By Michelle Lerner

It is business as usual on this week's GREY'S ANATOMY. There is; a newly adopted baby with a dying mommy and a feckless father, a boy who swallows magnetic marbles so his parents will get divorced, and a guy who can't crap and a facelift patient who find "chemistry" in their shared room. As usual all the funny, heartbreaking medicine is about the melodrama of our favorite hot docs and their sex lives. And when GREY'S plays fast and loose like it did tonight, that's a good thing.

The show often fails when the medicine mirrors the characters on the show in some inane way. Such was the case a few weeks ago, in the Halloween episode with the little boy who had no ears and his gross little story about flushing his goldfish down the toilet after it died so it could go back to the sea. At the time, Meredith was looking for a place to stash her mother's remains. Stories like that are a little too cute for me. Luckily this week the big picture of the cases wasn't too closely tied to the stories.


The story about the baby and the dying mom and uncaring father was well done, mostly helped along by the casting of a ridiculously cute baby. No father could abandon something that adorable! And of course the case was really about getting Meredith and Lexie in the same sphere. Every week these two seem to make progress, or at least reach some kind of detente. But then the writers tear the thread out and resew the whole thing up the week after. Meredith is annoyed that she walked in on Lexie hooking up with Karev. In her house. The whole thing makes Meredith seem a little childish; she screams at Lexie to find her own friends. After all, Karev pays rent and he and Lexie are adults. And Meredith's not mad at Karev at all. It's Meredith's prerogative to be emotionally unstable, I guess, but it gets frustrating when she always makes realizations about her behavior and then never sticks to any resolution. I think what I am yearning for is a little character development in the way of a step forward. People are stubborn, but when they want to make a change they can. Meredith seemed to make a change at the end of the episode when she told Karev to take her sister home; inspired by the baby drama Lexie had told Meredith five things no one else knew about her, touching Meredith. Let's see if Meredith remembers her sisterly moment in next week's episode.

The cranky crapper and the age obsessed facelift patient were meant to mirror George and Izzy I suppose. I’m glad the writers didn’t harp on it. Though they did spend way too much time on George and Izzy’s lack of chemistry. It’s not like it’s a surprise- Derek Shepard losing his mojo for Meredith would be shocking- Patrick Dempsey has sex appeal when acting with a wall.  But George is a character who is made to be humiliated. He was interesting in the first season of the show because his battle was to get respect, and he actually got some and then fell when he had bad sex with Meredith. That was all just true enough to make George relatable. But his whole thing with Izzy is so unbelievable as a love affair, that when they admit at the end of the episode that they are lying about how great the sex they just had was, the moment falls flat. Katherine Heigl is one of the most beautiful women on T.V. but she and George are better off as friends.

Dr. Hahn is emerging as quite the troublesome new surgeon. She hates Yang, or is she just trying to teach her a lesson? Either way she is fun to watch. One of the best things about GREY’S is the way they make surgeons look so competent and brilliant. Hahn is a perfect example. McSteamy thinks he might be in love with her, and it’s a sharp moment when she tells him he only thinks he is because of her skill, her confidence and the fact that she is not attracted to him. I do have a question though; is she trying to say she’s a lesbian? I wasn’t sure. Either way she’s a nice addition.


The Chief finally realizes that Torres is a terrible chief resident and that Bailey deserves the job. Bailey cries like a baby when she gets it, which I thought was very out of character but oddly touching. But my last question; did the chief fire Torres just as chief resident or as a doctor at Seattle Grace? I hope not the latter, because Sarah Ramirez is a great presence on the show.