Episode 30: Superstition

I got the last DVD for season 2 this week. I checked the hours and announced to GF, “Yay! Only five hours in this miserable season left!”

And she said, “You know this is entirely voluntary, right?”

I guess. Voluntary in the sense that I have a grant due and I’m back on the wards soon and I am therefore very busy but I’m still sitting up late at night, watching Grey’s. I would have watched sooner, wanted to watch over the holiday, but my entire family was in town for the weekend and my father hijacked my computer and used it to play online bridge for four solid days. I couldn’t write, watch, or take notes on episodes. In addition to this little injustice, my parents broke my TV, jammed my printer, turned on my oven and then promptly left the house for hours, and left my milk out to spoil. Yes, one would think, if he or she saw my house, that my Thanksgiving consisted one giant frat party, starring my parents as “the seniors.” At one point, GF’s sister came to my house and looked around and saw the oven that they had left on, the milk that was sitting out, and said, “They’re like children.” Yes. Yes, they are, and I don’t understand it. Maybe they’re trying to get back at me for once being a child myself.

Because my parents broke my television, I was forced buy a new one, which meant that over two days, I went to Best Buy 5 times. I bought and returned 2 different TVs that had problems (I will never buy an "open box" item again). By the end, I was so furious I couldn't see straight. I now have a TV at my house but have not yet been able to force myself to take it out of the box. Purchasing it was exhausting enough. And then there was the pain of Grey's. This was one of the episodes when the writing was worse than usual. I wouldn’t even call it “filler.” More like “garbage.” Some important plot points emerge, no doubt, but I spent most of the time rolling my eyes saying “For God’s sake! Is it too much to ask for a single episode with good writing??”

The opener:

 “My college campus has a magic statue. It’s a tradition for students to rub its nose for good luck. My freshman roommate really believed in it and insisted on rubbing its nose before every exam. Studying might have been a better idea. She flunked out her sophomore year. But, we all have little superstitious things that we do. If it's not believing in magic statues, it's avoiding sidewalk cracks or always putting our left shoe on first. Knock on wood. Step on a crack, break your mother's back. The last thing we want to do is offend the gods."

This is a clue that Meredith went to Dartmouth, where students rub the nose of a statue of Warner Bentley in the Hopkins Center for the Arts for good luck. This was the replacement of an older tradition in which students rubbed the nose of a bust of Craven Laylock, an 1896 Dartmouth graduate. Although this practice sounds odd, it turns out that rubbing bronze body parts is a common practice in the Ivy League. Brown students rub the nose of Secretary of State John Hay. Harvardians pat the toes of Ralph Waldo Emerson in Sever Hall. Harvard magazine recently published an article stating that the shoe of another statue, John Harvard, hasbeen damaged by "thousands of visitors a year who rub it for luck.”

Back in “Seattle,” (a.k.a. Prospect Studios in Los Feliz, CA, where Grey’s is filmed. I thought it looked way too sunny to be Seattle), the chief takes care of an old friend who used to be his AA sponsor. The former AA sponsor is played by Mary Kay Place, who has been in countless movies and TV shows. I won’t linger on Ms.Place’s career or the bad medicine the chief is offering her because it’s not interesting. However, we do find out that the chief has been in recovery ever since his affair with Ellis Grey. Yes, it was the affair with Meredith’s mother that drove him to rock bottom and into AA.

All I can see when I look at her is Roman Grant's evil scheming sister-wife on Big Love.  I suppose this is the danger of wearing a bun and pioneer clothing on television. It might also be known as the "Melissa Gilbert Effect."

In other ridiculous news, Denny needs yet another open heart surgery (something about a clot) but Burke won’t do the surgery because his hideous yellow surgical caps have gone missing (a fact he cares about because this is the episode on “Superstition” but maybe also because he already killed someone today, a result consistent with his other terrible surgical outcomes.). 

Nice yellow cap. I find it strange that both the women and men on the show wear the slick surgical caps. As a medical student, I wore such a cap only once, and I couldn't figure out why the anesthesiologist called me "Tom" for the entire case. Only later did I realize it was because women are "supposed" to wear the poofy bouffant caps and men wear the sleek tiebacks. Change it up and gender confusion is the result.

George and Izzie, a.k.a. Burke’s little watchdog and Denny’s future lover, find out that Cristina is in possession of one of the lucky caps, but she is holding the cap hostage (of course she is). Antics ensue as they chase her all over the hospital.

This is the way most surgical interns spend their days, I'm pretty sure (this is actual dialogue from this scene):  
CRISTINA: "This is the women's restroom."
GEORGE: "Give me the cap!"
CRISTINA: "That's my breast."

Cristina offers to return the cap to Burke in exchange for kicking George out of the house. See, she walked in on Burke and George blowing each other’s horns the other night and she can’t get the picture out of her head:

Some part of me thinks this plotline, the one where Burke and George are supposed to be "bonding," is what drove the Isiah Washington/TR Knight situation into crisis mode. Put a then-closeted homosexual and a homophobe together in scenes where they are in elevators together, engaging in sweaty, back-slapping after "exercising,"  and this "blowing each other's horns" moment and there's going to be off-screen tension.

Later, Izzie confronts Cristina about the cap situation with the best line of the episode:

IZZIE: "I swear to god, Cristina... I like you. I really do. But I grew up in a trailer park and I am not above kicking your pampered little Beverly Hills ass."

