Grey’s Anatomy – Cristina saved the shooter and herself

This was the Grey’s Anatomy episode I’d been waiting for, the one in which hardcore surgeon Cristina Yang would re-emerge from her cloud and let her talent shine anew. She had to do it on her own timetable and, apparently, after catching a giant fish with Derek and briefly clocking in some time as a god-awful bartender. Cristina returned to surgery on her own terms, ironically, by performing a complicated procedure at the scene of a mass shooting at a local college on a man who turned out to be the shooter who killed 26 people.

And it worked.

I wasn’t one of those Grey’s fans who lamented, “I’m soooo sick of moping Cristina,” and said that watching the once formidable character withdraw into herself like a tortoise inside its shell was getting boring. If Cristina — whose father died in front of her when she was a child and whose boyfriend was seriously wounded in a different shooting (remember Burke?) — had just bounced back from the trauma of operating at gunpoint while seeing yet another boyfriend get shot, and continued on with her life as though something huge hadn’t just happened to her, I would’ve said she was an automaton who might as well have been revealed to be one of those emotionless aliens from V.

Her decision to stick with Teddy in the operating room, even when she learned that they were working on the shooter, prompting other staffers to leave the room on principle, followed by Cristina’s casual yet deeply meaningful reunion with Meredith in the hallway felt right. It was worth the wait.

Speaking of Meredith, I hadn’t realized that she’d never told Derek about her offer to have the Seattle Grace gunman shoot her instead of Derek or Cristina when Cristina was operating on Derek in last season’s finale.

Derek was so calloused and nasty to “spoiled little brat” Meredith when she insisted on leaving surgery to update the wife of the hero professor on whom they were operating, that his behavior seemed shocking. It was almost as though he’d forgotten that Meredith saw him get shot and later miscarried their baby that day. It seemed like an obvious no-brainer that she’d be extra sensitive on a day such as this one. Why was Derek so hard on her? I’m not quite sure, but learning that his wife offered to die in order to save his life should fundamentally alter their relationship as they deal with repeated failure as they attempt to make a family.

I laughed aloud at the insanity of the OR scene with Stark, who seemed hell-bent on amputating a 15-year-old girl’s leg because removing it was easier than attempting to spend more time and effort in order to save it. To watch Alex play the role of a football linebacker while Arizona acted like his coach, shouting plays from the observation room while Stark was wielding a power-saw like someone out of a cheesy horror flick, was pretty damned funny.

What wasn’t so funny was Arizona’s lame attempt to make up for the fact that she left Callie — who had been willing to uproot her life and career to follow Arizona to Africa (as well as shelve her desire for a baby) — at the airport in one, swift, heartrending break-up which was even worse than Carrie Bradshaw being dumped on a Post-It note on Sex and the City.

“I will apologize to you every day,” Arizona said pleadingly. ” … I came across the world to be with you. I love you.”

Callie, however, didn’t fold and stood firm: “You had to fly across the world to get to me, Arizona, because you flew a whole world away without looking back. You just left.”

Here’s to hoping that Calzona is kaput because I don’t think Arizona is capable of flexibility, particularly on the kid issue.

Another pairing that I think is doomed and has the potential to throw Grey’s off the rails in the middle of such a strong, compelling season: Teddy and Denny Duquette 2.0, otherwise known as Henry. There’s something about that guy that I really, really don’t like, perhaps his whining about not getting wedding cake when he was instead getting life-saving health insurance from his doctor that got to me.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Jan 07, 2011 @ 11:12 EST5EDT