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‘Grey’s’ teeters on edge of answers

As "Grey's Anatomy" rolls toward next week's two-hour season finale, it's doing what must be done: setting up all the questions that will present themselves for potential answering during those two hours. So this week's episode played less like it was resolving matters and more like it was bringing them to the edge of resolution. The show has teased — all season, often slowly, sometimes agonizin
/ Source: TODAY contributor

As "Grey's Anatomy" rolls toward next week's two-hour season finale, it's doing what must be done: setting up all the questions that will present themselves for potential answering during those two hours. So this week's episode played less like it was resolving matters and more like it was bringing them to the edge of resolution.

The show has teased — all season, often slowly, sometimes agonizingly slowly — the matter of Owen and Teddy's old baggage. At last, Meredith has tipped off Cristina, and Cristina has discovered that Owen sandbagged Teddy professionally to try to get her out of town. This leaves Cristina convinced that Owen did it because he still has unresolved feelings for Teddy. We didn't leave them broken up, completely, necessarily, but their plans to move in together were ominously put on hold.

Meanwhile, Mark juggled no fewer than three women. First, he dallied with young Reed Adamson and was caught in the act by Teddy, who, rather refreshingly for this show full of neurotics, didn't care since they weren't exclusive.

But his Reed-Teddy conflict turned out to be a total red herring when Callie called him on the fact that he's actually still in love with Lexie, who was several sex partners ago. Mark came to his senses, but unfortunately for him, Alex had chosen this moment to make a go of being a proper boyfriend to Lexie himself. That didn't stop Mark from declaring himself to her and, ultimately, proposing. Lexie is presumably thinking about it.

With both their spouses dead, the two decided to get back together, which led all the doctors to ponder how sad it is to miss out on many years with the person you were meant to be with. Naturally, this caused Callie and Arizona to make out in an elevator, despite the fact that they broke up over their baby issues last week.

But not all the patients were there just to allow the doctors to explore their own psychological issues. Tween star Demi Lovato was there because she's famous. She played a girl diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic who perplexed Alex because she didn't seem as "crazy," in his words, as his mother or some of his girlfriends. (Fair point.)

Not persuaded that she was schizophrenic, he insisted on testing her for physical problems, over the dismissive objections of Arizona and Derek, and he found an obscure inner ear defect. And once he cured the issue, her normal behavior was restored. The effort to build up Alex's character after the Izzie fiasco is obviously being undertaken vigorously, but one hopes the writers no longer expect the revelation that Alex is a good doctor and not a callow jerk to be entirely surprising.

Perhaps the only person actually having good romantic luck this week was Bailey. After sleeping with Ben (the lovely anesthesiologist), she became paranoid that he was interested in other people (based on implausibly flimsy evidence, it must be said). He eventually assured her that he was serious about her, and they shared a lovely moment that seems to guarantee that something horrible will happen in next week's season finale to spoil all this hard-won happiness. 

Linda Holmes is a writer in Washington.