Grey’s Anatomy recap: Major Trauma

A bombshell episode disguised as a run-of-the-mill one, no? Last week’s looked all fancy, with its documentary camera work and Mandy Moore appearances, but this week’s shocked big time — and twice.

We started with Arizona and Callie packing for Malawi, though we knew they couldn’t really be shipping off two major characters with little fanfare (nobody leaves this show without major backstage drama that’s reported on for weeks, if not months, right?). And yet we still didn’t see the ending coming quite the way it did — but we’ll get to that. We’ll also get to that other big surprise that, in a way, we’ve known would happen but still found ourselves a little stunned by. In its best moments, Grey’s Anatomy knows how to twist a plot in the subtlest of ways.

Relations between my favorite non-lesbian two ladies, Cristina and Meredith, had grown noticeably frosty as the day began. Derek theorized that it was because Owen had won the million-dollar-contest for his trauma project, while Derek was left to forage for Alzheimer’s grants on his own. Meredith doubted that (as did I), but she volunteered to skip Owen’s trauma certification as a sign of marital solidarity. Alas, she wasn’t getting out of the training that easily.

Cristina, however, was — not that dealing with a lung transplant patient while you’re still suffering from PTSD is easy. The good news was that the guy for whom Cristina had lobbied to get lung transplants was finally up for his new set of breathing pipes. The bad news was that Cristina would be charged with watching over him while Teddy went to get the new organs. Owen stared soulfully into the camera with his big blue eyes for an extra few seconds to signal to us that this was, indeed, dramatic.

The rest of the residents were forced to do the training, though none seemed happy about it. “Take turns, train a dummy, get an early lunch, then get back to work,” Alex sighed. “It’s lame.” But then Owen, apparently still feeling the drama from his look into the camera, ran into the room and acted as if a “mass casualty situation” had arrived: a plane that collided with a Greyhound bus while trying to make an emergency landing. The doctors all ran outside to the receiving area only to find dummies strewn everywhere, which they were told had “multiple blunt trauma injuries.” Meredith put it succinctly when she said, “This is gonna suck.” They would work in teams of four, each responsible for nine casualties. They could treat the dummies only with what they could carry out of an ambulance. If they got the pretend patients on the imaginary helicopter, they got certified. I realized I didn’t care that much.

NEXT: Callie (unhappily) preps for her African adventure.

I was happy to get back to real patients (I know they’re still fictional, but I just can’t extend my caring to fictional dummies), particularly Roy and his lung transplant. His estranged daughter had shown up, but just after she arrived, he stopped breathing. Cristina looked a little frozen. “Aren’t you the doctor?” the daughter prodded. “Do something!” Cristina then snapped into at least knowing what was happening: His heart was overloading, because his lungs were putting extra pressure on it. If things continued this way, he’d need a heart transplant too. Not good.

On the lighter side of the hospital, Mark was stressing about Arizona and Callie’s going-away party. “Altman volunteered to pick up the cupcakes, but she had to pick up lungs instead,” he told Bailey. Her response: “You’re asking me to take time out from my very busy schedule to run to the bakery? Or would you rather I ran on home and baked some myself?” Seriously, I know he had a gluteal implant to do, but surely he could take five minutes himself to handle it. Why was he making this a woman’s job? Sexism does not exist on Grey’s Anatomy, dammit! Callie was annoyed, too, but for different, barely concealed reasons: Namely, her impending move to another continent. The Chief made his distress over this passive-aggressively known as well: “Sure, it was a surprise to learn that I’d have to replace two excellent attendings as opposed to just the one. But those are chief’s problems, and nobody wants to hear chief’s problems. It’s a shame, though, Torres. I had big plans for you. Big plans.” Has this guy been hanging out with my mom?

