As we head closer to season's end on Grey's,\u00a0my mind naturally turns to the\u00a0big Elephant on the Grey's landscape - contract renewals.\u00a0 This post will take a minute to share my thoughts about recent episodes like the last one, \"One Step Too Far,\" which was a bombshell.\u00a0 It will also look to see where Shonda Sunshine is heading the characters -- which are movin' on \u00a0and which are movin' out.<\/p>\n
That last new epi - \"One Step Too Far\" - aired March 15th and the next isn't due until April 5th, so there is time aplenty for the crazy duck lady to ponder where the show\u00a0is headed and which characters will get off the Grey's train before it pulls into the stations next season.\u00a0 This one\u00a0let a couple of big shoes drop -\u00a0surgical trauma caused\u00a0trouble for Mer\/Der and relationship trauma led to a big confession by Owen to Cristina.<\/p>\n
Mer\/Der had been rocking along very nicely until Shonda Sunshine suddenly made it rain.\u00a0 After choosing to \"punish\" Mer for helping Adele by switching packets in the clinical trial, last epi Derek decided to switch gears with no warning.\u00a0 \u00a0Der had banned Mer from\u00a0his service and essentially from all of neuro and\u00a0forced her to watch from the sidelines as\u00a0he brought in Lexie as his new protege.\u00a0 Mer's been floundering - trying to find a new surgical specialty and Lexie's been shining in the McDreamy spotlight, gaining a bit too much confidence in her surgical skills.\u00a0 But it's been a while since Mer's banishment and Lexie's induction, and both ladies were getting used to things.\u00a0 Naturally, Derek had to change that.<\/p>\n
Der brought Mer back in for brain surgery on a patient who had a cyst in her temporal lobe that was causing problems.\u00a0 The patient also had a brain tumor which wasn't causing problems so wouldn't be removed in this surgery.\u00a0 While assuring the patient that they'd get the tumor soon,\u00a0 Der made the huge, immense,\u00a0ginormous mistake of\u00a0telling the patient that this little ole tumor was gonna be so easy to remove that an intern could handle the procedure.\u00a0 Why was it such a mistake?\u00a0 The intern, Lexie, was listening and she takes every word out of Derek's mouth as gospel so why should she doubt this pronouncement?<\/p>\n
So off they go to surgery where\u00a0Der pushes\u00a0Lexie out of first chair position and moves Mer back in, leaving Lexie to assist.\u00a0 They get the cyst exposed and Der is called for an emergency on\u00a0intern Morgan's infant son.\u00a0 Mer and Lexie get the cyst drained\u00a0only after a little trouble occurs and Mer tells Lexie to open the incision wider.\u00a0 After the cyst drains, both girls see that in the wider surgical field, the tumor they'd been discussing earlier was exposed.\u00a0 And Lexie sees her chance - she can prove to her mentor that she's the best protege and show big sister that little sis has some surgical chops too.\u00a0 But Mer's the senior in the room with Der gone and Lexie can't have her big tumor removing moment unless Mer gives the go ahead.\u00a0 Mer protests and wants to wait but Der doesn't return as quickly as he'd said he would. Eventually Lexie wears her down and Mer consents.\u00a0 She\u00a0stands by while Lexie slices the tumor out\u00a0- without either physician consulting any of the brain scans taken earlier.<\/p>\n
When the patient awakes, she can't speak normally and she never, ever will.\u00a0 Mer doesn't want to tell Lexie but Der insists and Mer tells Lexie how to handle her hubby.\u00a0 But hubby is still pissed with his wife and he's still grumpy at the scenes at the end of the epi.\u00a0\u00a0He's grumpy, but he turns down Mer's offer to leave, which is a good thing.\u00a0 However, we're left with the tension circling their bedroom and we still see trouble ahead.\u00a0 Neuro superstar Derek has been mixing family with business way too much and everyone knows that's never a good thing.\u00a0 Now, the patient will pay the price for Der's idiotic assertion that Lexie could remove the tumor.