Izzie also breaks up with Alex because she is falling for Denny, her patient. So problematic.

ALEX: "What? You're breaking up with me over a corpse!"
IZZIE: "No! No! I'm breaking up with you because... on your very best day, that corpse... is twice the man you will ever be. You're not good enough for me, Alex. You're not good enough for anyone."

In the meantime, Meredith gets coffee or maybe hot chocolate from Addison, as part of a form of bribery Addison calls “juju.” I am familiar with hospital bribery. I used to bring all sorts of treats for the nurses so they would be nice to me. It totally worked, although I gained 30 pounds in the process because I always ate some of what I brought in. I’ve lost most of that 30 pounds, but certainly not all.

Anyway, Meredith throws out the hot drink (an action referred to as “dissing the juju”) and heads to the ER where she is caring for a girl who claims to have been struck by lighting while in her boyfriend’s yard. Later, we find out the patient has no boyfriend and wasn’t struck by lightning. What’s the point? I don’t know, but the patient dies of internal bleeding. Good story, writers. I hope you tell another just like it. Oh, I forgot, you probably will, next week.

McDreamy at one point says, “It’s a beautiful afternoon to save lives, people.” Then that patient dies, too. Something about obsessive compulsive disorder and a head bleed. Still, I’m going to recite that line that to my team every day next week.

Yeah, both of you in the gurneys will be dead in less than 43 minutes, not counting commercials. Bummer. Also, since when do interns transfer patients? This is not an educational activitiy.

All in all, a downer of an episode, but there's still a moral:

“Superstition lies in the space between what we can control and what we can't. Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck. No one wants to pass up a chance for good luck. But does saying it 33 times really help? Is anyone actually listening? Why do we bother doing those strange things? We rely on superstitions because we're smart enough to know we don't have all the answers and that life works in mysterious ways. Don't diss the juju, from wherever it comes."

The part of the episode that rings the most true for me is a conversation Cristina has with Bailey and Izzie:

CRISTINA: "This is great. No blood, no guts, no lives to save. It's dead quiet..."
IZZIE: "Cristina!?"
MIRANDA: "Yang, did you really just say that?"
CRISTINA: "Say what?"
GEORGE: "The 'q' word."
IZZIE: "That's like saying 'Macbeth' in the theater."

I can’t tell you how many times I have refused to answer the question “How is your day going?” I so want to say “slow” but fear the sh*t that statement may bring on me. So I say, “I’m not going to comment on that right now,” with a little tension in my voice. Why? (Here's my moral, for once it's the same as Meredith's): All doctors are superstitious. There’s so much we can’t control that we have to pretend to control something lest we lose our minds.

Episode 29: Band Aid Covers the Bullet Hole

CHIEF: "Yang, what is that smell?"
CRISTINA: "That's feces, sir. Baby feces."

CHIEF: “Are you having trouble with that diaper, Yang?”

CRISTINA: “No, sir. I have an MD from Stanford and a PhD from Berkley. I can handle this diaper.”

Yes, this was a stinker of an episode. This stinker of an episode only increased my annoyance with my worse stinker of a day.

Everything I touched today turned to, well, feces. Among other things, I: spilled a pan of boiling oil all over my girlfriend’s kitchen (she’s OK, but her leather boots and kitchen rug are ruined. And don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking: Get your minds out of the gutter. It was a cooking accident.); dipped the sleeve of my sweater into a pint of ice cream; dropped my phone and shattered the screen; got into an argument with every member of my family; and, after an unfortunate “women in medicine” dinner last night where a reproductive endocrinologist repeatedly asked me questions like, “You’re how old?”, I spent the day fretting about my conflict of career, relationship, and reproductive future.

I also have some fancy degrees, Dr. Yang, but I’m not sure I can handle this diaper.

MEREDITH: [narrating] "As doctors, patients are always telling us how they'd do our jobs. Just stitch me up, slap a band-aid on it and send me home. It’s easy to suggest a quick solution, when you don’t know much about the problem or you don’t understand the underlying cause or just how deep the wound is. The first step toward a real cure is to know exactly what the disease is to begin with. But that’s not what people want to hear... We're supposed to forget the past that led us here, ignore the future complications that might arise and go for the quick fix."

Let me first say that I’m not sure that this in any way true-maybe it’s true for surgeons, but for the most part, nobody except the most simple of patients ask for a quick fix from me. Most know it's more complicated than that.

Among the Grey’s crew, attempts at “quick fixes” include:

1. George cuts his hair to combat his emotional turmoil:

ALEX: What’s with O’Malley’s hair? He looks like a hobbit.

 

Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo?

2. Because she can't figure out another childcare option, Bailey brings her baby to work and forces Cristina to babysit:

Yeah, I'll back you up if you go to the ACGME over this.

She gives advice over the phone from the OR:

MIRANDA: "Let me hear him cry!"
CRISTINA: "What?"
MIRANDA: "Let me hear him cry! That's cry number four. He's hungry."

Bringing a one-month old to the hospital violates federal law, common sense, and standards for professionalism

OK, I must comment here that this baby is less than two months old and any good doctor knows that babies younger than two months have no immune systems. If they get a fever, they get a full “sepsis workup,” including a lumbar puncture. Bringing him to the hospital was not very responsible, Dr. Bailey. Of course, the hospital is required by law to give you three full months of maternity leave, which I’m pretty sure you didn’t get or didn’t take.

