Extended solo: Cristina won the first solo surgery. Unfortunately for her, she was disqualified as a result of the Frankenintern fiasco. So, instead of getting to do the surgery, she just got to decide which of her friends would do the surgery. They immediately started lobbying hard. Everyone bet on Cristina picking best friend Meredith, but Cristina picked Alex based on merit. (Meredith is lucky merit is almost never the reason anything happens.) Cristina was later consoled by McArmy, who took her to a secret part of the hospital where a vent literally blew smoke up her scrubs. That made her happy, and then they got back to smooching, which made her even happier.
Blah blah blah: Two bickering teenage sisters showed up in the ER after crashing their father’s car. As Driver Sister was wheeled off for testing, Passenger Sister angrily hollered, “I hope you die!” Predictably, Driver Sister then suffered brain death, which led to agonizing guilt for Passenger Sister. Dr. Dixon, the Asperger’s-afflicted surgeon played by Mary McDonnell, turned out to have a bad bedside manner with grieving families. Ultimately, Meredith talked Passenger Sister into apologizing before Driver Sister was removed from life support.
Still Not Dead: Not Dead Denny is now accompanying Izzie around the hospital, meaning that Izzie is now hallucinating and treating patients not only within the same day, but at the same moment. Moreover, it appears that she’s been shirking her work at the clinic to have sex with her deceased boyfriend. Hey, a girl has to have a social life. George figured out that Izzie’s knickers were in some sort of twist, but he failed to intuit that they were haunted. Alex complicated Izzie’s life even further when he announced that he loved her and wanted her to stop hiding from that and enjoy it. You know who didn’t appreciate that? Her dead fiancé, that’s who.
Girls, girls, girls: Hahn’s departure apparently wasn’t a signal that Callie was purely a situational lesbian and would immediately return to the company of men. In fact, Meredith’s friend Sadie, the exhibitionist and now appendix-free intern, seemingly flirted with Callie. This sent Callie running to McSteamy, who encouraged her to stop thinking about sex. “NO HOT INTERNS!” he commanded, only to find himself staring longingly at the forbidden Lexie.
The silent treatment: McSteamy was working on a woman who hadn’t had the power of speech for years, but a new procedure promised to give her a voice. Although she’d been faithfully maintaining a blog, her husband was reduced to hearing from her only in the form of Post-It notes, and it was breaking his heart. Once the woman had the surgery and spoke again and was reunited with her husband, Lexie was so impressed that she went to McSteamy’s apartment, started repeating “teach me” in a thoroughly creepy fashion that only drove home the inappropriate power-inequality problem inherent in the situation, and successfully persuaded him to have sex with her. So that’s a great idea.
Linda Holmes is a writer in Washington, D.C.