\u00a0 Der always stews and mopes\u00a0and lets things build and build to the point where they can only explode, so that's likely what he'll do again.\u00a0 He's also terrible at taking the blame when he sees another candidate handy, and he's decided this one is his wife's fault.\u00a0 Okay, Mer should have said no but she'd been out of the neuro game for a long while and Derek left her in an impossible position.\u00a0 In my field, what Der did would be akin to a Judge leaving a courtroom in the middle of a death penalty trial so that his law clerk was left to finish the trial and pass sentence.\u00a0 Whose fault would that be? The Judge's of course.\u00a0 And whose fault is\u00a0it that the young patient will never talk normally again?\u00a0 That's right, it's Derek's fault.<\/p>\n
Der might be the God of Neuro, but there are other neurosurgeons in the hospital.\u00a0 He shouldn't walk out\u00a0and leave a resident and an intern alone to finish any brain surgery-- cyst or not.\u00a0 And his tendency to stew and stew before he finally blows up might get him in real trouble this time because Mer might finally be\u00a0getting tired of playing emotional punching bag for Derek.<\/p>\n
Then there's Otina.\u00a0 Cristina's nose for trouble has been sniffing out the suspicion of\u00a0Owen's\u00a0having strayed for a few episodes.\u00a0 Things came to a head in this one. Emily, the\u00a0nurse she's seen Owen flirting with is\u00a0tasked to help Cristina convince a man to pull the plug on his\u00a0husband who'd been left brain-dead after a car crash.\u00a0 The nurse is kind and caring but it's Cristina who eventually convinces the man that his soul mate has already gone.\u00a0 After they finish the case, Emily asks Cristina something like - is there anything else I can do - and Cristina says yes, you can stop sleeping with my husband.\u00a0 The nurse says she may have flirted a little with Owen because she flirts with everyone but she's\u00a0madly in love and has never, ever been unfaithful with Owen or anyone else.<\/p>\n
Cristina is still mulling things over when Owen comes home - late again, as has been his slippery pattern of late.\u00a0 She's decided she made too much of nothing and confesses her suspicions to Owen who first tells her that he loves her so much it hurts.\u00a0\u00a0That sounds good until Owen corrects himself\u00a0 and says that it hurts to love her.\u00a0 Pow - a punch in the gut - but it gets worse.\u00a0 Owen says he has been unfaithful - but not with Emily.<\/p>\n
So who did the dirty deed with Owen?\u00a0 Teddy would be the first guess.\u00a0 She\u00a0went to war with Owen over the terrible way she found out about her husband's death but she and Owen have a lot of history.\u00a0 And we all remember that there was a time when Owen had to choose between Cristina and Teddy.\u00a0 Could he have decided he made the wrong choice?\u00a0 Don't forget, there was a time when Derek had to choose between Mer and Addison and he chose Addison but he decided that he made the wrong choice.\u00a0 Yet, in a preview for the 4.5 epi<\/a>, we hear Owen claiming that it was \"just sex.\"\u00a0 It's hard to think he'd feel that way about sex with Teddy, but then again, Owen is a man.\u00a0 So he could think that if comforting Teddy went too far it was \"just sex.\"\u00a0 But we'd know better, right?<\/p>\n If it wasn't Teddy, then who might it have been?\u00a0 Morgan's been crushing on Alex but Owen may have been trying to help her past that or over the problems with her child.\u00a0 Then there's\u00a0April - the lady Owen gave Chief Resident too, after all.\u00a0 But April's supposedly a virgin so it'd be a little hard-nosed for Owen to call that \"just sex\" but a man who could backslap his wife the way Owen did on the last epi might be capable of deflowering April and then calling it just sex. Of course, it could be just a random nurse or a stranger he met in a bar - those things happen on Grey's, don't they?\u00a0 Worse - it could've been Lexie.\u00a0 Now wouldn't that be a nice pickle?\u00a0 Yeah, it'd be more like \"just sex\" because we all know that Lexie loves Mark but at the same time, it'd be much more of a knife in the back. And what if if was Lexie and she gets back together with Mark only to find out that she's pregnant from Owen?