3. A couple who choose to ignore the woman’s possibly fatal aneurysm so they can run off to Paris.The result? The patient presents with “fork in the neck” sign (don't even ask) and gets a subsequent off-the-wall neurosurgical escapade by McDreamy.

So, how long ago did you notice that you had a fork sticking out of your neck?

4. Izzie seems to be dating her patient, Denny the heart failure guy. 

He can date, but he can't breathe. And soon he won't have a pulse.

Aside from the fact that her attendings should take her off this case immediately and prevent her from engaging in further inappropriate behavior, Izzie offers Denny’s “quick fix:” the placement of a left ventricular assist device, which is a device that helps the heart circulate blood. Such devices are considered a “bridge to transplant.” Other famous people with LVADs? Well, there aren’t many, but there is Dick Cheney. According to ABC, the device means that he “no longer has a pulse” because his heart now works more like a fish tank's continuous pump rather than an intermittent pump:

Jon Stewart says this indicates that “He’s more machine, now, than man.”

On the Grey’s front, Alex is the only one to correctly assess Izzie’s situation:

ALEX: You’re his doctor and he’s your half-dead, soon to be all-dead patient.”

IZZIE: “I can’t believe you said that”

ALEX: “Someone’s got to.”

5. George is in a plotline with that orthopedic surgeon and a hockey player who cuts off his own finger. Whatever.

6. Addie is told she resembles a “young Catherine Deneuve.”

I’m not sure what this has to do with anything, and I don’t think it’s even true.

Catherine Deneuve. She was hot in that lesbian vampire movie.

And then the moral:

MEREDITH: [narrating] "As doctors, as friends, as human beings, we all try to do the best we can. But the world is full of unexpected twists and turns. Just when you’ve gotten the lay of the land, the ground underneath you shifts. It knocks you off your feet. If you're lucky, you end up with nothing more than a flesh wound, something a band-aid will cover. But some wounds are deeper than they first appear, and require more than just a quick fix. With some wounds, you have to rip of the band-aid, let them breathe and give them time to heal."


OK, I'm ready to feel better now. Shouldn't the reading of the moral confer some degree of stress relief? 


Waiting.

Episode 28: What have I done to deserve this?

You may have heard that the northeast corridor was recently walloped by a snowstorm in late October. After that storm, I know why trees lose their leaves during the winter. It turns out that 8 inches of heavy wet snow falling on trees that are still full of leaves results in branches that bend, crack, and then fall on power lines and houses and cars. 

This is not my car, thank goodness, but it is my neighbor's car. Even worse, it was the only car parked on the street. True bad parking luck. What did they do to deserve this? The Grey's writers think they know..read on.

There were more than a million people without power during the storm, and I was one of them. On my 3^rd day without power, in my dark 40-degree house lacking TV, DVR, cable, or Internet, with just a few Grey’s DVDs and a couple of half-charged computers, I faced a question that has been on my mind since this task began: if Grey’s Anatomy were the last show on earth, the last possible form of entertainment available to me, would I watch it by choice?

The answer is: yes, I would. But I would be cursing my luck the entire time. And I would be repeatedly asking myself, “What have I done to deserve this?” These facts make this Grey’s episode all the more fitting.

GF and I actually had a tough few days. At first, it was a little bit fun. We made s’mores over the fire and nestled down for a chilly afternoon, but after a day without power, when I had driven to every gas station in a 30 mile radius and had found only one open, with a two hour wait to get to the pump, I started feeling like I was just a scantily-clad Tina Turner away from “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.” 

I was also basically wearing this outfit while fighting every other desperate driver in this town for the last gas pump, which makes the Mad Max comparison all the more real.

Later that night, when we were freezing in the house and my poor GF with bronchitis couldn’t stop coughing, I started to feel more like I was in a Charles Dickens novel. It was only the next day, when they emergently called me into work and the hospital was so full that there were cots in every conference room full did I start to feel a tiny bit like a character in Grey’s Anatomy. Well, I felt like a Grey’s character, less the medical tomfoolery (I didn't see a single spontaneous orgasm, for example) and the attending-intern hookups, of course.

Grey’s aside for one moment, you be wondering why the hospital so full. We had patients with carbon monoxide poisoning (from their improperly installed generators), burns (fireplaces), and falls (walking around in the dark), and a bunch of people who were cold and had nowhere else to go.

So I’m glad to be back in the land of electricity, heat, hot water, and open gas stations. Although I watched a lot of Grey’s I’m sad to admit I didn’t take notes, so I’ll have to re-watch the episodes in order to take pictures and blog about them. Sorry, people, but this blog doesn’t write itself. And I couldn’t very well take notes and pictures while using my computer to watch the show. Geez.

Back to episode 28. George and Meredith, fresh from their hookup, are skulking around miserably the entire episode.

CRISTINA: [referring to George] "What is with him?"
ALEX: "Okay, 50 bucks O'Malley caught her doing McDreamy."
IZZIE: "McDreamy?"
ALEX: "Did I just call the dude McDreamy?"
CRISTINA: "Oh, you know you did."
ALEX: [to Izzie] "You are ruining my life."