I love when we meet new random doctors who have evidently been there the whole time but we just never bothered with them before. It reminds me of those background players on Lost who would just futz around the plane wreckage or the encampment or whatever, hoping to become the next Nikki and Paulo (or not). Tonight’s lucky surgeon to get a few lines was a Dr. McQueen, who was on backup duty to attend to Roy. But he was busy with a different surgery when Roy was coding, so he couldn’t come when Cristina pled for him to. Besides, he said, “I’ll be there when I can, Dr. Yang, but it doesn’t sound like you need me at all.” She knew what she was doing. She just needed to believe. Owen believed in Cristina, but he didn’t believe she believed. Or something like that. So he granted Meredith her trauma certification and sent her inside to help Cristina. But Cristina wasn’t interested in Meredith’s help, so she sent her out to update Roy’s daughter on his condition.

Now, Callie was rationalizing away the effect that exile in Africa might have on her career of making bones and all that. “I’ll be building bones from dirt,” she told Mark. “I’ll be figuring out how to create unbreakable joints out of blood diamonds.” Mark quipped, “I’m pretty sure a couple of those would be frowned upon by the world community.” Callie shot back, “Whatever. Science isn’t about making friends.” People! The dialogue (and the monologues) were on fire this episode. The Grey’s renaissance is on, I say.

NEXT: Cristina lets loose on Meredith

As it began pouring outside, the trauma training got a tad more exciting. Alex wrapped himself in plastic to keep dry, and Owen questioned why he wasn’t keeping his patients dry instead. Alex countered (not irrationally) that they were pretend patients. But his teammate April, her over-achieving self obsessed with winning the trauma-off, ripped the plastic away and wrapped their patients in it. I liked her more already. Owen was yelling at the doctors who’d dropped out of the race, telling them to stay outside in the downpour to learn from the others. “We’re in Apocalypse Now,” Avery said, “and we’re gonna get scalped.”

Mark, though inside and dry, had other concerns. Or rather, was still concerned about the damn cupcakes. Lexie had gone to get them for him, but he was not impressed that she’d gotten mere supermarket cupcakes. She explained why she didn’t have time to get higher-quality baked goods: “I’m a doctor with a patient who’s about to make a giant butt-shaped mistake. The only reason a woman does something like this to her body is to impress a guy. Sure, it starts with a giant butt and then the next thing you know, she’s giving up her friends and moving in with him before she’s even ready. And if she’s not careful she’ll find herself a stepmother to a pregnant 26-year-old daughter she didn’t even know he had. And then she’s single and dying her hair a new color. And you know, it’s really hard to manage your roots when you’ve been committed to the psych ward.” That would’ve been the monologue of the night if there weren’t like five more. Even so, it was up there. Turned out, incidentally, that Lexie was projecting just a tad — the butt implant girl just wanted her jeans to fit.

Bailey and Derek were busy moping about Derek’s office. She was upset that Mary’s autopsy had proven inconclusive, and Derek was upset that researching Alzheimer’s was depressing. He was, in fact, suffering from serious grant-writer’s block. After a day spent staring at the screen, all he’d typed was: “Alzheimer’s is a bad disease. We should cure it.” He tried to give Bailey a snap-out-of-it talk about Mary, but she one-upped him: “I’m not the one who can’t stop thinking about the possibility of his wife getting Alzheimer’s long enough to write a damn essay.”

His wife, it should be said, was having an even worse day, if we’re keeping score. Cristina finally broke down on her when Meredith gently suggested Cristina give Roy’s daughter an update. “She doesn’t need to hear an update from me,” Cristina said. “All she wants is for me to hear that she’s afraid. And I can’t hear that right now because I am scared enough as it is. I was scared when he coded. I’m scared now that he’s stable. I’m scared walking across the lobby. I’m scared all the time.” Things got even deeper as the two friends waited for Teddy to land with the lungs. “How are you fine?” Cristina snapped. “How are you just completely fine when I am wrecked?” She revealed that she blamed her PTSD on being forced to save Derek: “If it was anyone else on the table, I could have walked away,” she said. “I would have walked away. And then I wouldn’t be here.”