By Michelle Lerner

After an anemic season premier, GREY’S ANATOMY gets back on track with its second episode. It’s got just enough drama to keep this fish on the hook, while being paced at a reasonable rate.  There’s a fight, some tears and even a baby that has a stroke!

Much of screwball tone is set by the initial appearance of Dr. Yang in the “A” story. Sitting in an apartment full of useless wedding gifts she decides to use them to get better surgeries. Yang is at her best when she’s finagling and barking orders at her interns. You can tell that this is what makes her tick. The melodrama never sat well on her shoulders, and in this episode she gets a chance to shrug off Burke defection like a bad joke. No tears, no absurd scenes. Well, one absurd scene, but Sandra Oh plays it so perfectly it goes down easy.

That scene is the one we wait all episode for, though this being GREY’S, we know it’s not going to be what we expect. Mama Burke, played with as much dignity as possible by Diahann Carroll, mysteriously shows up at the hospital and asks for Christina. Yang hates scenes, unlike everyone else on the show, and spends most of the episode avoiding her. Grey is sent to see why she is there and is reprimanded for her behavior at the non-wedding. O’Malley runs into her and is reprimanded for being in a marriage that isn’t working. Shepard runs into her and is reprimanded for being Shepard. But to Yang, Mama Burke apologizes and tells Yang she wishes she were more like her. (It could never just be what they set it up to be, could it? Having the reverse happen makes it almost as predictable though, when you do it all the time as they do on GREYS.) Yang handles this fairly enormous revelation with brusque aplomb and even gets Mama to get rid of all the silly gifts.  Well played, Yang. She almost made me forget that Burke couldn’t be there himself not because he’s mad at her for not loving him enough, but because the actor who played him, Isaiah Washington, made a lot of really insensitive comments about gay people and is now over on THE BIONIC WOMAN.


Now that the writers have let Karev be ok with his talent with babies, his character is a lot more palatable. It always had to be, but he still has just enough edge that when a patient, a methamphetamine cook of a dad, slugs him it is totally believable. I said something out loud that is unrepeatable here when it happened. The baby of the aforementioned druggy chef had inhaled fumes and couldn’t stop crying because he was coming off the drugs. If that’s not a great reason to bitch a man out, I don’t know what is. I give Karev a gold star. The only fly in the ointment is that Karev gets knocked out and the drug dealer dad absconds with the baby, making Callie look bad.

Callie, the new chief resident, is supposed to have things under control. But she clearly doesn’t. She’s having a very bad day and it only gets worse. She loses the baby and finds out that O’Malley is having an affair with Izzy. How does she find out, you ask? Does she perhaps walk in on some shenanigans in a closet? No, that would be too cliché, believe it or not. Does she over hear the nurses talking? No, wrong again. No, our friend Callie finds out that George is cheating on her because Izzy gives her a complement about how well she is doing as chief resident and wiggles her eyebrows suspiciously. Personally I don’t see how one leads to the other, but Callie is a doctor and I’m not.


I don’t understand why Callie or Izzy would want George. He’s so, well, flabby. And not in a James Gandolfini-masculine sort of way. And not in a Paul Giamatti baby-face-smarty-pants way either. No, George is flabby and self centered and just icky. When Callie pleads with him not to tell her what he is about to since she’s had the worst day, I almost got teary. This strong smart woman does not deserve this little creepy crawly. He has no fizz with either woman.

Shepard has fizz to spare, however. Patrick Dempsey could have chemistry with a wall. But he has eyes only for Meredith. They break up but decide just to be sex buddies. Whatevs. Meredith can’t handle anything more serious, though she can handle telling her non-sister-sister who she never wants to know about that sex life. Yikes. I am curious about Lexie. Her life seems much harder then Meredith thinks. I feel drama!