Grey’s Anatomy: There’s no “I” in Team

It’s easy to get lost in medical jargon when watching a show set in a hospital, but I always feel like I get the gist of what’s going on with Grey’s Anatomy, even if I don’t completely understand the lingo.  This is due in part to the writers’ incorporation of real medical events, from Buffalo Bills’ player Kevin Everett and the medical approach to his potential paralysis, to the storyline which served as the crux of the latest episode.

Seattle Grace continues to regain its standing in the medical community, first with recognition of one of Derek’s clinical trials in a national medical journal, and then with the opportunity to make medical history.  Dr. Bailey will be leading a team of surgeons in a six person kidney transplant known as a “domino surgery.”  This mirrors a procedure I saw featured on an episode of Good Morning America last year.  When patients require organ transplants, the obvious thing to do is test relatives to see if they are a match.  Sometimes they are not a match for their loved ones, but they are a match for another patient on the donor list.  In this episode of Grey’s, aptly titled “There’s No ‘I’ in Team,” the hospital has six patients in need of kidneys, and six willing donors who originally intended to donate one healthy kidney to their loved one.  Because the willing donors are not matches for their relatives, but are matches for other patients, they will donate to a stranger, while their loved one receives a healthy kidney from another stranger.  Twelve happy people, right? More like 10.5 happy people.  As Bailey states, the whole procedure is a “deck of cards,” and if one person gets cold feet, no one gets a kidney.  One young donor initially seems like a Good Samaritan, because she is not related to any of the other patients.  When it’s revealed that she’s sleeping with one of them, his wife (who wasn’t a match for him but for another woman whose sister wasn’t a match for her) finds out and doesn’t want to go forward with the procedure.  Eventually Bailey craftily makes the woman realize that her participation would serve the greater good, and the surgery goes forward.

The whole episode wasn’t this intense.  It wouldn’t be Grey’s if there wasn’t comic relief of some sort, and this is provided (still) by Callie and Erica’s burgeoning relationship.  Callie is ready to call it quits based on her discomfort with her intimate “performance” on their first date.  After a tutorial from Mark, she’s back on the love boat, headed for the island of Lesbos.  Hey, it’s a real place.  Check your Greek mythology.  Callie and Eric aren’t the only ones making a romantic breakthrough.  Alex and Izzie end the episode with a long-overdue smooch.  Unfortunately it still appears that Lexie has no chance with George, but at least he knows her feelings now.  After he expresses no desire to choose her as his intern, she justifiably flips out on the perennially cute and clueless doctor.  This was another good episode, and I barely cried, so that’s progress.

Season 5, Episode 5: There’s no “I” in Team (originally aired October 23, 2008)

For another take on this episode, check out Five Second Rule by Inisia Lewis.

For more on Grey’s Anatomy, click here.

Thursdays 9/8c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC