Kevin has confirmed that he will be attending the Monte Carlo Television Festival, which takes place from the 7-11 June in Monte Carlo 
For details http://www.tvfestival.com/

The increased speed of this week's Grey's Anatomy episode made it clear that we were hurtling toward the end of the season. The stakes grew higher for each character in this episode as the action was spurred forward by surprise character appearances, decisions that will have great impact for individual characters and for the hospital, and also heavier than usual patient anvils.  

At the beginning of the episode Cristina Yang was missing in action, having said simply 'that's how it goes' upon finding out someone else had won the Harper Avery award for which she'd also been nominated. She initially  processed the loss on her own, going incommunicado after exiting the awards ceremony to the point of missing her original flight back to Seattle with Owen Hunt and Meredith Grey. Both Owen and Meredith worried about her and worked to find her via repeated phone calls to her or others who may have heard from her while the plane sat on the runway, to the point of delaying the flight until they ultimately and reluctantly returned to Seattle without her. 

Besides personal concern about Cristina's whereabouts, there was a professional urgency as well when it appeared a transplant heart was now available for one of the pediatric cardiac patients she and Owen had been treating over the last several episodes. The tension in the OR was both cut and ratcheted up upon Cristina's abrupt reappearance, intent as she was on continuing her efforts to support this patient and her family. When she stepped in for rarely seen Cardio Chief Dr. Russell, Cristina maintained this was her patient and she would follow through on the course of treatment they'd started together regardless of her very recent professional disappointment. It was clear when she brushed aside all condolences on the loss at the awards ceremony with a terse 'it's an honor just to be nominated' that Cristina wasn't prepared to have any sort of emotional conversation on the subject just yet. 

It's worth noting that we had to wait until the end of the episode again this week to see Cristina share her true feelings with someone and that she again chose Owen to be the person to whom she showed her true self in a callback scene to more of their shared history. This time, instead of sharing emotional intimacy on their secret hospital hiding place - the vent - the two of them stood sharing emotional truths fully clothed in a running shower. More on that later.

In true Grey's Anatomy angsty style, the heart transplant was too good to be true as even once Cristina skillfully placed the heart in their patient's chest it simply refused to beat. Leaving the patient on bypass upon finding out another donor heart was available in a nearby city, Cristina struggled with sharing this news with their patients' parents. It turned out the older daughter, though also struggling, was now at the top of the transplant list and would actually stand a greater chance of thriving post-surgery given the even more precarious nature of her sister who had remained in the operating room on bypass. While Cristina suggested a mechanical heart could temporarily be placed in the less stable sister to allow both girls a chance, the parents felt incapable of making the decision and put it in Cristina's hands. 

Shaken by the situation, Cristina exited to evaluate all the data and make this nearly impossible decision as best she could. In a fraught round of scenes, we saw Owen and Cristina swing into action again on behalf of their very sick patients. We saw them prep for the heart to arrive by attempting to implant a mechanical heart into their younger patient in order to stabilize her. Initially the surgery seemed to have been successful, yet as they closed up her incision her weakened body began to shut down. Cristina was reluctant in the extreme to give up on their patient yet after almost an hour of attempts to save her life, Owen gently encouraged Cristina to step away from this patient as there wasn't anything more that could be done for her. As they shared a sad look it was clear they both knew they still had another young patient's life in their hands. 

Later, the weight of their efforts hung heavy on both Owen and Cristina as they tried to express their sincere regret at the way things had turned out to their patients' parents. While they were able to share the good news that their older daughter's heart transplant surgery had gone well, they knew the news of their younger patient's death would tear apart her parents standing before them. The tears in Cristina's eyes betrayed her outward attempt at calm as their patients' parents cursed her from within their grief at losing their daughter. Owen backed up Cristina's efforts for the parents and also expressed his sincere regrets, trying to offer support to this family and to Cristina whom he knew had done everything she could for both patients. 

At the end of an incredibly demanding day, Owen found Cristina standing fully clothed in a hospital shower, lamenting how her attempts to do what was right and provide her best professional efforts had resulted in such little direct result. It was again heartening to see that the one person who could just be there for Cristina, the one person she trusted to share her vulnerability with was Owen. As she questioned herself and all she'd tried to accomplish Owen chose to share with her news he'd received from Richard Webber who'd recently returned from a visit to Catherine Avery in Boston. Owen's news that Cristina had won the award based on votes and lost it due to politics broke her spirit and galvanized her all at the same time. We saw her look at him with both sorrow and fire in her eyes before purposefully striding out of the hospital into the night, a determined look on her face.

Elsewhere in the hospital: Jackson Avery was given the task of evaluating resources and results for all in-house research projects which earned him no friends among an already angered team of surgeons at the results of the Harper Avery award; Miranda Bailey struggled to reach the parents of her immune-depressed patient regarding her controversial treatment option; Alex Karev and Arizona Robbins faced the possibility of him accepting a private practice offer before he ultimately did just that and turned in his resignation to the board; Meredith and Derek Shepherd operated together while leaving their children in his sister Amy's hands for the day; Richard's surprise visit to Boston to propose to Catherine ended in sadness for them both; Callie Torres continued to mentor Jo Wilson in orthopedics; and April Kepner operated on a trauma case with Owen before going home to break news of her pregnancy to Jackson. 

The action for Owen Hunt and Cristina Yang in the most recent episode of Grey's Anatomy centered around their reactions to her Harper Avery award nomination and their continued efforts to treat a family of cardiac patients with mysterious symptoms.
 
Cristina, for the most part, tried again to downplay her excitement at her nomination. When Owen flirtily offered to accompany her to the Boston award ceremony for an evening of celebratory champagne and room service, she declared that her intent was to be out of town less than 24 hours, as if she were trying to make this sound like any regular business trip.
 
