Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Grey’s Anatomy 15x01 and 15x02 Review: “With a Wonder and a Wild Desire & “Broken Together” (Shake It Up) [Contributor: Julia Siegel]


“With a Wonder and a Wild Desire” & “Broken Together”
Original Airdate: September 27, 2018

Welcome back, Grey’s Anatomy fans! Have you missed getting your fill of Grey Sloan Memorial gossip this summer? Then you’re in luck: the two-hour, 15th season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy wastes no time jumping back into the juicy lives of our favorite on-screen doctors. The action picks up the morning after Alex and Jo and April and Matthew’s weddings, so let’s just say a lot has happened in less than 24 hours.

The opening scene of the premiere will either give you a heart attack or make you laugh, as the sight of Meredith in bed with DeLuca is sure to rub some people the wrong way... for about three seconds. When Jackson enters the room, we are thankfully clued in that Meredith is having one heck of a vivid dream. While the season kicks off on a comedic note, it is a not-so-subtle way of letting the audience know that this really is going to be the season of love. But more on that later.

We next see Jackson, Maggie, and DeLuca enjoying their hangovers from the previous night at Jackson’s place. On their way to the hospital, the three docs are using a crosswalk with a walk signal when a car comes blasting through the intersection. At the last second, DeLuca grabs Maggie and Jackson and pulls them to safety. Unfortunately, a female cyclist isn’t as lucky and gets blindsided, setting off a cascade effect that will last more than the first two episodes. On the patient side of the story, Maggie helps the driver of the car, who turns out to be a very chatty matchmaker, set on pairing up every doctor in the hospital and also has had two previous heart transplants. Jackson and Owen take charge on the cyclist at the hospital, who thinks she has died and gone to heaven upon seeing the pretty faces at Grey Sloan.

In typical Grey’s fashion, having a character declare that everyone is so good-looking is the perfect opportunity to introduce our two new surgeons! “Ortho God” Link and Dr. Nico Kim make their entrances — and turn just about every head in the process. At first sight, they fit right in; but Owen and Jackson quickly realize that they have a different style than the rest of the group when they want to take their time helping the patient and play very loud music in the operating room. The operating room antics keep coming when the gallery becomes overcrowded with very giggly women watching the two mystery men work (along with intern Schmitt staring at Nico, who spooks Schmitt with a wink). Since it was previously announced that Nico is the first openly gay male surgeon at Grey Sloan, could this be the first hint at a new romance?

In case that wasn’t enough drama, the first part of the episode also features more of Teddy’s return. You can’t help but feel terrible for Teddy when she shows up at Owen’s house in the morning to tell him the pregnancy news and finds teen Betty at the door. Betty tells Teddy that Owen and Amelia are still sleeping, and Teddy becomes more shocked when she hears baby Leo crying in the background. Of course, Teddy has no idea what she has walked into and is too spooked to stay around. She goes back to the hospital and tells Bailey that she can’t take the interim chief job because she can’t stay in Seattle.

On her way out, Teddy gets a pain in her leg and has someone to call Maggie for a consult. Maggie and intern Parker come to evaluate Teddy, who tells them she has a blood clot in her leg... along with the other little secret she has been hiding. Teddy quickly figures out who Maggie is and makes her promise not to tell either of her sisters, or anyone, about her pregnancy. Through this process, we learn that Parker was formerly in the Air Force, which seems to have been a backstory that was created between seasons. Teddy then decides to leave the hospital (against Maggie’s wishes), and we don’t see her again for the rest of the episodes.

Next up, the newly-married Alex and Jo are honeymooning on the beach in California. It’s nice to see the couple relax and enjoy life briefly while talking about what their futures hold. Jo is still indecisive on whether she should take a fellowship in Boston or stay in Seattle, while Alex babbles about how he wants at least two kids with her and will support her no matter what she chooses. While building a sandcastle, Jo comes up with a brilliant idea that could change the future of medicine. She puts the honeymoon on hold to write out her idea to isolate the gene that causes cancer to grow on a series of notecards and napkins. When she finishes, she tells Alex that she wants to stay in Seattle and work on her breakthrough with Meredith.

Back at Grey Sloan, all of the doctors have heard that Bailey is looking for an interim chief and try to win her affections to get the job. Bailey is just as unamused with all the attention as Meredith is with Link (which becomes a running joke for the remainder of the premiere). Amelia and Koracick are working on their brain surgery project and discuss Amelia’s continuing feelings for Owen, as well as Teddy’s arrival. Koracick actually gives some real advice and tells Amelia that she needs to fight for Owen if her feelings are real. Meanwhile, Jackson is struggling with his possibly newfound faith since he: prayed and saved April, saw Matthew and April spontaneously get married, and was saved from death by DeLuca earlier that day.

