After a series of so-so episodes, Grey’s Anatomy’s recent offering, “The Time Warp,” was a breath of fresh air. Three doctors — Miranda Bailey, Richard Webber and Callie Torres — each told the assembled hospital staff about a case that was pivotal to their careers and deeply affected them, hence they reached back into the past and we were treated to a trio of “flashbacks,” which kind of reminded me, just a teeny bit, of a Lost flashback, only without the headache-inducing, “What the … ” feeling and tropical setting.
The best part of the gimmicky episode? Miranda Bailey, circa 2003, with pink rimmed glasses, hair in long braids and asking people to call her “Mandy.” Mandy! Seriously. At the beginning of her first year as an intern, Bailey was the one who stood in the back of the pack of interns during rounds and murmured the answers to all the Chief’s questions like an eager Hermione Granger, sans Hermione’s aggressive confidence.
In fact, Bailey’s flashback attempted to make the point that she wasn’t always the no-nonsense, no-BS doc she is today. “I was raised to be polite,” she lamented over brightly colored, fruity drinks with umbrellas (Umbrellas?! For Bailey?!), to a pathetically coiffed Joe the bartender. “Don’t raise your voice, have respect for people higher on the pecking order … I was not raised to be a shark. Now does that make me a minnow?”
However it was a leap to swallow the notion that Bailey was able to develop her renowned ferocity so quickly that, by the time Meredith Grey and her buddies came along just a couple years later, Bailey had fully morphed into a feared resident who was nicknamed “the Nazi.”
While I embraced the concept of employing flashbacks as an interesting Grey’s storytelling device, Richard and Callie’s backstories were weak in comparison to Bailey’s. Richard’s flashback, I think, suffered because I had high expectations for it. I had the biggest hopes for his backstory which transported viewers to 1982. We heard the strains of Hall & Oates’ Maneater and the camera soon found a young, whip-smart Dr. Ellis Grey, who was in the midst of her affair with Richard and was depicted in one scene as roughly pushing the doll-toting Meredith away from her so she could return to work. Ellis — played by Sarah Paulson, who I couldn’t really buy as Ellis — worked with Richard on Seattle Grace’s first, controversial AIDS case and they were the only two surgeons willing to operate on the sick patient.
As the two married lovers discussed the fact that their patient, who’d hidden the fact that he was gay, had lived a life of lies, Richard said they were no different and suggested that they should stop seeing one another. Ellis saw things differently and said they both needed to leave their empty marriages. But I already knew all of this. It was old news. I wanted to gain a new perspective on the Richard-Ellis relationship, perhaps get some additional insight into what their lives were like, alas, this flashback just skimmed the surface.
As for Callie, well, her flashback was a disappointment seeing as though it only went back to the first season of Grey’s and involved Alex Karev, with whom she treated a patient. As much as I love Callie-centric stories, I would’ve much rather have seen the time devoted to her backstory instead given to Bailey and Richard’s flashbacks which were more interesting.
What did you think of the flashback according to Grey’s?
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Feb 19, 2010 @ 10:30 EST5EDT
no mention of the fact that Ellis is the one who got Weber to drink his first drink? i thought that was a nice little reveal.
i liked the 3 stories. with the Chief backing her, i buy in to Bailey’s transformation over the few years to become the Nazi. she looks up to him & as was revealed last ep, he mentored her to become the surgeon she is now. that’d boost any minnow’s confidence.
I wish they would have clarified if the flashback matched what they were talking about. Or if the flashback just added the drama. But I would doubt the chief would admit an affair with one of his resident’s mothers in public, as well as drinking for the first time.
And Callie admitting sleeping with Carev
I also had trouble believing Callie would be that nervous presenting after college, med school and as a resident.
I don’t think what we saw in the flashbacks was exactly what the presenter was telling the group.
I didn’t think that flashback ellis and flashback richard had any chemistry at all; they were cast well but had nothing together as characters. She had zero chemistry with Thatcher and Meredith too; so not sure what they wanted us to feel about her except a big fat nothing. I also thought the Baily flashback was the best of the bunch, and Callie with stagefright? Give me a break. It would be nice if the writers of this episode actually knew the history of the characters they were writing for instead of just making stuff up.