I mean,  all this awkwardness is a little ridiculous given that this is Meredith, who has hooked up with half of Seattle. You’d think she’d know how to handle a trick after she’s done with him:

ALEX: [to Meredith] "That's what you do. When you feel sorry for yourself, you get drunk and sleep with inappropriate men. It's okay. I find it charming."

But instead of explaining herself, Meredith trudges around telling everyone she’s a bad person, leading George to take over the job of “monologue.”

George: “Okay, so, sometimes even the best of us make rash decisions. Bad decisions. Decisions we pretty much know we're going to regret the moment, the minute, especially the morning after. I mean, maybe not regret, regret because at least, you know, we put ourselves out there. But...still. Something inside us decides to do a crazy thing. A thing we know will probably turn around and bite us in the ass. Yet, we do it anyway. What I'm saying is...we reap what we sow. what comes around goes around. It's karma and, any way you slice it...karma sucks.”

So the episode is about karma. I’m a karma-doubter. Look at this Buddhist explanation of karma:

“What is the cause, what is the reason, O Lord," questioned a young truth seeker of the Buddha, "that we find amongst mankind the short-lived and long-lived, the healthy and the diseased, the ugly and beautiful, those lacking influence and the powerful, the poor and the rich, the low-born and the high-born, and the ignorant and the wise?"

The Buddha’s reply was:

"All living beings have actions (Karma) as their own, their inheritance, their congenital cause, their kinsman, their refuge. It is Karma that differentiates beings into low and high states."

So basically, if you’re poor, ugly, or otherwise unfortunate, it’s your own fault. Those starving kids in Africa? Don’t send them your Midwestern leftovers. Their lot is their own fault. Patients with cancer? Ditto. Given these harsh and ridiculous implications of this definition, I've realized that this is not the usual popular culture definition of “karma.” The popular definition of karma is better captured by another quote: "We are the heirs of our own actions."

This karma interpretation plays out in the episode a few ways: Addison contracts poison oak after popping a squat during a dog walk. She claims that the poison oak is the result of her tryst with Mark back in New York. Presumably, she doesn’t think he had anything directly to do with the poison oak in her backyard in Seattle. Rather, poison oak is karmic retribution for cheating on McDreamy. I found this plotline to be a little confusing at first, because I initially interpreted her uncomfortable squirming to be not poison-oak-itchiness but the “Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID) shuffle" (a patient develops a shuffling gait to reduce jostling to the pelvis-because of cervical motion and general pelvic tenderness associated with PID, a sexually transmitted disease). Contracting PID wouldn’t be karma so much as cause and effect (have unprotected sex with someone who has an STD and you might get a disease) and, given the timing, it would have made more sense that she caught it from McDreamy rather than Mark.

It's easy to mistake Addison's itchy waddle for the "pelvic infammatory disease shuffle." Or maybe just a serious wedgie.

In other news, there is a gay couple who have a child with a head bleed. I don’t know what they (or, especially the kid) did to deserve a near-death experience, but judging from their outfits, I suspect the charges stem from a fashion violation. Once again, Grey's gets the gays wrong. Do you know any gay men (including gay dads) who would wear a brown suit, a mustard shirt and a sh*t brown striped tie? Spontaneous orgasms I'll buy. But this? It's too far fetched. (Although I sort of believe in fashion karma.)

It was a crime of fashion.

In other news, Alex seduces Izzie with a cupcake, but despite his elaborate schemes, she's still falling for the transplant guy.

As I watched the scene, I said to GF, "You know, a cupcake is the perfect way to seduce me." I think she heard me but was so busy rolling her eyes she didn't take the time to write it down.

The real question, though, is what we as viewers did to deserve the worst things we get in this episode: actors fake crying.

First, Addison fake-cries over her poison oak:

If I ever claimed that she was attractive, I take it back. She has officially jumped the shark with this one.

Then we find out that Meredith freaked out and "cried" during her hookup with George, and he panicked and left the room, meaning that they never actually slept together.

Meredith takes whining to a whole new level. I think right before this, George said, "Don't cry. I was just messing with you when I told you there were calories in your toothpaste."

What did George do to deserve this? Nothing I can see. And it gets worse. First, the entire program finds out that he and Meredith hooked up and that it was a disaster. Then he falls down the stairs and dislocates his shoulder. Finally, he ends up moving in with Cristina and Burke! Cristina asks the question that all surgeons ask before every admission:

PRESTON: "You're a good person."
CRISTINA: "No, I'm not."
PRESTON: "You're helping a friend."
CRISTINA: "Are his problems surgical?"
PRESTON: "No."
CRISTINA: "Then we can't help him."

And then George reads the moral: "Karma evens the score. And even when we're about to do something we know will tempt karma to bite us in the ass...well, it goes without say. We do it anyway." 

OK, I admit it. I found a 5 dollar bill in the hospital parking lot last week and I kept it because I couldn't figure out who to turn it into. Then a snowstorm hit my house and we lost power for days. It's ridiculous to think the two could be related. No way. Although...it does kind of make wonder what my neighbor did to have that happen to his car.