While everyone is dealing with their personal problems, Richard, DeLuca, Carina, and intern Roy are treating a male patient who has a foreign object stuck in his rectum. The patient won’t tell them what he stuck up there, so they blindly take him into surgery to remove it. During the operation, the patient’s intestine starts to bleed, so Roy uses a cauterizer to fix the problem. Richard shouts at Roy to stop, but is too late. The patient’s intestine explodes with a burst of flames as the cauterizer touches the flesh, leaving the patient and Roy on fire. The patient had a can of hairspray in his intestine, which ultimately leads to his death. DeLuca tackles Roy to the ground and saves his second person in one day by putting out the flames.

The action-packed first episode closes out with two updates on relationships. Amelia decides to tell Owen that she still has feelings for him, leading to a make-out session that gets abruptly ended by the sounds of Betty and Leo waking up. Jackson and Maggie then have their usual awkward moment at home. Through a discussion about love and faith, Jackson half-proposes to Maggie, who freaks out and runs out of the house instead of dealing with it like an adult. Thankfully, this is a natural two-part episode that continues immediately instead of making us wait for a week to see what happens with the patients and doctors.

The second episode opens with yet another Meredith dream, which is funnier the second time when DeLuca and Link are both featured. After she wakes up, Meredith finally gets the hint that her subconscious is telling her something. Maggie and Amelia walk into the house at the moment that Meredith comes downstairs for the first sister moment of the season. The only interesting part is when Maggie almost reveals Teddy’s secret to Amelia and Meredith. We then see Jackson at the hospital trying to keep both of the patients alive when the cyclist develops a necrotic back infection and the matchmaker’s heart and kidneys start to fail.

The next morning, Jackson is filling Meredith in on the case — since she took on the case halfway through the first episode — and tells her that she is married to her work. Meredith is not happy with Jackson’s comment and begins to say that she isn’t married to her work. She stops mid-sentence when she sees Link standing behind her, who only appears to have heard that she isn’t married and is happy to know that information. Meredith dismisses him again, and the cat-and-mouse game continues.

Jo and Alex return to Grey Sloan to pitch Jo’s idea to Meredith, who immediately latches onto it. Meredith goes to Bailey to pitch hiring Jo as the first surgical innovation fellow, but Bailey says that the hospital doesn’t have enough money to hire Jo as a fellow because she just hired Link and built a giant high-tech hypobaric healing chamber. The new chamber makes its debut when the cyclist’s infection gets worse. Jackson and Schmitt bring their patient into the chamber in an attempt to heal the necrotic tissue, but the surgery fails and the patient dies. This sets off Jackson again as he struggles with why he is alive and his patient is dead.

Afterward, Jo and Alex go to Bailey’s office to directly pitch the idea to her. Bailey decides to take a leap and invest in Jo personally by writing a check hiring Jo to work for her. It doesn’t take Bailey long to brag to Meredith about stealing Jo and the project from her, which naturally aggravates Meredith. Bailey then decides to make Alex the interim chief, much to Meredith’s chagrin. It’s odd to see Bailey make two brassy moves in the same episode, which could easily rub the audience the wrong way. Meredith’s personal story really gets going when she bumps into Link for a third time in the hallway. This time, they have a small conversation, which ends when Meredith learns that his full name is Atticus Lincoln and becomes offended that he doesn’t use either of his names. Meredith then goes to her matchmaker patient and asks for her help in finding love again — which will likely get a strong reaction from the other characters and the audience.

Keeping with the love theme, Owen and Amelia spend most of the second episode acting super awkward around each other. In the end, Owen tells Amelia that he wants to try and have a relationship with her again. Sadly, neither of them knows about the baby bomb that will eventually drop on their rekindled love. The Amelia/Owen/Teddy love triangle will clearly be a strong part of the season, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out.

Richard tries several times throughout both episodes to be Bailey’s interim chief. Bailey tells him that she can’t give him the position because he hasn’t found a new AA sponsor yet and needs to take care of himself first. On his way out of the hospital, Richard runs into DeLuca, who pulls up on a shiny new motorcycle. If this isn’t a steaming bowl of nasty foreshadowing, I don’t know what is. Expect something terrible to happen this season to either DeLuca or Richard via that motorcycle.

Ultimately, the premiere sets up quite a number of stories to watch over the next few weeks. From love to new jobs to personal struggles, this season of Grey’s Anatomy promises to pack a lot of action into every episode.

0 comments:

Post a Comment