Grey's Anatomy 5.11 "Wish You Were Here" Recap

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Grey’s Anatomy is back! Finally, after many weeks of anxious anticipation, we’ve gotten a new episode. Was it worth the wait?

5.11 “Wish You Were Here”

Original Airdate: 1/8/09

This week’s episode picks up pretty much where things left off, maybe a day or two later. Cristina and Meredith are still mad at each other, Lexie and Mark must deal with the aftermath of their “teaching” session, Callie still has the hots for Sadie, MerDer is still MerDer, Cristina and Hunt are taking things slow, so slow that it’s almost as if they’re not moving at all, Izzie is still seeing Denny and dating Alex, and George … *crickets chirp.*

Last night’s episode centered around three patients, the most important of which is – as we know – a death row inmate named William Dunn (played by Eric Stoltz). His arrival at Seattle Grace causes a lot of added tension. Meredith seems keen on treating him with kindness, no matter what he might’ve done, while the rest of the team assigned to his case (Derek, Cristina, Hunt) treat him with thinly veiled disdain. We find out eventually that Dunn enjoys slicing women’s throats and managed quite a few before eventually getting caught and landing in his current predicament. His ailment: a sharpened toothbrush in the spine. Ow.

Meanwhile, Bailey welcomes a young patient of hers, Jackson. Alex aids her. The pediatrician on staff keels over from a massive coronary right in front of the kid and gets replaced by Dr. Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw). Bailey does not take kindly to the fact that the new doctor is young and has a totally different treatment protocol than the one that dropped dead. She tries to complain to the Chief but he basically just tells her to deal with it. Bailey’s idea of ‘dealing with it’ involves questioning the new doctor’s instructions to get the kid some transplants. But the new doctor stands her ground. I rather liked her. And by the end, Bailey probably did too. Though the kid’s future is rather uncertain.

Callie and Sloan spend the entire episode being each other’s support group against the Evil Hot Interns (i.e. Sadie and Lexie). Sloan is intent on never repeating the mistake of sleeping with Lexie again, and Callie’s fighting her attraction for Sadie. Meanwhile, they have Sadie and Lexie as interns while they deal with a lady’s throat tumor. The patient, Margaret, is played by Perrey Reeves. George was involved in this too though he had maybe 5 or 6 lines and doesn’t seem to be a part of any particular storyline. Eventually, Sloan fails miserably at his attempts to avoid Lexie and off to more teaching lessons they go. Callie manages to stay strong – sort of.

Cristina and Meredith are still mad at each other, and so they bicker all episode long while dealing with Serial Killer guy. They do not manage to reconcile. I hope they do so by next episode cause I’m kind of bored of watching them be angry at each other.

Hunt brings Cristina some coffee. Then blows her off. And then Cristina tells him to leave her alone. That’s their relationship in a nutshell.

But Hunt and Derek are getting buddy-buddy, bonding over Cristina and Meredith’s current dispute.

The Chief spends the entire episode hidden away in a room, feeling like a failure because his staff keeps quitting, no one seems to want to work at Seattle Grace, and the interns are a bunch of scalpel-happy maniacs who like to slice each other up. We’re once again reminded that Seattle Grace has sunk to the #12 spot. And it doesn’t seem like the Chief’s managed to do much to improve the state of things. Someone give the man a hug.

Izzie finally tells Alex that she can see dead people. And by ‘people’ I mean Denny. And Alex takes it like, “Cool, whatever.” And Izzie sinks further into crazyland, because her boyfriend doesn’t seem to mind that she’s sleeping with a hallucination. And now she can have the best of both worlds. Two boyfriends are better than one! Even if one is dead. Oh, it’s also Izzie’s birthday. Happy birthday, Izzie! Alex bakes her a cake. It looked rather yum, if slightly diagonal.

Derek and Meredith have a nice moment together toward the end. He tells her that the reason he was so hard on the prisoner guy is that his father got shot by two men that were trying to steal his watch. And though he knows he should treat everyone the same, in his eyes they’re not the same. They discuss the feud with Cristina and then Derek turns up the music and tries to cheer Meredith up by dancing around the room. This was really quite hialrious.

We close with Izzie blowing out her birthday candle.

[fade to black]

So what did you think of the new episode? I quite enjoyed it. Feel free to discuss your thoughts!

Next week: All new Grey’s, “Sympathy for the Devil.”