“It’s Raining Men”
Original Airdate: October 17, 2019
The lives for all the characters on Grey’s Anatomy keep getting more complicated. This week’s issues center on derailing any potential happiness that any of them have. Grey Sloan Memorial finds itself in even hotter water after an article slamming the hospital goes viral.
FALLOUT
Meredith’s problems keep piling up when a very harsh article gets published using her name. Amelia and Maggie tell Meredith that she is making headlines and has 90,000 likes and climbing for an online article, in list form, detailing various criticisms about healthcare, pharmaceutical companies, and issues at Grey Sloan Memorial. The problem is that Mer only sent the website her ideas for potential articles and neither wrote anything herself nor gave quotes. Meredith is shocked that the headline suggests that Grey Sloan is a terrible hospital and repeatedly says that she never said that.
The article spreads like wildfire, and we quickly get to see each character’s varying opinions of it. Alex thinks the whole thing is hilarious because of how true it is, while Jo is shocked that Meredith would bash the hospital that she owns. The residents and interns have mixed opinions on the article, but they seem to be in agreement that Meredith’s issues are valid. However, most seem to also feel that the bad publicity for Grey Sloan is not good for their blossoming careers. One even says that Qadri should be happy she was fired and got out while she could, and it is also revealed that the recently fired doctor has gotten a job in Michigan.
Bailey’s reaction to the news is the worst of the bunch, which is unsurprising. However, the way she finds out is a bit comical. Owen tells Bailey that he is going on paternity leave for as long as Koracick keeps his restraining order on him. As they talk, an ambulance pulls up to the ER with a dialysis patient with a burst fistula. The new patient finds out he is at Grey Sloan and immediately freaks out and says he will sue if he is brought inside. Turns out he has seen Meredith’s article and doesn’t want to be anywhere near what he thinks is a toxic hospital. Bailey is very confused, and Owen jumps into action by telling the driver to take them to Pac-North. Bailey goes inside, looks at her phone, and is instantly horrified by the article.
DeLuca thinks that it’s a good idea to see how Bailey is handling the news, which is a dumb move. We all know that Bailey’s reaction isn’t going to be good, so putting yourself in the line of fire is a bad move, DeLuca. He also has the bright idea to tell Bailey that the chief resident quit after seeing the article. In a surprising move, Bailey immediately appoints DeLuca as the new chief resident. In the next breath, she starts berating him about why he didn’t warn them about Meredith’s article and completely freaks out at him. Bailey is being irrational, but at least we get an explanation as to why at the end of the episode.
Koracick is also on a small warpath and is trying to come up with damage control solutions. His bright idea is to film Jackson’s upcoming surgery on a three-year-old child with abnormal skull growth to give the hospital some good publicity. Koracick’s theory is that Jackson successfully operating on a child and helping her have a better life will make them all look better. Jackson is wary of the plan, but goes along with it for the moment. Elsewhere on the patient front, Teddy is back at work full-time and gets a crazy case: a criminal stowaway jumped out of a plane mid-flight and landed on a group of people on the ground. The criminal died on impact, but Station 19’s Ben and Vic bring in a woman who was hit by the guy. Her crush injuries are pretty intense and lead to a very unorthodox day at the office for everyone.
FROM BAD TO WORSE
Meredith wants to make the whole article situation right and calls her contact at the unnamed website while at community service. She demands them to change the headline, as it is misleading and she never said that Grey Sloan is a bad hospital. The person clearly doesn’t care what Meredith says and won’t change it. Meanwhile, Jackson is very unhappy when he learns that Koracick has bribed his child patient’s parents for his publicity stunt. They will let a camera crew follow all of their daughter’s care and the surgery in exchange for the surgery being pro bono. Jackson doesn’t agree with the terms and makes it well known that he hates Koracick.
