“Let’s All Go to the Bar”
Original Airdate: November 21, 2019
Meredith is back at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital where she belongs! The fall finale kicks off with life starting to get back to normal for our core group of doctors, who have all faced difficulties in the first half of season sixteen. This episode also doubles as a pre-kick off to the weekly Station 19 and Grey’s Anatomy crossovers that will begin airing on January 23, 2020. With plenty of laughs and tragedy to go around, let’s dive into the final episode of Grey’s Anatomy for the year.
FIRST DAY JITTERS
Maggie and Meredith are both back at work, and everyone is welcoming Mer back with open arms. We see screen images of Mer receiving texts from Cristina that say she has sent Mer a welcome back/sorry you got dumped present. DeLuca is surprised to see Mer at Grey Sloan Memorial, as he seems to be the only person in the hospital who didn’t know Bailey rehired her. Mer chimes in the best comeback and says, “I was going to tell you, but you were too busy dumping me.” DeLuca is confused and doesn’t think they are broken up, but Mer assures him that wanting space is the equivalent of ending a relationship.
Things at Pac-North seem to be going smoother these days. Gemma continues to try to be supportive of Richard and brings him a peace offering yogurt to get him to talk. She encourages him to be easy on Maggie over the death of his niece, Sabrina, but Richard doesn’t seem convinced. With Alex out for the episode to visit his mother in Iowa, Owen is left to give Dr. Daphne Lopez a tour of the hospital. The UCLA emergency room doctor is deciding whether to bring her services to Pac-North or Seattle Presbyterian, who apparently can’t afford her.
Romance is also back in the halls, and ambulance dock, at Grey Sloan. Catherine pulls up to the hospital to find Jackson being touchy-feely with Victoria Hughes. Since she still thinks her son is dating Maggie, Catherine is none too pleased to meet Vic. Catherine gets the award for best zinger of the episode by responding with, “Station 19? What is that, a TV channel?” after Vic introduces herself as, “Victoria Hughes, Station 19.” Amelia and Link and Nico and Schmitt are getting hot and heavy in different rooms of the hospital too. The romance factor drops a notch when Amelia and Link run into Jo, who tells them she has signed up to be a safe haven volunteer and has gotten a notice about a baby that was dropped off at a nearby firehouse. Jo asks Link if he will go with her, but Link has to get to surgery. Jo decides she will handle it alone, which probably wasn’t her best decision. Amelia and Bailey have also become pregnant buddies and check up on each other when they cross paths, like they did when Amelia walked away from Jo and Link’s conversation. It’s an odd new friendship.
Elsewhere in the hospital, the residents are doing their daily rounds and are all still mad at Schmitt for turning Mer in to Bailey. They go with Maggie to meet her first patient since coming back: a new father whose wife gave birth to a premature baby. The patient, Elliott, has chronic aortic stenosis and needs a fourth aortic valve replacement. This instantly makes Maggie nervous, as she doesn’t seem ready to be back at work yet. The next patient on rounds is Station 19’s former captain, Pruitt Herrera. Bailey sends the residents away and wants to take care of Herrera herself, as she formerly treated him for mesothelioma. He thinks his cancer is back and asks Bailey not to tell Ben. The third patient on rounds is one of Meredith’s former child patients, who presents with a mass in between her ribs. They get interrupted by Dr. Cormac Hayes, who was hired as the new chief of pediatric surgery that same morning. The Irish doc is immediately brash and rubs Mer the wrong way.
UNCERTAINTY
Jo arrives at none other than Station 19 to pick up the surrendered baby and is greeted by Vic, who thinks Jo is the baby’s mother. Jo recognizes Vic’s name and says that she must be Jackson’s girlfriend, which freaks Vic out because she didn’t think they had a label. Ben and fellow firefighter Dean Miller bring the three-day-old baby to Jo, and Ben decides to give Jo a tour of the station. Back at Grey Sloan, Maggie tells Teddy about Elliott’s surgery and asks her if she would like to scrub in. Teddy questions why Maggie would need help, but decides to scrub in anyway because she misses heart surgery. This is also direct confirmation that Maggie is unsure of herself and not ready to operate after taking responsibility for killing her cousin two episodes ago.
