“Reunited”
Original Airdate: October 10, 2019
“Reunited, and it feels so good” is the perfect mantra for this week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Former Charmed costars Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs guest star as, you guessed it, sisters who are reunited in the wake of a family tragedy. The pair checks into Pac-North (this episode is part of ABC’s “Cast from the Past Week” where Milano and Combs are reunited with Grey’s executive producers and one-time Charmed writers Krista Vernoff and Andy Reaser).
You know you are in for a good time whenever two guest stars of this caliber stop by for some antics.
PATIENCE IS A VIRTURE
The episode opens with a few shots of Jackson and new friend Vic Hughes going on a morning hike. The pair appears to be getting along great, though Jackson is surprised to see Vic’s firefighter strength when she moves a tree out of their path. It’s immediately obvious that it is only a matter of time before they become more than friends, but more on that later. Over at the Grey/Shepherd/Pierce residence, Amelia tells Maggie that she is going to keep the baby during their now-typical morning talk. Amelia admits that the situation is bewildering and that she isn’t ready to tell Meredith, Owen, or anyone else yet. As has become customary, Maggie gets in a few complaints about Jackson moving on from their breakup so quickly.
DeLuca keeps trying to earn the title of best boyfriend by dropping Meredith off at community service on his way to work. Their car ride discussion reveals that Bailey is punishing DeLuca for his ongoing relationship with Meredith by assigning him to run the ICU and not perform surgery. Meredith is currently working on pitching article ideas to different websites on various reasons why the healthcare system in this country is failing. DeLuca cautiously warns Meredith to not go too far with whatever she writes, as it could come back to burn her down the road.
It may be a new day for Alex and Richard down the road at Pac-North, but they still seem to be having the same problems. Their new MRI machine has arrived, after the old one broke in the previous episode, but the hospital doesn’t have the correct software for the new machine, rendering it useless. Richard is surprised to bump into his AA friend Gemma, who was introduced toward the end of last season. Gemma has gotten a job in the billing department of Pac-North, and Richard is glad to have another friend around.
Grey Sloan Memorial is also having its fair share of drama, which kicks off when Teddy brings baby Allison to the hospital and bumps into Amelia. Teddy is slightly frazzled at being a new mother, while Amelia catches herself mid-sentence when she practically says that she is pregnant. Teddy’s sleep deprived brain isn’t functional enough to catch Amelia’s slip up, so the pregnancy secret is safe for now. Owen is working on a trauma patient in the ER when Koracick comes into the room for a consult and kicks Owen out by enforcing his restraining order. Owen isn’t pleased that he can’t help his own patient and that Koracick is acting like a child, but this is what was to be expected when he was given more power. Jo seems to be the only happy doctor in the hospital and is very enthusiastic about performing a difficult surgery on one of Meredith’s previous patients. However, the patient is not happy that Meredith is no longer her doctor and doesn’t want Jo to remove her liver tumor.
We are then introduced to two squabbling sisters, Heidi (Combs) and Haylee (Milano), who are shocked to learn from Richard that their third sister fell 30 feet into a construction site and might be brain dead.
DISORIENTED
Back at Grey Sloan, the drama heats up when Amelia finds out during a hallway conversation that Link told Jo about the pregnancy. Amelia reiterates that she isn’t ready to tell people and isn’t happy that Link blabbed. Link defends himself by telling her that he had to tell his best friend. Thankfully, the argument is cut short when they run into an elderly Korean woman in the hall. The woman appears to be lost, and Link and Amelia decide she needs help since they can’t understand Korean.
Jo decides to be extra bold and asks Bailey to let Meredith come back to the hospital to perform one surgery on her patient with the liver tumor. Bailey immediately shoots the idea down and tells Jo that she needs to convince her patient to have the surgery because she won’t let Meredith step foot in the OR. Jo has a lightbulb moment and realizes that they can have Meredith be a part of the surgical team without her being in the building.
Maggie’s pity party continues as she is performing a heart procedure on an elderly gentleman named Bertie. During the procedure, he tells her all about how love makes everything better, but Maggie isn’t buying his advocating for love. And speaking of love, we get a glimpse at the chaos happening over at Pac-North, where Heidi and Haylee are at odds over whether or not to unplug their brain-dead sister. Alex and Richard watch as Heidi tries to convince Haylee that their sister wouldn’t want to continue living like this, but Haylee doesn’t want to give up hope. Poor Alex and Richard know they are in for a long day of arguing.