Episode 27: Yesterday

First, the bad news. I went on to Netflix today and decided to count how many Grey’s episodes are left. What I found was upsetting, to say the least: I have 10 episodes left in season 2 (unbelievable! Seriously! This has been going on too long!), 25 episodes in season 3, 17 episodes in season 4, 24 episodes in season 5, 24 episodes in season 6, and 22 episodes in season 7! Go ahead, do the math: I have 122 episodes left and just over 100 days until my “breakup anniversary,” Valentine’s Day! So this means that today is the day that I am admitting failure. There is no way I can finish all of the episodes in less than 365 days. Like a Biggest Loser, contestant, though, some part of me wants to “finish.” And so, I trudge on, even though I have failed in my original task. Yes, I vow to keep watching episodes and blogging as long as I can keep it up.

On to "Yesterday." The narrative to this episode reads like they added it after the fact, because it bears very little relevance to what the episode was about:

Meredith: "After careful consideration and many sleepless nights, here’s what I've decided. There's no such thing as a grown-up. We move out, we move away from our families. But the basic insecurities, the fears and all the old wounds just grow up with us...for the most part, we're still a bunch of kids, running around the playground, trying desperately to fit in."

OK, except you're scrubbing in on surgery and writing orders for narcotics. I'm not saying this makes you a grown-up (the banter in the last orthopedic surgery I witnessed as a medical student enforced this fact. It was like hanging out with a bunch of junior high boys. Four hours of vibrator jokes. Attending: "Hey, why am I buying my wife a vibrator?" Resident: "I don't know. Why are you buying your wife a vibrator?" Etc. Four hours. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.). No, what makes you a grown up is the episode you ran in season 1 that was all about how you're all grown up.

Anyway, the scene opens with Meredith serving her demented mother coffee in what may be the world's nicest nursing home. Let me say that Meredith's mother's dementia is like no dementia I've ever seen. She doesn't wander off or remove her clothes inappropriately or forget who her daughter is. No, her dementia seems to exist as a time warp where she is forever trapped in her intern year. If that doesn't sound like hell, I don't know what does, but she seems to enjoy reminiscing about call-room hookups and other hijinks. 

Nursing home? This looks like a Folger's commercial. Dementia should be so neat. This is dementia minus sundowning, incontinence, swallowing problems, atypical psychotic medications, and sad, confused, hollow eyes. And plus coffee. Although there's notably no evidence that people with dementia are actually unhappy. As my dementia researcher friend says, 'Ignorance really is bliss."

We move on to rounds, where Meredith presents the first medical mishap of the episode: “Stage 3 B non-small cell lung cancer. He has had extensive chemo and radiotherapy to which the tumor was not responsive. He is admitted for radical resection.”

Huh? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Stage 3B non-small cell lung cancer is defined as a tumor that has spread to distant lymph nodes, has invaded other structures in the chest (such as the heart or esophagus), or has a malignant pleural effusion (fluid build-up containing cancer cells between the layers lining the lungs). For the vast majority of patients, Stage 3 B is inoperable, especially after “extensive chemo and radiotherapy to which the tumor is unresponsive.” The other problem with this scenario is that other than his oxygen via nasal cannula, the guy looks as healthy as a horse. He doesn’t look like someone who has undergone “extensive chemo and radio therapy.” But…OK. 

"End-stage cancer patient" He looks healthier than me. Of course, he has removed his nasal cannula for this shot so you might be thrown off. It's amazing how far nasal prongs can go in convincing us someone is sick. It's the oldest nursing trick in the book. Me: 'He looks horrible." Nurse: "Yes, we just put him on 2 L to see if he would perk up."

I'm not complaining too much because operating on inoperable lung cancer is NOTHING compared to the other major medical plotlines in this episode. The first is a woman who is having “spontaneous orgasms.” I guess that spontaneous orgasms are not unheard of (apparently, it’s called Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome or PSAS. The link might make you think it's a real medical entity, but note that the link references an article in Playboy called, "The Woman Who Could Think Herself Off," so I’m not sure it’s considered “class IA” evidence in the medical world.) The bigger crime is that the surgeons of Grey’s take this woman to surgery! For what, I ask? What might they possibly be surgerizing? Brain? Genitals? Your guess is as good as mine. The writers don’t even attempt to explain the surgery because there is no possible medical explanation. (My favorite piece of the puzzle is that at one point, Izzie seems to be doing a prenatal-style ultrasound on the patient, for unclear reasons).

The best thing about this plotline is that I was watching this scene when GF walked into the room, saw the woman moaning, making faces and pointing her toes. GF looks at the screen, looks at me and says, "So, what's going on here?" I answered, "Oh, that patient is having spontaneous orgasms." To which GF answered, 'Of course she is," and then turned and left the room.

And then there’s the most ridiculous plot of all-Mark Sloan is back in town, and creating havoc every way he can. He’s cute, for sure, and he immediately hits on Meredith:
 
MARK: "You and I are the dirty mistresses."
MEREDITH: "I suppose we are. Why do you think that is?"
MARK: "My $400-dollar-an-hour shrink says it’s because behind this rugged and confident exterior, I'm self-loathing and self-destructive to an almost pathological degree."
MEREDITH: "We have a lot in common." 

This is what seeing a cute television plastic surgeon will do to a bunch of television interns. In real life, it's much more awkward.

CRISTINA: "McSexy?"
MEREDITH: "That's not right."
IZZIE: "McYummy?"
CRISTINA: "Mmm... no."
MEREDITH: "McSteamy."
CRISTINA: "There it is!"
IZZIE: "Yup."
GEORGE: "Allow me to choke back some McVomit.

