TV Review: Grey's Anatomy 2.15

Sunday, January 29, 2006

From ABC: The nurses at Seattle Grace Hospital go on strike, leaving the doctors to fend for themselves; Meredith's mistake in treating an elderly patient is brought to light by the patient's friends (June Lockhart, Betty Garrett and Rae Allen) and Izzie treats a pregnant teen.

My Rating: 4 out of 4





In tonight's episode titled Break on Through, the nurses follow through on their threats of last week, and they are now on strike. They are picketing outside Seattle Grace Hospital, and the episode opens with our interns standing out side, wondering how to cross the picket line. Cristina is the first to cross, but they have patients inside. She gets pelted by food and other items. Seeing this, Izzie soon follows suit, but George isn't sure he wants to cross. Both his parents have gone on strike before, and if they knew he crossed a picket line to go in to work, they might not be too thrilled with him at all. He decides to not cross, and he joins in with the nurses on their strike. The only time he enters the hospital is to follow the patient directions given to him by the nurses because those are their patients too. By the end of the episode, Webber has backed down and conceded to the requests of the nurses.

We have three cases on this week's episode, and we also see the new attending that is now taking the place of Bailey until her return. Little Miss Mary Sunshine, as I am calling her, immediately gets on Cristina's bad side. The first case they deal with is a woman with a bad rash. Once they go in to biopsy it, Alex, Cristina and the new attending discover they have a case of flesh eating bacteria on their hands. They immediately need to make a decision on how to proceed, so they go to her new husband. They can either amputate or spend hours trying to save the leg. Cristina votes for amputation, but the husband is reluctant to do that because the young woman, played by actress Leisha Hailey of The L Word, is a runner.

They go back in to save the leg, and Yang goes to Burke and tells him the new attending is killing the patient. Burke then goes in, and he is put into place by the new attending. This causes some friction between the couple. Burke realizes he crossed the line by going into the operating room because his girlfriend came to him upset. He now can see why residents and interns shouldn't date. Alex and the attending are able to save the leg, and Cristina is forced to apologize to the attending for crossing the line and going to Burke.

Meredith has a case of her own this week, and it brings to light issues she has in her own life. When she finds an elderly woman having trouble breathing, she immediately puts the woman on a ventilator. Only she finds out, that the woman was not to be resuscitated in case of death. Her friend's are at the hospital, and they immediately tell Meredith of her error. However, she just can't take her back off without permission of someone in the woman's family. Webber comes onto the case as well here, and the woman's daughter is called in from Oregon.

Once she arrives, Meredith proceeds to pull her off, and they wait for her to die. Once she passes on, it hits Meredith that she doesn't want her mother to die alone. She has also discovered during this episode that Webber has been visiting her mother at the home she's in. She breaks down, and Derek is there with her. He calms her down, and for a split second there I thought the two were going to kiss. I wanted them to kiss. They did tease us, and then the moment was gone. I even screamed at the screen in frustration after that moment. Things are certainly heating up, but they are dragging it out now too. Just have them get back together again already!

Lastly, Izzie has a case with a pregnant teenager. Her baby has a tumor, and it needs to be removed before the baby can be fully delivered. The young woman comes from a poor family, so it is thankfully covered by the hospital. With this case, we learn even more about Izzie. It turns out she has a daughter she put up for adoption. She talks to the young woman about her choices, and she ponders giving her baby up as well.

On this week's episode, the medical drama of the episode definitely pulled out things out of our characters that we didn't know. Usually the interactions of our characters are separated from this cases. However, this week we needed the cases to find out more from each of our interns. I think this was probably one of the best episodes of this season. It was open and honest, and it allowed us to learn more about our interns and surgeons. We saw real emotions on this episode, and in some cases it was heartbreaking. It was real though, and that is what makes this series only get better. Next week, Grey's Anatomy will follow the Super Bowl with an all new episode. We'll finally learn what a Code Black is! I can't wait.