Back in Mer and Hayes’ patient’s room, the two docs are butting heads. Hayes asks Mer if she ordered a CT scan yet, and Mer says that she was about to order one before he interrupted her exam a few minutes before. Over in our third patient’s room, Bailey is giving Herrera an ultrasound and fielding questions about her pregnancy. Bailey is happy to say that she has an ultrasound later that day and is excited to find out the sex of the baby. Unfortunately, Bailey sees a mass in the ultrasound and needs to take Herrera for a biopsy.
Jackson decides to find his mother and set the record straight. Before he can do that, Catherine accuses him of sneaking around with another woman in plain sight. Jackson finally tells her that he broke up with Maggie a while ago and that he is seeing Vic now. Catherine reveals that she is unsure whether her marriage to Richard will last much longer, but Jackson reassures her that Richard loves her and wouldn’t cheat on her. Richard and Catherine have apparently barely spoken in weeks, so Jackson recommends she try and listen to her husband. Over in Elliott’s room, Teddy gives him and his wife some tips on being new parents while prepping him for surgery. Maggie is still clearly nervous, which at this point should be making the audience nervous as to what is going to happen next.
BABY FEVER
Back at Pac-North, Gemma and Richard have an impromptu AA meeting in his office. Richard tells her that he hasn’t been doing too well and learns that his friend is a widow, which is why she started drinking. The action switches over to Station 19, where Jo is chilling with the baby while Ben gets a bottle. Station 19’s Lt. Jack Gibson pops in to see how Jo and the baby are doing. Jo opens up about how she is having a surreal moment since she was also dropped off at a firehouse as a baby. Jack and Jo proceed to bond over growing up in the foster system before Ben comes back. Ben and Jack reveal that they get about seven surrendered babies a year after Jo asks, and Ben tries to explain that the babies are given up for good reasons. While Jo feeds the baby, you can totally tell that she is starting to wish that she wasn’t joking about being pregnant during her Halloween wedding.
Over at Grey Sloan, Schmitt and Helm are taking Elliott to surgery, but he asks to go by the NICU to see his baby in case he doesn’t make it through surgery. Bailey and Amelia find each other and start chatting again. Amelia reveals that she hasn’t had an ultrasound yet at 20 weeks pregnant and doesn’t care about finding out the baby’s sex. Bailey yells at her for being dumb, and Amelia has been too terrified at what she might find out from the ultrasound to actually have it done.
While waiting for their patient’s CT scans to load, Hayes and Mer continue to disagree. Hayes thinks the patient has a tumor, while Mer thinks it could be some gall stones that migrated to the patient’s back after taking out her gall bladder two years ago. Hayes accuses Mer of screwing up the prior surgery. Mer rebuttals by asking Hayes if Bailey or Koracick hired him because she doesn’t think Bailey would hire someone with that massive of an ego. Mer is also having the residents try and hunt down her package from Cristina, which they have yet to find.
FROM BAD TO WORSE
Ben offers to give Jo and the baby a ride from Station 19 back to Grey Sloan, as he’s taking the rest of the day off to go to Bailey’s ultrasound appointment. The baby is making Jo question her past even more, and Jo is failing to understand how her mother could give her up. Jo is quickly going into potentially bad territory here, as she doesn’t look like she wants to give this baby up. In the OR at Grey Sloan, Maggie continuously asks for Elliott’s estimated clogging time, which is what she forgot to ask about during Sabrina’s surgery. Teddy reveals she is being courted by Pac-North to run their cardiothoracic department. Speaking of Pac-North, Catherine shows up to visit Richard, but hears from another doctor that her husband is in his office with another woman and has the door shut. Catherine immediately assumes the worst and storms out.