Owen arrives at Pac-North with the dialysis patient and tells the ER doctor that he needs to page the head of cardio and get the patient to the OR. The doctor tells Owen that they don’t have a head of cardio, so Owen decides to take the patient to surgery himself. Webber catches up with them and takes over the patient’s care. As Owen goes to leave, he bumps into Alex and is offered a tour of the hospital. Alex is smart and spots Owen being at his hospital as an opportunity to recruit another great doctor. Back at Grey Sloan, Teddy, Maggie, and Helm are attempting to help the patient who was crushed by the guy who fell from the sky, while Link tries to calm down the patient’s blood-soaked boyfriend. The boyfriend tells Link that the guy that fell from the sky exploded on impact, which explains why he is covered in blood and extremely shaken up. Link tries to calm him down and clean him up, but finding a piece of the dead man in the boyfriend’s sweatshirt starts the process over again.
Things aren’t going well for Meredith at community service either. She gets texts from DeLuca saying that the Bailey situation is not good at all and from Cristina saying that she should leave before Bailey kills her. Meredith decides that she should play the part of bomb squad and go diffuse the situation with Bailey. She tells her supervisor that she needs to leave and will make up the hours another day, but the supervisor is being tough and doesn’t want to let Mer leave. Meredith runs away from community service, which if reported by the supervisor, would put her back in court.
PATCH JOB
After checking on his young patient before surgery, Jackson sees that the camera crew is interviewing her father, who is giving a tearful account of how much help all the doctors at GSM have been. Koracick is super pleased with the footage, as he plans to use it to his advantage. Jackson angrily watches and undermines Koracick by cutting off the interview. Koracick ignores Jackson’s power move by saying now is a good time to go interview the mother. The powder keg is close to exploding at this point, and it’s unclear how far Jackson will go to stop Koracick.
Bailey asks Maggie to give her a cardio exam to make sure her heart is fine after not feeling well when learning about Meredith’s article. Bailey is worried that the news will give her another heart attack, but Maggie assures her there is nothing wrong with her heart. Maggie nervously tells Bailey that she thinks the problems Bailey has been having are hormonal. A little after the appointment, Ben visits Bailey in her office to try and make things better. He tries to make light of the article situation, which doesn’t make things better. Bailey gets hysterical and tells her husband that she is starting menopause. She completely loses her mind and sobs through the scene while telling him about all the feelings she’s been having and how she never thought menopause would be this hard. Ben is a saint and asks her to tell him what she needs because he is the best husband in the world and will do anything to make her feel better. Bailey just wants him to sit with her for a bit, but that doesn’t stop her hysterics.
At the end of their tour of Pac-North, Alex and Owen walk past a room where a patient is bleeding heavily while recovering from surgery. Owen immediately springs into action to help stop the bleeding and tells the incompetent Pac-North doctor to get out of his way. Like the good guy and doctor he is, Owen decides to try and teach the resident while trying to stop the patient’s bleeding. When the bleeding won’t stop, Owen volunteers to help Alex operate. Meanwhile, Meredith has snuck into Grey Sloan and finds Jo to ask how bad things are. Jo tells her that the residents are panicking and the other doctors are split on their feelings. However, she also says that once tempers calm down, she thinks the article will spark good conversations about healthcare reform since what Mer “wrote” is true.
Down in the OR, Teddy and Maggie are assisted by Helm to fix their patient’s crush injuries. No matter what they do, it seems the patient keeps going downhill. Right as things start to get even worse, Link comes in to give them an extra set of hands. He might be too late though, as it appears the patient might be bleeding out and going into cardiac arrest. Jackson has decided to fight back against Koracick by screwing up his publicity ploy. He enlists Amelia and tells his patient’s parents that Amelia is the better surgeon for the job. Jackson tells them that the surgery will still be pro bono with Amelia operating because patients mean more to him than good press. The parents agree to let Amelia help with the operation, and Jackson convinces them that they don’t need the cameras either.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES
Unfortunately, Teddy, Maggie, Link, and Helm’s patient succumbs to her injuries on the operating table. Teddy is especially upset by her patient’s death and declares that the whole world is broken for something like this to happen, not just healthcare. In an adjacent OR, Koracick is livid to find Jackson, Amelia, and Schmitt operating without the cameras present. He feels they kidnapped the surgery from him, as Amelia replaced him on the roster. Jackson decides to play his ace and tells Koracick that as the head of the board, he is technically Koracick’s boss and can decide if cameras record his surgery or not. He also reminds Koracick that all of his plastic surgery procedures generate a ton of money for the hospital, so he should back off.
