In this second episode of the season, we saw the continued emotional shifts happening for Owen Hunt even as we saw him exclusively in his professional role as Chief of Surgery. While he mostly wore his game face in this episode, we briefly saw his emotions at the surface whenever the specter of Cristina Yang, his love, continued to haunt both him and the hospital, the staff of which was struggling to adjust to her absence.
Owen asserted his chiefly authority early on in the episode in shutting down Maggie Pierce's intent to review the charts for the family of pediatric cardiac patients he and Cristina treated at the end of the previous season. Again, I must say, it did my heart good to hear Owen talk in defense of his and Cristina's diligent approach to treating this family, one they both bonded with while attempting to diagnose the cause of their three children's cardiac myopathy. The emotional undercurrent was evident in Owen's facial expressions and his vehement yet vulnerable approach as he told Maggie to leave the family alone to heal.
And yet ultimately it turned out that Maggie's insistence on finding the cause of the family's cardiac problems met up with Miranda Bailey's insistence to once again use her recently closed genome lab. This confluence of events found a way to give the family peace which Owen seemed pleased to witness. And it once again did my heart good to see the contented look on Owen's face as Maggie explained the genetic cause of this family's trying health conditions to the two parents for whom he himself had worked alongside Cristina to provide answers.
Elsewhere in the hospital; Maggie explored Seattle and her workplace; Meredith Grey and Maggie continued to fight; Alex Karev continued to vie for the open board seat which Miranda continued to also be focused upon; Jo and Stephanie, the two remaining residents, continued to compete for cases; Alex's new private practice boss learned he might be losing him to GSM Hospital if he won the board seat; Amelia Shepherd continued to try to convince Richard Webber to talk more about his potential family via learning he might have a daughter; while Callie Torres argued with Arizona Robbins over her decision to consider taking on a new fellowship at the same time they've talked about having another child.