Hayes decides to ruffle Mer’s feathers some more by telling their patient and her mother that she might have cancer, even though Mer specifically asked him not to worry them before finding out what was going on. Mer walks into the room as they find out the news, and she tries to calm the hysterical pair down. Elsewhere in the hospital, Amelia informs Link that she hasn’t had an ultrasound while he is walking to the OR with DeLuca. Link is more than a little surprised, and Amelia takes out her frustration on DeLuca by asking Link why DeLuca is on his service after dumping her sister. DeLuca is still convinced he didn’t break up with Mer and explains what happened to Link and Nico, who are all scrubbing in for the same surgery. Link surprises DeLuca by saying that he is not Mer’s equal and that it is okay. Link continues to say that he knows he isn’t Amelia’s equal either, and Nico seconds with how he’s not equals with Schmitt. Nico sends the message home by saying that even though he and Schmitt aren’t equals, he respects his boyfriend, but wouldn’t respect him if he asked to take a break to figure things out. Link urges DeLuca to correct his mistake with Mer and undo it before it’s too late.
Maggie and Teddy are almost done with their surgery, which is being carefully watched by Koracick in the gallery. Maggie thinks Koracick is still following Teddy around and feels he may think that he still has a future with her. Maggie wants Teddy to clear the air with Koracick instead of stringing him along, and their conversation gets cut short when Teddy gets paged to the ER and leaves Maggie to close with Helm and Schmitt. After Teddy leaves, they realize that Elliott’s heart isn’t restarting, which causes Maggie to start freaking out.
A quick break shows Bailey telling Herrera that he has lymphoma. Bailey is happy to report that the treatments are straightforward even though the cancer is aggressive. Herrera starts to imply that he might not want treatment, but notices that Bailey is bleeding. Ben, Jo, and the baby arrive at the hospital at the same time, and Ben gets the bad news text from Bailey and leaves Jo and the baby alone. Back in the OR, Elliott is crashing, and Maggie is losing her mind. She asks how this could be happening again, and Teddy comes back to save the day. She proposes a plan to keep Elliott on bypass and wait and see if his heart will restart itself while also trying to calm Maggie down. The scene cuts to Ben running through the halls and into an exam room, where he finds Herrera and Carina DeLuca comforting Bailey, who has suffered a miscarriage.
In another OR, Mer and Hayes are performing a biopsy on their teen patient. Mer is still complaining that she can’t locate Cristina’s package, while the lab confirms that the mass is not a malignant tumor. The news immediately perks Mer up, and she takes Hayes’ place to remove the mass and find out what is plaguing their patient. Upon removing the mass and opening it up, Mer finds that it was a gall stone all along. Hayes eyes show that he is quite impressed that Mer knew the mass was a gall stone and not a tumor from a scan. Mer takes a victory lap by verbally putting Hayes in his place.
Owen then finishes up his tour of Pac-North with Dr. Lopez and seems a bit smitten with his potential new colleague. Richard sees their interaction and warns Owen to be careful if he doesn’t want his relationship with Teddy to blow up. Even though he is projecting his problems onto Owen, Richard isn’t wrong, as Catherine and Jackson are sitting at a bar at the same time and talking about the same topic. Catherine fears that Richard is having an affair, while Jackson isn’t convinced and thinks they have just had a massive miscommunication.
Another couple in potential tragedy could be Ben and Bailey, as it’s unclear how they are going to handle the miscarriage. Ben wants to take Bailey home, but she would rather stay at the hospital and work to take her mind off things. She asks for some alone time because she can’t face her husband. On her way to her office, Bailey bumps into Amelia again. Bailey urges Amelia to have an ultrasound, and Amelia is happy to report that she already scheduled one for that night. Amelia makes the mistake of asking how Bailey’s ultrasound went, but Bailey doesn’t tell her that she had a miscarriage.
