Grey's Anatomy: "Crash Into Me" Part 2

"Pivotal"
Another great two-parter.

I have something of a love-hate view towards "Grey's Anatomy" (GA). The show is very good, but it amazes me how Shonda Rhimes and the producers can have fine stuff come out almost hand in hand with questionable creative choices. I for one did not care for the backdoor pilot of "Private Practice" wedged into Season 3's "The Other Side of This Life, Parts 1 & 2." If Shonda wanted to jumpstart another series, why not just air it separately in its entirety and not at the expense of a good GA episode? I'm indifferent to "Private Practice" and won't miss it if cancelled.

Anyhow, I digress...

As in many episodes, contrivances pop up to conveniently ramp up the drama, but I feel "Crash Into Me, Parts 1 & 2" upholds GA's knack for two-parters. Our characters scramble to save patients in difficult surgeries that experience one complication after another and several people juggle personal issues while they're in their patients' innards up to their elbows.

Watching Lexie bond with Nick (Seth Green), struggle to keep his carotid sealed...and fail couldn't not pull at the heart strings. Something might've started if he'd lived. And I had the feeling he would've been better for her than Alex.

Seeing Bailey overcome her distaste to save a neo Nazi paramedic suffering from internal injuries while her husband announced he was giving up on their marriage... Talk about being caught on the horns of a dilemma. Her speech to George about telling her husband to take their "vows" to heart was riveting. George's line: "Can I just do charts?" Priceless.

There's Alex working on a patient with both Eva and Lexie watching. I expected more fireworks. We'll just have to see in later episodes what the fall out will be.

For the first time in a while, I found myself liking Meredith as she reverted to form as a caring doctor faced with a no win situation, sticking a needle into the expanding heart of a trapped paramedic before helping him get out of an upside down, crushed ambulance passenger compartment while his dead partner's body lies inches away (with the Chief guiding her along the way. And then she persuades the wife of the dead man's partner to stay and be there for his good as much as for her own.

The season long rut Meredith has been locked into of hating her likeable half-sister, Lexie, and running away from a relationship with McDreamy has been making her extremely unlikable to me. It would've been...interesting if Derrick and Lexie had built on their meeting at the bar. But then we wouldn't be able to enjoy watching Derrick and Rose come together. Where one door closes, another opens. I'm more than willing to slam the door on Meredith for Rose's sake.

Letting Lexie dance with her and her friends at her mom's house kinda announces that Meredith is softening. But it comes out of the blue for me. I'm afraid I missed what made Meredith ease up enough to include Lexie for the first time.

And Meredith telling Derrick that she's trying to overcome her fear and doesn't want him to date other people was nice, but I wonder if it's too little too late?

The sparks are starting to fly between Derrick and nurse Rose, who saved Derrick's operation by getting their computer imager to work again despite being "nervous and flawed." Thank god for those three semesters of computer science she had at Santa Barbara. Needless to say, Derrick was able to continue excising the tumor from the brain of the black lady ambulance driver (the neo Nazi's partner no less) who crashed her rig (extremely convenient for the two-parter's sake) into the ambulance that Meredith and the Chief were performing triage at.

I originally started as Meredith-Derrick shipper. But I won't mind if Derrick begins something with Rose. (In fact, I think Giselle of "Enchanted" is better for him.) Somehow, I doubt Shonda and her braintrust will let these two be, though. But that's one reason why viewers will keep tuning in: to find out what'll happen between Derrick and Rose.

Hopefully the writers strike will be settled sooner rather than later. There aren't too many more Season 4 episodes left in the can, which is a shame since I feel this season of GA is turning out to be one of the better ones.

A lot of interesting things happening in this two-parter. Just skimming the highlights is a long essay.