Back in Grey Sloan’s ER, Link and Amelia are treating their new patient for dehydration while looking for an interpreter. Nico happens to be close by and overhears the lady speaking Korean, which he also coincidentally speaks. Nico translates what the patient is saying and tells the other two that she has lost her friend that is a bird and that she seems disoriented.
Owen is also mulling around the ER and gets very upset when Koracick announces that he is entering the room, forcing him to leave once again. Jo brings Meredith into her patient’s room via video chat and says that they can have her in the OR the whole time with them to look over Jo. It’s surprising that Bailey has agreed to allow Meredith to supervise through video chat considering her disdain for her former mentee. However, Bailey has to get over it when the patient agrees that she will have the surgery as long as Meredith is there on camera the whole time.
FAITH
Teddy is still chilling at the hospital since she enjoys being there more than being at home. Owen finds her and Allison and suggests that they give the baby a tour of the hospital to take both of their minds off of things. Vic shows up at Grey Sloan when she brings in a patient while on aid car duty and visits Jackson. He notices that she has a cut on her forehead over her left eyebrow and says, in a very flirty manner, that he will fix her up. Amelia finds Maggie and wants her opinion on whether she should start telling people that she’s pregnant. Maggie feels that Amelia shouldn’t say anything yet so she and Link can enjoy their secret. Amelia and Link’s elderly patient doesn’t want help, but Nico suggest that they keep her for observation in case she has dementia. Maggie checks in on Bertie, who asks her to go on a walk with him.
Over at Pac-North, Haylee has left and come back with some crystals, which she thinks might help her sister heal. (Yes, the healing power of crystals reference shouldn’t be lost on viewers in the sly move to reference Milano’s witchy TV past.) Heidi doesn’t see the point in holding out hope when they know that their sister isn’t going to wake up. Haylee wants Heidi to have some faith that they could get some good news and not lose their sister, which is really too optimistic at this point.
Speaking of faith, DeLuca shows some good faith by teaching Schmitt how to do a simple procedure and then letting him perform it on their patient. DeLuca’s plan backfires when Schmitt royally screws up by dropping the guide wire into the patient’s heart. Bailey is beyond mad at DeLuca when she hears what happened, but he takes her wrath like a champ and doesn’t out Schmitt’s mistake, much to the surprise of Schmitt and the audience.
LOVE ALWAYS WINS
After some more bickering between Heidi and Haylee, Richard forces the sisters to stop arguing. The sisters quip that he sounds like their mom, but are moved when he says that they should use this hard time as an opportunity to become close again. He reminds them that they have each other to lean on in this tough time and that they need to make a joint decision on what care to give their sister in order to heal. The sisters immediately realize that Richard is right, and Haylee decides that Heidi is right in pulling the plug.
Meanwhile Jo’s surgery on Meredith’s patient is going very well, and Meredith is happy to be helping out via video chat. The other surgeons and nurses are glad that she is helping out too, but Bailey still isn’t enthused by the situation. Things go south when the patient has a massive hemorrhage in the middle of the surgery. Bailey scrubs in to help Jo out before the patient bleeds out. At the other end of the hospital, Maggie asks Bertie for advice on how to get Jackson out of her mind while on their walk. They pass by the Korean patient’s room, and Bertie and the woman recognize each other, much to the shock of the other doctors. It turns out that the pair met during the Korean War and fell in love.
Bertie tells the story of how they were supposed to meet on a train platform to go back to America together and start a new life. Unfortunately, he was reassigned to an earlier train and didn’t have a way of contacting her, and they never saw each other again. Bertie goes on to tell his long lost love about his life since then and how he has never forgotten her. The lady tells Bertie, through Nico’s translation, that she never showed up on the train platform either because she was scared to leave South Korea. She didn’t forget about him either and followed him on social media. She had seen his post about his surgery, which prompted her to fly to America to find him and see him again. This is quite a moving and lovely story that touches all the characters and exactly what this episode needed considering the Heidi/Haylee storyline.
