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Grey's Anatomy: (As We Know It)

Posted Feb 13th 2006 2:31AM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, ABC, OpEd, Grey's Anatomy


When this episode ended, I just wanted to turn off my TV. I knew that nothing coming after it could possibly approach my now-heightened television standards. This show now ranks in my top-five list, greatest hours of TV ever. Seriously.

And it wasn't just the dramatic circumstances - the bomb inside a patient, the impending birth of Bailey's son, the threatened death of her husband, the sexual tension between Alex and Izzie, the looove tension between Shepherd and Meredith, Burke and Cristina. It was the film work, the emotion, the music, the heart-stopping fear and love and agony and ... just wow. And the shower scene, my lord, that was truly great stuff. Every bit of dirt that sullied my conscience after loving the shower scene that opened last week's episode was [yes I'm conscious of my double entendre] washed away.

Thanks, ABC, for advertising the Season 1 DVD at the end of this episode! Great. 'cause all I want is the DVD of this season now.

If the shower scene was the most striking, it had plenty of runners-up. There was, for instance, one of the first scenes, where Meredith and Cristina are both tending to the guy with the bomb. Burke asks Cristina to leave, and naturally, she doesn't want to. His response - that he needs her to leave, he can't think with her in there - would spark empathy in even the hardest of TV-watching hearts.

Then there's the scene between George and Addison Shepherd, when he asks her, isn't there anything they can do for Bailey? When she says she's so freaked out she can't possibly think of a dumber question, I feel compassion and pissiness towards the doctor in pink. Did she really need to get that pointed in her response?

George's answer, though, is lovely. He tells Bailey that she needs to fight, she needs to do, that she's that sort of person. And he gets right in there with her - literally - to help her push the baby out.
The pushing scene is admirably long. Bailey doesn't push the baby out in two grunt-filled puffs! I so hate it when TV shows do that. I pushed for two hours with both my boys (to no avail, they both ended up as c-sections, but that's another story) and it injures me personally when producers make childbirth seem so quick. And I think we can all agree? We want George to be our birth coach. Oh, he's going to make such a cute daddy one day! If he can do this for his boss, can you imagine how great he'd be for his own wife?

Then there is, of course, the gurney scene. It turns out that the operating room where the bomb guy is sitting is right over the oxygen line. If the bomb were to go off over that, the whole hospital would explode. And we don't want that. In order to address the problem, the gurney needs to be moved before the bomb is extracted. And Meredith has to hold her hand steady in these excruciatingly slow steps down a long hall.

This is where the camera work arrested me most. Focusing in on those little rubber feet, that was a masterstroke. The tension was enormous and we were all biting our tongues when we saw that metal strip on the floor... ack.

The part where Meredith is removing the bomb is almost calm in comparison. And as she hands it over to the bomb squad guy, the music is fantastic, perfect, and my husband and I are arguing. "He's going to blow up as soon as he leaves the room," says hubbie. "No, he's not!" I respond. "I'm sure of it." Then Meredith walks out in the hall, with (wow she's really a good actress) this look of curiosity, mild concern, on her face. Uh-oh. I still don't believe that the bomb will explode. I don't. And... pow.

I didn't want the bomb to explode. But that was one of the best explosion scenes I've ever witnessed.

Wrapping up, the end is just a succession of fantastic vignettes. McDreamy's face when he comes off the elevator, looking frantically for Meredith, the "where is she?" misinterpreted by the Chief (but not, at all, by Mrs. Chief). Bailey bringing her little boy - "William George Bailey Jones" - to see his daddy. The shower scene. Oh my, the shower scene, filled with the intimacy of fear, love, trauma between friends in stark contrast to the fantasy shower scene of lust and delicious bubbles of the previous episode. Cristina telling Burke that she loved him, too, once he'd fallen asleep. The "last kiss" thing between Meredith and McDreamy. It was all pretty great, although I didn't really like the device of having Dr. Shepherd keep starting to leave, then coming back for more conversation... it was a bit awkward after a beautiful, beautiful show. But somehow, everything is awkward between Meredith and McDreamy now, isn't it?

You can see nearly all my favorite scenes in the ABC video. You go ABC (now if you could go leave out the damned minivan commercials, that would be great).

Tags: bomb, ellen pompeo, EllenPompeo, gray's anatomy, Gray'sAnatomy, izzie, meredith gray, meredith grey, MeredithGray, MeredithGrey, sandra oh, SandraOh, surgery, television, tv

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