The
episode starts with Meredith saying, “Dying changes everything.” and I thought,
“Uh-oh.” Not only did we get a death in the last season finale, but everybody
had been buzzing about another death coming up and more trouble to come. So we
all waited through the break and finally the new season has come. We’re
transported to 30 days after the crash – or at least 30 days since Mark Sloan
fell into a coma.
When we
last left our “Seattle Grace Mercy Death” doctors, they were stuck in the woods,
with Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang sharing one stick of gum and the wind
blowing out their last match. So where are they now?
Mark
Sloan – Well, as mentioned, he’s lying in a coma and his very specific DNR
states that if he slips into a coma and after 30 days there are no signs of improvement,
then his proxy (who was not specified, but it’s either Callie or Derek) should
then pull the plug on him. Throughout the episode, we see snippets of his life
in home videos. Derek’s wedding where he was the best man, Callie and Arizona’s
wedding where he admits on cam that the love of his life was Lexie Grey, a
surgery with Avery who he mentors with his usual swagger, a “video” of him and
Callie in bed, and even a video of him with his co-parents. It’s sad actually,
and I personally didn’t want to see him go, though seeing the send off the
character got warms the heart (as opposed to say, getting a large part of the
airplane landing upon you and you die).
Cristina
Yang – We find her at the frozen tundra, Minnesota. She’s far from happy and
the team spirit at the Mayo Clinic is dampening her sharp Seattle competitive
claws. Cristina, compared to how we find the other doctors, seems relatively
okay with only a few dinks here and there. Flight anxiety, included.
Derek
Shepherd – The last time we saw those two million dollar a year hands, the left
one looked like it had gone into a blender and somebody pressed Puree. We find
him now with a working hand and learn that he’d been cleared for surgery for
weeks but hadn’t done any since then. He decides to perform a surgery on the
day when Mark’s DNR 1-month condition runs out, and he literally and
figuratively drops the ball. “My hand went numb in there,” he tells Callie.
Callie
Torres – Oh Callie. Kurt Vonnegut once said that writers need to be sadistic to
their characters, something that show creator Shonda Rhimes had obviously taken
to heart. Callie, in this episode, was reduced to sobbing in a supply closet.
Her plate is full: Mark’s in a coma, Arizona’s nowhere to be seen, and everybody’s
pestering her with sad stares. The situation with Arizona becomes clear at the
end of the episode.
Arizona
Robbins – Arizona had been mysteriously absent for most of the episode and of
course, I had heard about the worst kept secret leg amputation ever. It brings
to mind another medical drama I used to follow, House. In this equation, Arizona’s
House (except with the leg completely cut off) and Callie’s Stacey. If it
follows the same vein, then Arizona is probably going to be very pissed and
turn into a miserable misanthropic bitch which is a total 180 from our usual
sunny, rollersneakers wearing, Peds attending.
Miranda
Bailey – For all the sadness in this episode, Bailey is happy. In fact, she has
a new nickname: “BCB” or Booty Call Bailey. Ben flies in from UCLA every so
often and they “capitalize” upon these times with on-call room trysts. Bailey,
formerly the Nazi, squeaks once she finds out what the interns call her.
Meredith
Grey – Oh where do I start? We find out that the “doctors in the woods”
experience went for as long as a week, and it shows on Meredith more than
anybody else. She’s now an attending and she mentors the newbies much like
Bailey did back in her Nazi days. The interns call her Medusa, as in the
mythical monster that has snakes for hair and can petrify people with a mere
stare. She constantly talks with Cristina via Facetime, though things really aren’t
the same. She assisted in the traditional “intern appe” and she loses it
outside Mark’s room while waiting for the end.
We also
see the farm girl April Kepner in the standard issue plaid farm clothes (and
with pig named Jeb in tow). She gets a visit from Owen Hunt asking her to come
back to Seattle. Avery is obviously sad over his mentor’s demise and Alex has
again gone full on whore.
Overall,
this season’s first episode is a rollercoaster ride. We get highs from Bailey’s
booty calls and lows from Mark’s video snippets. Frankly, I can’t wait for the
next episode, which promises to take us back to the forest and show us exactly
what happened to our Seattle Grace Mercy West doctors immediately after it.
Shonda
is an evil, sadistic genius. By the way, if you want to know what's coming next, then check out the episode 2's promo:
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