Grey’s Anatomy: This is Just Creepy.

Ew, I just watched Izzie make love to a dead man. Seattle Grace has ingested coo-coo bananas juice. Normally, this is one of the best things about Grey’s Anatomy, but this week I might throw up a little bit in my mouth. I feel like I’m watching a cheesy episode of the Outer Limits mashed together with an evil game of Operation. Grey’s Anatomy has never been a straightforward depiction of the real world or the medical world, but excelled at portraying flawed characters pushed to the extremes.  After this week, Shonda Rhimes may need to pull out the paddles to bring this season back to life.

Coming in at a nine on the insanity meter on a scale of one to ten, Izzie still can’t shake the seemingly corporal Denny and goes even one step further by solidifying her belief in him through feeling the one sensation that she can’t recreate from memory. It was about the moment when she ripped her shirt off that I dared myself to change the channel, but it’s so absurd, I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the remote. Like watching a car wreck, my eyes were glued to the screen. Maybe Izzie should wise up since Denny repeats the same mantra over and over, a ping-pong between “I’m here for you” and “I’m not going anywhere.” Run! This is creepy! Yet, she spends most of the night holed up in her room, even bypassing a surgery to faux-snuggle.

With a seven on the insanity meter, the Secret Society of Interns decide, after successfully administering an epidural catheter to one of their ranks, to perform an appendectomy on our new friend Sadie. Obviously she is perfect for this crowd. Anyone who would undergo a surgery they don’t need by a group of amateur doctors has a death wish. No wonder she’s one of Meredith’s best friends. (Does each Seattle Grace doctor have to fail a psych test to get a job at this hospital?) The surgery goes incredibly wrong, even though Lexie, the most adept intern of all, is at the helm. When it looks like Sadie might not make it out alive, Lexie leans on her big sis for help out of the mess she made. Luckily both Meredith and Christina are better surgeons than all of these interns put together, and they have the brains to call on Bailey for reinforcements, even knowing they’ll get the whole lot in serious trouble. Not only the interns take the heat for this, but each Resident does as well. They are supposed to be the babysitters. And we know parents always blame the babysitter when their kid winds up with a boo-boo.

Since Christina kept mum about last week’s sutures, she bears the brunt of the Chief’s wrath, even revoking her privilege to vie for the solo surgery that’s somehow become one of the season’s major plotlines. (How? I don’t know.) The morbid BFFs come to blows when Meredith doesn’t back her up, knowing full well that everyone’s to blame for the interns going AWOL. On the bright side, Christina ends up a few steps closer to Hunt when she finds him sitting outside her apartment. He even tells her that he thinks she’s beautiful. If only his words would stop failing him and his heart could move on past the horrors he witnessed in Iraq.

Some normalcy did come out of all this crazy. Most of interns are back in line. Sadie may confront the reasons she fled her morgue job for the “Queen City.” Sloan displayed a softer side when he fixed Callie’s broken nose and brought some relief to a young girl weighed down by her father’s medical issues. After a never-ending stream of friends in and out of Meredith and Derek’s home, Derek brought home his own stray in the form of Little Grey. Alex told Lizzie that he wouldn’t leave anytime soon no matter how crazy she became, and Izzie chose Alex over Denny, at least, for one night.

Tonight’s Grey’s Anatomy was like a soap opera except even though soap stars may come back from the dead once too often, they don’t converse with the dead while awake, at least not without a medium present to make it even remotely legitimate. And I don’t know any medical show that has pushed the bar so far as to tackle self-harm in the name of education.

I love Denny, and nothing could make me dislike Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but this return has spoiled their romance forever. I also like Lexie, but her newfound aggressiveness is really getting out of hand and out of character. Shonda, hear my plea. Return Grey’s Anatomy to the primetime soap I once loved. Focus on character development, angst and love again. Let our residents act like friends for once. Bring back George, and rev up the attention you’ve been paying to Christina and Hunt. You can start by giving Bailey more screen time. That always makes me a happy camper.

Season 5, Episode 9: In The Midnight Hour (originally aired November 20, 2008)

For another take on this episode, read “I Screw Dead People” by Tanya Lane here.

For more on Grey’s Anatomy, click here.

Thursdays 9/8c on ABC
Photographs courtesy of ABC