Her attempts to remain low key were rapidly overtaken by her concern at the alarming symptoms exhibited by three pediatric cardiac patients she and Owen were treating. When Cristina checked in with her patients before leaving for the night she found them in disarray. The pressure of juggling such an intense situation has left the kids in various states of emotional and physical distress while their parents tensely bickered with each other to mask their fear. When the hostility level between the parents took a sudden turn, Cristina urged the father to take a breather while she evaluated the kids. Cristina then showed us her growth by making a compassionate and caring choice to tend to this family rather than attend to her own concerns outside the hospital.   
 
When we next saw Owen he'd arrived at the family's hospital room where he looked surprised to find Cristina playing Jenga with the kids while their parents were nowhere to be found. While she quickly caught him up on the situation it turned out she'd paged him to listen to the start she'd made on her acceptance speech, albeit with snarky input from their teenaged patients. Once Owen's sussed out her intent he leaves her to it in order to tend to his own busy workday. 
 
We as viewers were lulled by this quiet turn of events, which meant, as usual, there was more intense action on its way soon. In a disheartening one-two punch of intensity, we found that the family's two daughters were in increasingly dire physical straits. The older of the two had seemingly begun to reject the heart from the recent transplant Cristina performed while the younger daughter had collapsed in the hall due to heart failure, the pacemaker they'd implanted no longer being enough to sustain her weakening heart. 
 
As we saw the heightened emotional context for their patients' mother as she struggled with not being able to locate her husband amidst the stresses of having to make very complex decisions about her children's' medical care, we saw Owen and Cristina band together as a team. They took turns tending to their patients and supporting the parents, providing them all the tools they would need to move forward into further treatment options. Amidst their work, we saw Owen and Cristina again discuss her intent to go to Boston on her own, leaving us thinking that Cristina was pulling away and that Owen would let her. This concern was shored up by the continued intertwining of the seeming fracturing of the relationship between their patients' parents with Cristina and Owen's fractured attempts at communicating with each other and yet also in those anvils, there was hope for all involved.

With most patient crises averted, Cristina finally attempted to depart for the airport. Owen and Meredith accompanied her as she waited for her to cab to arrive, both trying to mark the occasion with her while Cristina remained businesslike and confident she could handle this situation. As both her friend and her love were paged for emergency cases we saw Cristina take a deep yet tentative breath as she was finally left alone with her own thoughts. We wondered if she would indeed make this journey on her own until we saw a fairly heavy-handed, yet much welcomed by this fan, anvil as Owen reunited their patients' father with his wife. We saw Owen take in the man's regret at having not been there when his wife needed him to face life's challenges and we hoped that meant Owen will follow his own instincts and make his way to Boston.

And when we next saw Cristina at the award ceremony she was excited yet nervous, faced with people who wanted to talk to her about her research. However, it was quickly clear that Cristina had grown regretful of her attempt to handle this situation on her own as she pulled out her phone to call Meredith to say she'd made a mistake and wanted her people with her - Meredith and Owen both. The delight on her face was evident when she walked into the dining room only to find both Owen and Meredith waiting at her table. It was incredibly touching to see the sweet smile on Cristina's face, to hear the tears in her voice as she said Owen's name before walking into his arms for a hug and a kiss, the grateful tone to her voice as she thanked Meredith for being there too. As she reached for Owen's hand and turned toward him before the ceremony began her hope of winning was giving way to excitement. You'd have to know and love Cristina to see the threads of disappointment in her expression when another surgeon's name was called given how rapidly she covered it with hearty applause for the winner.
 
Elsewhere in the hospital: Callie Torres and Arizona Robbins' planned date night goes awry when they ended up caring for Meredith and Derek Shepherd's kids when they are both called into unexpected surgeries; Alex Karev was working a double schedule at the hospital and also moonlighting for a surgeon in private practice; Jackson Avery and April Kepner's stark differences are brought into clearer focus when they treated a deaf child and realized how much they disagree on topics of faith and family; Meredith and Richard Webber treated a patient together; Derek struggled to balance work and home; Miranda Bailey continued to treat her immune deficient patient and to juggle his treatment with her research interests; the residents stepped into yet another semi-friendly surgical competition; some good-natured bonding occurred between Meredith, Alex, and Cristina as they all worked late nights at the hospital; and April asked Callie and Arizona if she could stay with them for a while.  

HBO on Amazon: What to Watch First?

By now you know the news that HBO will make a lot of its older content available to Amazon Prime subscribers starting May 21 as part of a lucrative deal. The network's current top-tier content, like Girls and Game of Thrones, will remain off-limits to non-subscribers. But a rich vault of quality premium television is suddenly being opened up to a huge base of viewers, a prospect both exciting and daunting.

[snip] ... here are some gem seasons of other HBO shows (a few original films) to start off with when the archive goes live.

Rome: Season One
Now that Game of Thrones is in its fourth season, we definitely can't say there won't ever be a TV show as epic as Rome. But there's still something special about Rome, especially that first season. A ridiculous, massively-budgeted retelling of the rise and fall of Caesar, it had a bunch of solid actors doing the best work of their lives (James Purefoy, Ciaran Hinds, Polly Walker, Kevin McKidd, Ray Stevenson) and ludicrous amounts of sex and violence, celebrating the Roman empire as a debauchery hall-of-fame. The second season came apart at the seams quickly, but Season One tells a complete story and it does it very nicely.

Read full article here.

Sandra Oh tries to dunk Kevin McKidd during the "Grey's Anatomy" year-end carnival
Tony Phelan and Joan Rater held for the cast and crew.
(FYI: Tony is in the stripes and straw hat holding towel.)