And Mark is trying to win back Addison.

Although Addison is displaying the universal symbol for "Stop, your cologne is overwhelming, your scruff is too calculated, and you just hit on the woman my husband used to sleep with," Mark is still thinking he might score.

Worst of all, though, Mark arrives in Seattle from New York and immediately begins practicing medicine without a license. He offers to perform some kind of facial reconstruction to a patient with Craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, also known as “lionitis” also known as the “disease that made Eric Stoltz famous for his role in the movie Mask.”

Before the facial reconstruction even starts, though, McDreamy kills the kid with a brain-surgery botch that results in a fatal hemorrhage. Mark then completes the facial reconstruction on the now-dead kid. I wonder if they got the family’s consent for that one?

Geez, Eric Stoltz has not aged a day since "Mask." All this episode was missing was Cher.

In other character development news (literally, nothing has happened all season and now suddenly it’s all happening in one episode!), Meredith tracks down her father (who appears to be the parent from whom she got her weeny, whiny, wet-blanket personality. Still, he doesn’t seem like a bad guy, so why hasn’t she seen him in 20 years? Parental visitation doesn’t exist in this world?) and George confesses his love to Meredith, finally, and although we all know that she’s not that into him, it looks like she might make a mistake and sleep with him.

GEORGE: [to Meredith] "Hi. I... I know I'm not a world-renowned surgeon, and... I know I'm not a lot of things you've gone for in the past. I know that. But... I would never leave you. I would never hurt you. And I will never stop loving you."

You didn't hear me wrong. That's not Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis in "Top Gun." That's George and Meredith.

Now this one IS Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis. I remembered this shot as vertical but it looks horizontal here.

Most interestingly, George and Burke give their beloved women almost the same monologue without either hearing the other deliver the speech. Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?

PRESTON: [enters his apartment] "I am Preston Burke. I am a widely renowned cardio-thoracic surgeon. I am a professional and moreover I am a good, kind person. I am a person that cleans up after himself. I am a great cook. And you? You are an unbelievable slob. A slovenly, angry intern. I am Preston Burke. And you... are the most competitive, guarded, stubborn... the most challenging person I have ever met. And I love you. Why the hell won't you just let me?
CRISTINA: "I gave up my apartment 20 minutes ago."
PRESTON: [pauses] "Well, alright then."

And the moral:

“I've heard that it’s possible to grow up. I've just never met anyone who’s actually done it. Without parents to defy, we break the rules we make for ourselves. We throw tantrums when things don’t go our way. We whisper secrets with our best friend in the dark. We look for comfort where we can find it. And we hope against all logic, against all experience. Like children, we never give up hope.”

Huh? I think this refers to George “taking a chance” with Meredith, but truthfully, given George’s unrequited love, the moral maybe should be, “There are some times when giving up hope is your best option.” (Like when you have 122 episodes and less than 100 days.) Feel free to propose other alternatives to this moral in comments.

Although...and not to give the writers too much credit here, but...OK. I have a new reader, someone who knows me in real life, who has taken hope from this blog. She read the first entries, saw how unhappy I was, and realized that I'm so much happier today, just 260-some days after those first sad narratives. So...maybe, sometimes, it's OK to hope? I don't usually let such drivel slip by, but I (and this blog) may be proof that sometimes, hope is (Don't say it. Don't say it. Don't say it.) just what the doctor ordered. (Oh, God, you said it.) Yeah, I'll hear it for that one. Somewhere in surgeryland, Dr. McAwesome just threw up a little bit..

Episodes 25 and 26: It’s the end of the world (as we know it)

[to be sung to the tune of “It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)" by REM. My advice? Push play on the video and read the post below along with the music]:

Dreamscape complete with teary haze.

That’s great. It starts with a dreamscape, OR craze, and

teary haze. Meredith is quite afraid.

Premonitions, death dreams, gratuitous lesbian shower scenes,

Screaming woman, chest wounds, Bailey’s water broke on George’s shoes,

Ricci’s hand into the chest

Bleed, where bombs sleep

The ORs start to clatter with fear, fright, flight, hype

Car wreck and a head bleed, Bailey’s hub to OR 3, neurosurg emergency with

A bomb on site

Alex is a-coming in a hurry with a fury not to

move that hand

Team by team the surgeons baffled, trumped, tethered, cropped

Look at that chief reign

Fine, then,

Uh-oh, trombones, drums roll, change of tunes from indie tones

“Save yourself, Save yourself!”

But what does Bailey’s husband need with that subarachnoid bleed

McDreamy sticking with the husband cause it’s right. Right.

Izzie idiotic, in a closet with that Alex who is feeling pretty psyched

It’s the end of the show as we know it.

It’s the end of the show as we know it.

It’s the end of the show as we know it.

It jumped the shark.

40 minutes/TV hour. Next week we’ll have Nielson Power.
We know you will return to see if all the ORs burn
Scrubbed in, bomb holding, silly plot is still unfolding,
Every move could escalate, subsequent incinerate
Lots of drama, lots of tension. Hold still, hold still,

Watch your hand rush, rush. Uh-oh, this means no fear, Meredith.
Who will you end up with? Season after season after season after you will pine, yet:
“Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.”