While one couple is brought back together after many years apart, a new couple emerges in another room in the hospital. Jackson is stitching up Vic’s forehead, and the sexual tension in the air could be cut with a knife. She asks him is she is the first girl he has dated who is stronger than him and whether or not that is an issue. Jackson coyly says that he may not be stronger than her, but he has a lot of skills that she will find handy. With that cue, the two engage in a lively makeout session and decide that taking things slow isn’t going to happen. It’s easy to see Jackson and Vic working out long term because they have great chemistry and a second cross-show relationship makes perfect sense.
NEW BEGINNINGS
After all the love is outed, we finally learn that DeLuca and Schmitt’s patient is fine following Schmitt’s debacle. Schmitt doesn’t understand why DeLuca is taking the blame for his mistake, and DeLuca says it is ultimately his responsibility because he was in charge of the procedure. However, all is not forgiven, and DeLuca wants Schmitt to hold onto a guide wire for the next week in order for him to learn to never let go of it again in a procedure. DeLuca also makes Schmitt tell the patient’s family what happened to teach him a lesson. The other ailing patient at Grey Sloan also survives when Jo and Bailey are able to repair their patient’s hepatic vein and restore blood flow. Jo completes the procedure successfully, and everyone is super proud of her. Meredith is extremely proud of Jo’s successful outcome, but Bailey hangs up on her mid-praise.
The time has come for the brain-dead sister to be unplugged at Pac-North. While Richard is explaining what he is doing while turning off the machines one by one, everyone gets scared when a cell phone goes off right after the ventilator is turned off. Heidi finds her dying sister’s phone in her bag of personal items and picks it up when she sees it is her sister’s best friend calling. They get the shock of a lifetime when Heidi is told by the friend that her sister is alive and well and that her bag had been stolen. Heidi and Haylee immediately freak out that they have killed the wrong person and scream at Richard to plug whoever this woman is back in. It’s quite a comedic moment when they realize that they pulled the plug on someone they didn’t know.
It turns out that the injured and now-dead woman stole the wallet and was misidentified. Haylee starts blaming Heidi for mistakenly killing person. Richard intervenes and makes them realize that they have been given a rare second chance at fixing their relationship with their very-much-alive sister and that they shouldn’t waste the opportunity. The sisters agree with Richard and all is well again, except in Alex’s case when Richard tells him that the whole mess is a chief problem to fix.
After hearing Bertie’s story, Amelia tells Link that she is happy that they decided to keep the baby, but she’s scared at the same time, which is why she wanted to keep it a secret. In the same sentence, she has a change of heart and decides it’s time to tell their family and friends the good news, as long as he is by her side the whole time. You can practically hear the audience’s collective “aw” in the background during the sweet moment. In another moment of couple’s therapy, Nico doesn’t understand how Schmitt made such a big mistake and says that Schmitt needs to demand more of himself. Nico decides that they will spend the night in the skills lab practicing the procedure over and over until Schmitt won’t make the same mistake again.
Awkwardness then takes over the halls of Grey Sloan when Maggie bumps into Vic as she is leaving. Vic doesn’t want things to be awkward between them, but there’s no chance of that ever happening. The scene is very uncomfortable to watch because they are able to really drive the awkwardness of the encounter home. Things get more awkward when intern Qadri goes on a rant to Bailey about how all the interns and residents chose to work at Grey Sloan to specifically work with Meredith. Bailey irrationally fires Qadri on the spot for supporting Meredith. My bold prediction is that Bailey will not remain chief of surgery for much longer and will be removed from her position by midseason. She can’t keep punishing everyone who supports Meredith because it is completely unfair.
Owen and Teddy end their day by switching roles. Owen suggests that Teddy go back to work and let him stay home with Allison for a while since his current work situation is less than stellar. Teddy is very happy with the new agreement and decides to go change into scrubs and get to work at that very minute. Link, Amelia, Meredith, and DeLuca are also enjoying a couple’s night, where Amelia randomly blurts out that she is pregnant. The news stuns Meredith and DeLuca momentarily until Meredith starts jumping for joy. She is just a little excited to be an aunt.
The episode ends at Pac-North with a possibly touchy situation for Richard. After not being able to get a hold of Catherine to tell her about his chaotic day, Richard runs into Gemma again. She invites him out to dinner to talk about pulling the plug on the wrong patient, and the two leave the hospital together. Hopefully this doesn’t put Richard on another slippery slope, but only time will tell.
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