviews: '“I always leave the television on,” she says. “That way something is always moving.” An English muffin hardens next to her on a plate. She says that she got in the habit of saving food in case she is hungry later in the day. She seems as hauntingly alone as the patients she interviewed some thirty years earlier.'

Now I'm back to freaking out again.