It's the end of the show as we know it.
It's the end of the show as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the show as we know it (It's time I had some time alone).

It jumped the shark.

It's the end of the show as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the show as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the show as we know it (It's time I had some time alone).

It jumped the shark.

It's the drama for our times, residents with crazy lives. 
Everyone else makes it but the 

Bomb Squad Guy dies?
Christina Ricci, Meredith and Preston Burke.

Bailey's husband, Alex, Sandra Oh! Whoa!
Egoistic, narcissistic, G.A. cast.

Right? Right.

It's the end of the show as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the show as we know it. (It's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the show as we know it (It's time I had some time alone)

And I feel fine.

Gratuitous lesbian shower scenes

Bailey's water broke on George's shoes. She does not yet know that her husband, after a car wreck on the way to the hospital, would soon be Derek's patient

Christina Ricci guest starring as a paramedic who puts her hand into a patient's chest wound. A chest wound that contains a bomb. Yes, that is Christina Ricci's hand, displaying the true meaning of the phrase "The opposite of sex."

If I had a nickel for every Xray with a foreign object that they've displayed on this show...I'd have at least a dollar.

Izzie idiotic, in a closet. Alex is feeling pretty psyched.

Offer her solutions, offer her alternatives, and she declines.

Maybe my take was a little harsh, but these episodes do seem to represent the weeks the show jumped the shark. The plot is ridiculous, unbelievable, and far afield from the "medical drama" this show was supposed to be. To me, the question is not "has it jumped the shark?"  but "Can it rise from the dead?"

For those who missed it, the episode ends like this: the bomb goes off just outside the OR and everyone is somehow fine except the bomb squad guy, who is dead. To indicate all that Meredith has been through in this day, in the last scene they give her a neat little scratch on her forehead. Never mind that she was 30 feet from a bomb blast that showered her with debris and the force of which slammed her head against the floor incredibly hard. 

The TV version of a traumatic experience = a neat little scratch.

Episode moral: If you knew this was your last day on earth, how would you want to spend it?

My answer: I don't know, but definitely not watching this show. 

Episode 24: Break on Through

Thanks for all the comments on the last post. The GF, who tends to comment in person rather than online said about it, “Wow, that post was a little…process-y, don’t you think?” Now, I cannot reveal GF’s real name, of course, but suffice to say that in addition to being a spin instructor, she is vaguely sort of Internet-famous. Her blog is very newsy and academic, sort of the opposite of process-y, meaning that comment was not really a compliment. Still, I guess I should just be glad that she at least reads the blog. I’ve had GFs who never read a single blog post of mine (back when I had a different blog).

I just turned in a huge grant (a day before the deadline, thank you very much) which means that the last thing I want to see right now is single-spaced Arial 11 point font (the standard font for federal grants and, apparently, this blog) and I’m also suffering from some serious post-grant letdown. I came home from turning in the grant to discover that my sewage pipe has backed up into my basement, making all of my plumbing unusable. Seeing as I’m literally knee-deep in, well, sh*t (more like ankle-deep, but still, you get my point), I’m shacked up at GF’s house until I can get a plumber in (to make this situation more sticky, I have been picking fights with her for days because I’ve been stressed out and pissed off about the grant). I also discovered, after turning the grant in, that I haven’t done any other work in 2 weeks or more, so I have a pile of stuff that needs my attention immediately. And although, for the last month (since September 7), I worked out like a fiend and counted calories, keeping my daily intake to 1500-2000 calories, I somehow gained three pounds. Ridiculous. Irritating. Pass me the macaroni and cheese and ice cream because I clearly live in opposite world where nothing is fair so I might as well eat whatever the heck I feel like eating.

Meanwhile, at Seattle Grace, there’s a nurses’ strike going on. The hospital is 2 million dollars short and is mandating overtime rather than hiring new nurses. The theme of the episode is “Lines we can’t cross,” so George is in a tricky “can’t cross the line” situation. He is unable to cross the picket line because of his working class values (hinted at in a previous episode where his family took him hunting) but, as a doctor, he believes he is not allowed to strike. Where does he get this idea? In 1998, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA, FACP (then Chair of ACP-ASIM's Ethics and Human Rights Committee,  now head of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundaton) said that the problem with physician unions is that "One of the major tactics that unions use is to strike, to withhold services. If our professional ethic dictates that our services are to benefit our patients and we withhold them to get a gain that will benefit us directly, it creates a conflict." But don’t be fooled! Doctors have gone on strike, in the 1960s in Canada in response to the beginning their national health insurance program, and more recently, over reimbursement and hours in England and Israel. There have been isolated incidents of doctors’ strikes the in the US, so although most US doctors believe striking violates their professional oath, it’s actually a point of contention within the medical community whether striking is a tool that should sometimes be used. The interns in the episode quote the gospel of “doctors can’t strike,” but it’s not strictly true. It’s probably truer that most doctors wouldn’t strike over nursing overtime. Most of the doctors strikes in the past seem to be linked to physician concerns over patient quality of care or to physician reimbursement. And there’s one good way that (hospital-based) doctors can strike: keep seeing patients, but refuse to submit billing documentation. Then doctors don’t violate their oath but the hospital loses the revenue. In the end, George does not cross the picket line.

The "Proud to be a nurse" sign is funny. But why?

