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Romantic workplace tension filled the first few minutes of Grey's this week, which meant most characters and their shipper groups were in for a bumpy ride. Leading the charge was Meredith who was musing aloud about Nathan's declared interest in her. (She also, by the way, shouldn't talk so loud about how great the sex was with Nathan while her sister Maggie was within earshot.) Next on the scene was Owen, looking intense and brooding in the ambulance bay. Guess who showed up for another neuro consult on one of his patients - yep, Amelia. Who, when he asked how she was, said it was great to be back at work. Ouch and cue another sad face for Owen as he tried unsuccessfully to hide his hurt reaction in front of his coworkers and their patient. In another Kevin McKidd directed episode, we saw more of Owen than we have in weeks. Owen remained decisive about his feelings on the state of his marriage with Amelia, cornering her for a conversation in which his need for answers was obvious, as was her inability to give him any. This Owen has learned to identify his feelings and to verbalize them, as we saw him ask her if she was going to continue running away from home or if she would ever be willing to face him. As Grey's writers do, the medical story of the week was the mirror to their very different approaches to their relationship, as we saw two former surgeons arrive at Grey Sloan Memorial, one of whom had fallen while hiking and turned out to have a risky to repair brain bleed. Aside from some brilliant stunt casting with the inimitable Hal Holbrook, we saw his wife searching for her own path through her tragic injuries while her husband wanted to have some control over what was happening to them. Naturally enough, Owen alternately consoled the husband while castigating Amelia for taking on a risky surgery without much chance of a positive outcome. Amelia stayed rooted in her work, wanting the space to pursue her patient's requested surgical option. Oh, and then there were the anvils about their patient wanting both more time with her husband and also wanting to use that time to help him figure out how to be alone before she died. While Owen received sage words of wisdom from Holbrook's character about there being no secret to a long marriage, Amelia remained certain she was doing right by her patient. Her certainty put her in the hall fighting it out with Owen soon after, where we saw her holding no punches. She even brought up Cristina, Owen's first wife, with whom he also struggled to deal with her not wanting the family he craved. This was the one piece of unexpected conversation we saw between these two characters who rushed into their marriage only to be brought up short by their approaches to whether or not to have a family and how to communicate with each other. (Although yay for invoking Cristina, who remains my favorite former character.) As Owen shared his side of the conversation, we heard his familiar refrain about wanting, what he called, a normal life, while Amelia reminded him that having a child doesn't ensure your life will be what you hope it will be. She reminded him that she was already a mother once and it turned out to be wonderful and heartbreaking, as her son died soon after he was born. Owen remained silent when she asked him if he was ready for that kind of a roll of the dice when it came to the family he envisioned. And if that wasn't enough, of course their patient survived surgery only to die a short while later, leaving her husband fumbling for how to move forward on his own. Viewers were left wondering where Owen and Amelia might go next as both were visibly shattered by their public argument at the hospital and the fractured marriage at the center of their medical story. A weighted look between them in the ER left us with little guidance except leaving it clear much distance remained between them. Elsewhere in the hospital: Maggie's mom received bad news from her oncologist; Maggie and her mom remained in conflict, even once Maggie knew about the cancer diagnosis; Richard froze out both Miranda and Arizona; nosy Jo worked on Jackson's service and got opinionated on Maggie's mom keeping secrets from her daughter about her health; sisterly bonding between Meredith, Maggie, and Amelia was filled with subtext about their romantic relationships; Nathan kept joking his way around Meredith's insistence he step up if he wanted to be with her until he finally ponied up with some sappy reasons that won her heart; Ben and Miranda bonded; Stephanie seemed triggered by their patient's death, though her emotional response got Andrew to admit to being, maybe, in love with Jo; and Richard told Arizona he had to work through his feelings before he'd feel confident in their friendship again. | press release | photos | promo | sneak peek 1 | sneak peek 2 | Q&A | BTS photos | Be sure to check the website for articles & other news about this episode that Kevin directed. This week's episode of Grey's Anatomy took place not in Seattle, but in Montana and got us some pretty heavy duty backstory on Jackson Avery. He traveled to one of the Avery Foundation hospitals to treat a patient along with April, a last minute substitute for Meredith. What followed was Grey's ubiquitous tense medical case filled with anvils aplenty. As usual in these sort of stunt episodes, very few other characters were seen which meant lots of stories didn't move forward this week. However, we did get more capable directing from Kevin McKidd. The bickering between Jackson and April continued as they stepped into the Avery family plane and were offered champagne by a flight attendant. While Jackson put his nose into patient files and acted unimpressed by the luxury around him, April teased him while also sticking up for Catherine, pressing Jackson's buttons all the way. The mood shifted rapidly when they arrived at the Montana hospital to do a throat transplant from one child to another when they realized the dying child's father still held out hope his son would wake up. Jackson shared his own heartbreak at losing the son they both still mourn, shocking April into silence, and convincing the father to authorize surgery. When Jackson next used his experience as a father to charm the mothers of their transplant patient, April confronted him. His response was to stalk away to a diner in which we later find him soused as April picked up the pieces of their exploded surgery when the donor was found to no longer be an option. In some stunt casting we found Eric Roberts tending bar and acting all sorts of folksy, offering Jackson a standard free beer for new customers. The plot thickened when April sought out a now drunken Jackson only for him to storm moodily out of the bar. A brief introduction to the bartender gave us the next plot cannonball - he's none other than Robert Avery, a former surgeon and, wait for it, Jackson's missing in action father. Now all Jackson's talk of fatherly concerns slipped eerily into place. Once a less optimal surgery option was all they had to offer, their patient's mothers decided to take her out of state which was risky given her deteriorating condition. Jackson, headstrong and self-assured, promised them an idea to fix their daughter's condition which he later admitted to April he made up on the spot to give himself time to think. She accused him of only being in Montana to see his father, a quest she told him was putting their patient at risk. Our normally eloquent Jackson found himself at a decided loss for words before he stalked away from her once again. This at least temporarily put a halt to their bickering as April patiently heard Jackson's amalgam of feelings around being face to face with a father who didn't recognize him. With April's encouragement Jackson once again approached his father, but found his bumbling description of how the status and expectations of the Avery name just wasn't 'his thing' to be less than what he'd hoped for in a response. The clueless look on his father's face paired alongside the heartbreak on Jackson's face was mesmerizing. Once again Jackson stalked away from the encounter rather than face his pain in front of April, which made this week yet another episode in which the patient's story was almost beside the point to the resulting impact on the doctors' personal lives. And boy was it ever personal as Jackson and April's bickering turned to empathizing which turned to surgical breakthrough, oh yeah, and turned to smut as we saw Jackson and April, high on surgical adrenaline, back in each other's arms. The culmination of the story came when Jackson found it in himself to make peace with his biological father's absence from his life which allowed him to also seemingly make peace with his force of nature mother Catherine. Be ready for the next stop on the rollercoaster Japril fans, will this detente stick for them or not? While we missed seeing most of our favorite make believe Seattle surgical team in this episode, based on the preview for next week the shipper rollercoaster will arrive at the station for two more groups of fans very, very soon. Hold onto your hats! |
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