After Koracick leaves, there’s a more graphic than usual montage of Jackson and Schmitt deconstructing and reconstructing their patient’s skull piece by piece. This scene isn’t for the faint of stomach, as Grey’s typically doesn’t show the grittier side of medicine. At the end of the successful procedure, Schmitt tells Jackson that they should have filmed the surgery because it really would have made a difference for the hospital, which further angers Jackson. Back Pac-North’s OR, Owen describes how bad the Koracick situation has gotten at Grey Sloan and how he refuses to work with Koracick after the restraining order incident. Alex takes the opportunity to formally offer Owen the position of head of trauma at Pac-North. The pitch includes allowing Owen to run and build the department however he wants.
Meredith decides to fall on her sword and speak to Bailey while she is visiting Grey Sloan. Bailey is less than thrilled to see her former student in her office and doesn’t want to hear Meredith’s explanations for what happened. Meredith tries to tell Bailey that her ideas were never meant to be published and how she had no idea it was happening or that the website would bad-mouth the hospital. She says the website won’t take the article down or change the headline. Bailey and Meredith both then agree that publishing a retraction of the story won’t help the cause either. Meredith apologizes for the whole ordeal and emotionally talks about how she could never say anything bad about Grey Sloan. For half a second, it looks like Bailey might understand Meredith’s pleas, but that quickly fades when she tells Meredith that the damage has been done and can’t be undone. Bailey kicks Meredith out, effectively ending anything that remained of their friendship.
THE LAST LAUGH
At the end of a very busy day, Koracick catches Owen and Teddy before they leave the hospital to tell Owen that he has decided to drop the restraining order and would like to offer him his job back. Owen practically laughs in Koracick’s face and tells him that he quit and wasn’t fired and doesn’t want his job back. Koracick and Teddy are surprised to hear that Owen has accepted a job at Pac-North, and Koracick smugly tells Owen to call him when he realizes the error in his ways.
The end of the episode essentially gives updates on the show’s couples. Vic finds Jackson after dropping another patient off at Grey Sloan and hears all about how he rebuilt a kid’s skull from scratch. She is surprised that he is being more humble than usual and says how impressed she is with his work. The love birds head to the cafeteria for a dinner date. At the Grey/Pierce/Shepherd residence, while spending some quality time together, Link tells Amelia that he is in love with her. He goes on to explain that love isn’t his thing because he is afraid of pain, but has decided that it’s time to dive in and see what happens. Oddly enough, Amelia doesn’t say that she loves him too, even though she has already declared her love earlier in the season.
Two other relationships are about to be tested back at Grey Sloan. Meredith talks to DeLuca about the article situation and admits that she doesn’t know how to fix it. She thought that her history with Bailey would work in her favor, not blow up in her face. DeLuca tells Meredith it was a bad idea to talk to Bailey and she shouldn’t have left community service. He gets angrier at her when she tells him that she has been summoned back to court for her actions. Meredith takes the opportunity to defend herself and says that she was only telling the truth in her article.
DeLuca fights back by saying she is being self-destructive and should have worked within the system to fix it instead of trying to blow it up from the outside. Now Meredith is rather upset with her boy toy and declares that if he thinks she can sit back and not say anything when there are giant problems then he doesn’t know her at all. The cracks that we all knew would at some point make themselves apparent have started to form. The episode ends with a quick scene in Bailey’s office with Maggie delivering her final test results. Maggie announces that Bailey is starting menopause, but she’s also pregnant! Bailey is utterly shocked and Maggie asks her to not keep it a secret. Considering Bailey isn’t Amelia, I’m sure the news will come out quickly.
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