Inside the hospital, Meredith has made a classic six-month-intern mistake: with the nurses on strike, she walks into a room of a patient with respiratory failure and immediately intubates the patient, temporarily saving her life. The problem, and the sixth-month-intern aspect of the whole thing, is that the woman is DNR/DNI-the intubation should never have happened. In classic early-trainee fashion, she ran the code pretty darn well. 

Not bad technique. But you should've checked the chart first.

She just made the huge mistake of not looking at the chart first. Meredith is then surrounded by friends of the woman, one of whom hits her with a giant handbag for making the mistake. (Good one! Hit her a little harder. I’m pretty sure she’ll keel right over, given her desperate need for a sandwich.) Instead of immediately extubating the patient, Meredith demands a signed power of attorney form (odd, given the giant “DNR” on the chart) from the patient’s daughter. The friends, who are not the power of attorney, are a cute but contrived trio of television-style old ladies (thin, energetic, laxative-commercial types). They talk on and on, and some of the dialogue is kind of hilarious:

“Her daughter? She’s a lesbian. Well that’s OK, isn’t it? She can still be the power of attorney.”

What the actors were actually saying to each other when the camera was off: "Haven't we met before? Oh, yes, that laxative commercial we did together. Or was it adult diapers? I can't remember. Oh, my memory is not what it used to be! Ha. Another Gingko joke. They never get old. Unlike character actors!"

After much angst and Meredith crying in a closet (where she is chased down by McDreamy, who McDreamily wipes away her tears. Insert gagging sounds here.) over her mother’s ongoing dementia and impending (but probably at least two seasons away, unfortunately) death, the poor woman is finally extubated. For the love of God! That woman was dying and you cruelly didn’t let her die and then you dragged it out and made it all about you. What is wrong with you? Leave the personal sh*t at home or in the supply closet. And, although I put this in an earlier post, I repeat: if it is me, please immediately withdraw care.

Gag me. Sensitive naked man of the week goes to: McDreamy!

Cristina is excited to scrub in on a case of necrotizing fasciitis. The woman with this "flesh-eating bacteria" is played by an over-the-top hetero version of Alice from the L word. She probably took this part because this was the height of the L word buzz and she wanted to prove she could still play it straight.

Everything about you and your flesh-eating bacteria reads "straight." Too bad this attempt at versatility didn't improve your post L word career chances. I know this because I am writing from the future.

Unfortunately for Cristina (but fortunately for the flesh-eating bacteria lady for reasons that we will soon see), Bailey is out on bedrest and the interns have a replacement resident, the peppy Sidney “Heal with love” Heron. She is too cutesy and touchy-feely for the Grey’s interns, save Alex who plays along to garner favor. 

Sidney "replacement resident" Heron. I've had residents like you. We all know that you got up at 4 AM so you could spend an hour on the stairmaster before coming to work. Don't tell us about it. Seriously. You are annoying enough as it is.

This “Heal with love” business irks no one more than Cristina, who wants to amputate immediately rather than try to save the flesh-eaten leg. Sidney is horrified, and instead opts for a longer, leg-saving surgery. Cristina recounts the whole story to Meredith in the bar later:

Cristina: “She called me unkind. Unkind and lacking in compassion. I am not unkind!”

Meredith: “I have to kill my patient tomorrow. I have to take out the tube that is keeping her alive.”

Cristina: “And that is a problem why?? And that is not unkind or lacking in compassion.”

For the record, Cristina, I’m with you. That is a problem why? And I agree that is not unkind or lacking in compassion. You’re just not making everything all about you all the time.

Burke, who got dragged into Cristina’s argument with her resident later tells Cristina: “I never understood what the problem was, an intern dating an attending, until today.” Well, that’s your problem there, Burke. You should know exactly what the problem is: You’re her boss; you have power over her; medicine is a hierarchy and you’re at the top and she’s at the bottom; you cannot effectively teach someone you’re sleeping with…the list goes on. But you never saw it because you’re, well, a dense and ridiculous character that should be pursuing his dreams somewhere other than this show. Burke leaves us with: “I’m an attending. I don’t apologize to residents. You, on the other hand, are an intern.” 

I’m an attending and I apologize to residents all the time. But maybe that’s my problem.

The nurses’ strike is finally resolved when:

Nurse manager: “I seem to remember pushing through paperwork for a multi-million dollar surgical robot.”

Chief: “That will bring in huge business”

NM: “Can you and the robot handle that business without nurses?”

Interestingly, a colleague of mine just wrote a very interesting paper on surgical robots. The chief is right. It’s very likely that robot would have generated significant revenue for the hospital, because it turns out that when hospitals buy a robot, their surgical volumes go way up, probably because surgeons begin performing unnecessary surgeries given the strong incentive for doctors and hospitals to use their new toy. So the best business decision (but, perhaps, not the most patient-centered decision) would have been to both buy the robot and hire new nurses. It was 2005. You so could have bought that robot on credit.

The show tries to end with a moral, but this one makes no sense: "Once you’ve crossed, it’s almost impossible to go back. If you do manage to make it back across that line, you’ll find safety in numbers."

I therefore initiate my first ever Grey's Miracle Cure Contest. What the hell does this moral mean? Or is it just Hollywood filler/drivel? Answers accepted via comments.

It's like the New Yorker cartoon contest. Except not as artistic. Or clever.