Post by LarcSpoiler space for those who haven't seen the 5-20 episode.
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Wow!!!
I'll see that Wow!!! and raise you a "Holy Fuckin' Shit!" (I had to
wash two dogs three times total today. I'm even less restrained than
usual.)
Post by LarcThat's the way to get rid of obnoxious Mercy Westers! The two worst
ones (Reed Adamson and Charles Percy) are gone and the best ones (April Kepner
and Jackson Avery) are OK.
Absolutely. When the news of a shootout first hit a couple of weeks
ago, the show had already conspicuously started using Reed and Percy
again after having forgotten about them since a third of the way
through the season or so, around the time that Derek became Chief.
Post by LarcIt was a strange season finale basically because there's really no cliffhanger.
Derek is apparently all right now as well as Alex. In fact, more ongoing
problems seem to have been solved tonight rather than new ones arising for next
season.
Err, Derek had open-heart surgery after being shot.. That's not going
to be a walk in the park to recover from. The cliffhanger here is
clear: assuming that time passes between this finale and the season
premiere in the fall, will Derek still be the Chief of Surgery, or
will Webber?
Also, Alex isn't really all right, as he started hallucinating that
Lexie was Izzie. Furthermore, his hallucinating Izzie revealed enough
about his state of mind that it seemed to make Lexie more attracted to
him. And, of course, her guilt regarding being the one who
discontinued the life support of the shooter's wife as her DNR had
specified -- well, we likely have just seen the start of Lexie having
a whole lot of Izzie-level izzues -- err, issues.
Post by LarcOf course, Meredith's miscarriage could cause psychological problems
for her.
Oh, Meredith's miscarriage was soooo nicely played in both the writing
*and* Ellen Pompeo's acting. Well-timed, waiting to reveal it while
she's about to stitch Owen up -- if this had been the ER of the time
between Clooney leaving and the start of its next-to-last season,
Meredith would have been miscarrying right there in Derek's surgery
when she was gobsmacked on the floor, with blood oozing out beneath
her.
I don't think Meredith's miscarriage is going to cause additional
psychological problems beyond the expected PTSD and intensifying a
certain 'nother thing that she has: she's kinda already grown into
the mother-hen of the group. While she used to be just the nexus, the
focal point, of the group because of her suicidal depression, Izzie
was the group's mother hen -- her St. Crispin's Day rally-the-troops
speech as they were trying to revive Meredith from drowning was
probably the most obvious example of that, but Izzie and her cooking,
too. But since the end of the season before this one, when she and
Derek gave their wedding to Alex and Izzie, the baton of mother-hen
was passed from Izzie to Meredith (consolidating the leadership
position and the focal point into one person).
And that's especially noticeable regarding Alex rooming at Casa Grey
and Lexie's revolving door-ish status at Meredith's -- moved out to
live with George, moved back in after breaking up with George, moved
out to live with Mark, moved back in after breaking up with Mark.
The group is now linked more intensely by the shared trauma of this
shooting, so it'll be interesting to see how much Meredith's nesting
instinct -- which, IMO, grew over the season as she became
comfortable-ish with The Wife of the Chief of Surgery (except how it
affects her friendship with Christina -- sticks around after her
miscarriage and how she might direct that mother-hen-engery (henergy?)
toward others. Will she get more impatient with Kepner or, given
Kepner's George-ish nature, take Kepner under her wing? Will she have
everyone walk on eggshells around Derek while he's recovering? Will
she get Derek to build that house that he once outlined with candles?
Will she have Derek expand the plans to include, say, a guest house
for Lexie and whoever Lexie's shacking up with that week? When the
house starts getting built, might she even keep Casa Grey as a rental
for Lexie and/or Alex and/or other residents/interns?
Post by LarcStrange we didn't see Bailey's new squeeze tonight. I really thought he might
get killed since the actor who plays him is moving to another series. Maybe the
writers will just pretend he never existed.
Yeah, he'd have obviously made a great Red Shirted Ensign alongside
the two underused Mercy Westers. But he's got great presence and I
see why Shonda wouldn't necessarily want to kill him off -- new shows
have a high mortality rate, so why not wait until the season premiere
to write him out with the potential of bringing him back.
Finally, I loved Callie and Arizona's reconciliation. Jessica Capshaw
does such a great job as Arizona and bringing out the universal in
what, for broadcast television is still unusual: a gay woman who fits
no discernable stereotypes about gays (and thus, is inarguably normal)
-- that I wish that Shonda had shown Arizona's trepidations about
having children from Arizona's point of view sometime before this
episode. Because seeing the conflict from only Callie's point of view
until now had made Arizona too much of an antagonist, thereby
unbalancing the story and making Arizona needlessly unsympathetic
(although Jessica Capshaw made it work despite getting the short
shrift in the writing). And I'm more generally annoyed that they have
yet to do a story from Arizona's point of view. She's always either
the romantic foil in Callie's storylines or the mentor in a Bailey or
Alex storyline. (Arizona going to someone for advice last week or the
week before would have been *great.*) But that said, the argument
that Callie and Arizona had in *this* episode was well-balanced and
IMO more reflective of a conflict that's an honest disagreement, as
the events in their arc leading up to this should have been. Each of
them was ready and willing to give up her dreams so that the other
wouldn't have to give up her own.
So, given that Jessica Capshaw is pregant in real life, does this mean
that they're going to write her pregnancy into the show?
-- Rob