<\/p>\n Either way, it appears that Cristina's gonna confide in Mer in the next epi and Mer's going to tell Derek that he'd be in real trouble if he ever cheats on her.\u00a0 And in the clip, Der looks worried.\u00a0 What could that mean?\u00a0 It's possible that Owen has\u00a0confided in Derek.\u00a0 He may know who Owen did the nasty with - and if so, that would really put Derek in the middle.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of course, Derek deserves to be put in his place a little.\u00a0 His whiny, it's not my fault attitude and his grandiose bragging have earned him some pay back.<\/p>\n But - looking past this epi and the next - where are we with the future of Grey's?\u00a0 If the network doesn't re-sign Mer, Der and Cristina - where does that leave the show?\u00a0 I can see Crinstina possibly leaving.\u00a0 It would be a tough, tough loss -- but I think the show could go on without her.\u00a0 I can even see recent events ultimately making Cristina question whether Owen is her soul mate.\u00a0 If she thinks back on the man and his husband and the trauma she just helped them through, it'd be natural for her to ask that question in the wake of Owen's confession.\u00a0 You know what? I've never thought Owen was Cristina's soul mate.\u00a0 I think that was Burke.\u00a0 So maybe she'd leave the show to go off and explore what future might be open for her with the man who got away.<\/p>\n That would even leave Cardio as a a specialty for Mer, which might turn out to be a nice fit.\u00a0 It'd force her to work with Teddy which could be especially interesting if Teddy turns out to be the one Owen\u00a0slept with.\u00a0 That would mean that Mer's mentor would be the person who ultimately cost Mer her person.\u00a0 Lot's of interesting possibilities in that, right?<\/p>\n But you know what\u00a0I find to be the \"no future possibilities\" scenario?\u00a0 If the produces are stupid enough to let either Mer or Der go -- there goes the show.\u00a0 That's the last call folks - at least it is for the crazy duck lady.<\/p>\n For this romance writer, Grey's without Mer or Der would be like a romance novel that tried continuing after the hero or heroine died.\u00a0\u00a0 There's no HEA for Grey's if Mer\/Der aren't on the show next season.\u00a0 Yes, there's a great ensemble at Grey's - but they're ALL secondary characters.\u00a0 Grey's is the show that Mer\/Der built and it can't go on without them.<\/p>\n If the producers don't re-sign Patrick\u00a0Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo, in my opinion, they're signing Grey's death warrant.\u00a0 Yes, they're killing the goose that laid their very own golden egg.\u00a0 Grey's without Mer\/Der is like a romance novel without the hero and the heroine - it'd be a mighty sad place.<\/p>\n The last episode for Mer or Der would be the last episode of Grey's Anatomy most of America would watch -- and that includes a certain over-the-top duck lady.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n UPDATE:<\/span> Welcome Twitter, Facebook, and FanForum visitors! Take a look at my tribute to Grey's, Dangerous Relations: Griffin's Law<\/a><\/em>! The synopsis and purchase buttons are at the preceding link, and Amazon has graciously provided a \"read the first\u00a0paragraphs\"\u00a0link;\u00a0check it out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As we head closer to season's end on Grey's,\u00a0my mind naturally turns to the\u00a0big Elephant on the Grey's landscape - contract renewals.\u00a0 This post will take a minute to share my thoughts about recent episodes like the last one, \"One Step Too Far,\" which was a bombshell.\u00a0 It will also look to see where Shonda ...continue reading \"Grey’s Anatomy: Movin’ On Or Movin’ Out?\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2242"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2252,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2242\/revisions\/2252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}