Grey’s Anatomy: Happiness and the Flood

This week on Grey’s, Derek took a stand and asked Mer to give her roomies, Izzie and Alex, the old heave-ho. While news of this rattled her roommates, Meredith kept saying how happy she was, even quitting therapy.  Yet of course she continued to act anything but.

The chief laid down the law big time. He wanted the docs to know that play time was over.  No more specializing in surgeries, playing favorites with interns or getting emotionally invested in patients. While the chief was so busy setting the rules, he failed to realize the ceiling was falling…literally.

As plumbing problems struck the hospital, the crisis interrupted George and his long awaited intern exam. George, always willing to take one for the team, puts aside his exam to help out.  Despite Bailey’s incessant warnings, the chief ignored the plumbing issue until the hospital flooded and the ceiling caved in on a patient.

Meredith is assigned a cancer patient who in an effort to distract herself from her disease,  wants to know all the details of Meredith’s love life.  “You didn’t tell me about the hair,” the patient teases after seeing Derek’s locks in person. Meredith replies that it’s one of the things that make some people happy.

Lexie’s photographic memory leads to a great diagnosis when she discovers the cause of a patient’s seven-year headache.  When Derek and Christina won’t listen, she tells Mark.  Mark offers to let her scrub in, but she’s deemed “pathetic” when she passes it up to help George study.

When Derek tells Mer that Christina thinks the roomies should go, Christina tells him what she thinks, then gives Meredith’s shrink a piece of her mind.  “It’s never going to work out,” she informs the doc.  The therapist replies, “it kills you that you might lose her to him.”  Christina is amused, lobbing back “You’re a terrible shrink.”

When Izzie finds a great apartment and tells Christina, Christina thinks it’s meant for her and Dr. Hahn. Pissed off,  Izzie is waiting for Meredith at home, and she tells her flat out that she’s alone and that she doesn’t have anyone but Meredith. Of course, Alex shows up just then and we see that someday they’ll have each other but for now it’s all lingering glances and withering quips.

When Derek arrives home, Meredith stands up for herself and also proves that she’s still not all that happy. “They are my family. And you can’t ask me to give up my family.”  And in the annuals of wonderful yet fictional men, Derek says its fine and for now at least, Meredith at last, seems truly happy.

For another take on “Here comes the Flood,” check out Tanya Lane’s review here.

Grey’s Anatomy, Episode  5.3  “Here Comes the Flood”  (originally aired 10/9/2008)

Thursdays at 9PM/8C, ABC
Photographs courtesy of abc.go.com