THE SHOE DROPS
Maggie and Teddy have the difficult task of telling Elliott’s wife that they need to keep him on bypass indefinitely to see if his heart will restart itself. The wife isn’t happy that they don’t know how long it will take or if her husband will wake up at all. Maggie gets too emotional and has to leave the conversation. To make matters worse, she runs into Koracick in the hall, who wants to know what happened with the patient. Maggie fully spirals out of control and tells her boss that she doesn’t trust herself anymore and quits on the spot. Teddy walks out of the room to find a stunned Koracick, who immediately asks her to be the new cardio chief. Unfortunately, Teddy thinks that Koracick fired Maggie to give the job to her as a sign of love. Teddy apologizes for hurting Koracick and proclaims her love for Owen while telling her ex that he needs to move on. Koracick is even more shocked at Teddy’s speech. He manages to tell Teddy that Maggie quit and would still like her to take the job. Koracick goes on to say that he would marry Teddy tomorrow if she said yes and wants a future with her. He asks Teddy to seriously consider whether she wants to close the door on him since Owen hasn’t proposed to her and he has.
While telling their patient that she doesn’t have cancer, Mer is surprised to see that Hayes has a softer side. He gives the teen advice on how to deal with boys her age, as he has raised a few teen boys of his own. On his way out of Pac-North for the night, Richard gets a text from Catherine saying that she is leaving for a conference. Gemma believes that Catherine must think Richard is involved with her, and Richard fears the same. The episode then goes into a series of four shocking/surprising moments/cliffhangers to end the year. The first comes from Jo, who has invited Link over to her and Alex’s home. Please note Alex is still out of town. Link is shocked to see that Jo has kidnapped the baby she picked up from Station 19, but considering how she acted throughout the episode, I wasn’t surprised at all. Jo admits that maybe becoming a safe haven volunteer was too much too soon. Maybe it will all work out with Jo and Alex adopting the baby without Jo getting in legal trouble.
The second sort-of surprise occurs when Mer and Hayes share the same elevator at the end of the night. Hayes informs Mer that he gives his patients all the info good or bad regardless of whether or not he knows what is wrong with them because his wife’s doctors didn’t give him that courtesy before she died. It is surprising that he is also a widow, but Mer is more taken by Hayes saying that he wants to learn how to work with her and understands why she was missed. Mer then gets her big shock when Cristina sends her several texts stating that her package isn’t an “it,” rather a “him.” The next text says “McWidow,” which is followed by three separate four-leaf clover emojis representing that Hayes is both Irish and the third doctor she has given a “Mc” nickname. Granted, McWidow doesn’t rhyme with McDreamy and McSteamy, but we’ll let that one slide. Considering the amount of times Mer couldn’t find her package with Hayes in the room, it wasn’t hard to guess that he might indeed be Cristina’s package, especially since she still likes to interfere in her person’s life form afar. Will Mer take Cristina’s bait now that Hayes has started to loosen up?
I also predicted the third cliffhanger way back at the beginning of the season. Amelia has her ultrasound and is relieved that everything is fine. However, Carina reveals that Amelia is actually 24 weeks pregnant, making Amelia realize that Link may not be the father of her baby. For the record, I called this the moment Amelia found out she was pregnant. This ought to severely complicate many lives! The big cliffhanger happens when Jackson, Nico, Schmitt, Ben, Herrera and a bunch of residents find themselves at a bar. Herrera is comforting Ben and says that his wife miscarried before having their daughter Andy, who is one of the few Station 19 characters missing from this episode.
As Ben asks Herrera why he was at the hospital, a car crashes through the side of the bar and becomes the night’s promised tragedy. It’s unclear what the outcome of the accident will be, but thankfully we don’t have to wait very long to find out. Station 19 and Grey’s Anatomy return Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 8/7c and 9/8c respectively. That’s right, Grey’s Anatomy is moving back to the 9/8c timeslot to allow the weekly crossovers to run more smoothly.
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