Oh, my perfect little petals. My flawless unicorns. We’ve lost many tributes together, haven’t we, in The Shonda Games? Lexie and Mark and George and interns. And interns. And interns interns interns. So often have we set our hopes, only to have them dashed upon the rocks. Well not this time, motherfuckers. Not this time.
Whoops, did I spoil you? I’m sorry. It’s just that your makeup looks great today, and I want to save you the tears so you don’t mess up your mascara. Oh, you’re not wearing makeup? That’s just your natural radiance shining through? Well! You look absolutely fantastic! And your ass is killer in those jeans. Way to go, you!
And way to go this lady, too. Dr. Amelia hands-on-my-hips-like-yeah Shepherd.
![greys 1114 moving my hips like yeah](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114-moving-my-hips-like-yeah.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
Scalpel? Check. Golden Lasso? Check. Let’s do it!
Right, okay. When last we left our illustrious cast of surgeons, Dr. GD’s tumor had invaded her optic nerve, and you and I were gnawing our fingernails down to the quick. We pick up this week exactly where we left off. Amelia is staring at Dr. GD’s scans, obviously rocked back onto her heels. She thought she had more time. So did we, pretty lady. So did we. She leaves the MRI room to get the OR prepped, looking = shell-shocked but no less breathtaking than usual, and this is the state she’s in when Owen hustles his dumb ass up to her like a monkey chasing a peanut, yammering about, “Are you nervous? You’re not nervous, are you? Huh? Huh?” Amelia squirts him in the face with a water pistol.
Then—oh, tender little buttercups! Then Amelia walks into the scrub room to get ready. She reaches for a mask, then puts it down, turns around, and wipes her eyes—and she becomes a superhero. Chin up, chest out. Her hero music plays, and if you don’t think she could solve even the mystery of Who Is A? right now, you’re out of your head.
![greys 1114 12](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114-12.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
While I’m in there, I’ll find out, conclusively, whether or not she dropped that ball on purpose!
Hold up your head. Enter the arena. Fight until you can’t fight anymore. Never let go. Never give up. Never run. Never surrender. Fight the good fight—even when it seems inevitable that you’re about to go down swinging.
She splashes some dye into Dr. GD’s brain, which will light up in the places where the tumor is. They flip the lights and that thing shines like a glow stick.
Elsewhere in the hospital of broken dreams, Arizona is prepping for the fetal surgery on Bailey’s patient.
![greys 1114](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
Oh my god, what is Huck doing? That is the grossest thing I have ever seen and my hands are inside a body right now!
![greys 1114 4](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114-4.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
I knew we shouldn’t have put a TV in here. You’re going to have to start DVR-ing Scandal like the rest of us.
“We’ll do some medical things, and then some more medical things with some instruments that look terrifying,” Arizona tells Bailey. Bailey, who spends most of this episode with a pretty severe case of volcano mouth, starts flapping her hands, demanding “We? The hell do you mean, we? You got a rat in your pocket? Where is Geena Davis? I WANT GEENA DAVIS.” The look on Arizona’s face tells me she’s about twelve seconds from sending Bailey into the hallway with a box of animal crackers and a juice box.
You know who isn’t having a juice box? Edwards. She tells Amelia that as long as Amelia isn’t taking breaks, she’s not taking breaks either. The hero worship is kind of cute, but it makes me think of when my son was really little, and wanted to play video games with me but was just terrible at it, so I’d give him a controller that wasn’t hooked up to anything and let him have at it. Someone else can hold Amelia’s retractors, Edwards.
![greys 1114 5](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114-5.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
The most punchable face in Shondaland? No, that’s always going to be President Fitz. But you’re a close second.
Down in the ER, Arizona learns that Dr. GD is in surgery. She hightails it up to the gallery with her head on swivel and her Arizona radar turned up to eleven. Owen tells her that she’s in surgery. Callie’s perfect eyebrows furrow together. “Fetal surgery? Alone?” she asks, and Mr. Bailey shushes her. He shushes her like some kind of naughty preschooler. That dude was already on my shitlist after his brattiness with his sister two weeks ago. He’s rushing headlong toward the top spot. Get it together, Mr. Bailey.
“She is gonna pull it off though, right?” Callie asks, meaning Arizona.
“Yeah, yeah she will,” Owen answers, meaning Amelia.
Unfortunately, something is wrong in Mudville. Amelia is starting to look like she’s in the wars. Dr. Webber hops up out of his seat, and so help me mother of god, if he’s going to call Derek, I will fistfight—
Oh, wait. No. He’s going down to the OR to see if Amelia wants a sounding board. Amelia turns, and with panic writ large on her face, she quietly asks Dr. Webber to call her brother.
![greys 1114 9](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114-9.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
Look, no offense, but Derek is just as punchable as President Fitz.
![greys 1114 10](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114-10.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
More punchable, tbh.
When I was little, I got into super big time trouble at daycare over a sloppy joe. I’m not sure if it’s that I wouldn’t eat the sloppy joe, or the fact that I barfed it up all over the teacher when she insisted that I had to eat it. I suspect it was a little of both. Whatever. When recess time rolled around, my punishment was to sit on the “hot seat,” which was literally a little plastic stove that had been dragged off to one side of the playground, where the bad kids had to sit and watch everyone else play. When my sister came out for her own recess and saw me sitting there, she lost her damn mind. She stomped over to the teacher on her scrawny little legs, demanding I be let up from the hot seat. My teacher, who I guess was a bit of a smartass, asked if Heather was going to take my place, and Heather told her yes, she was. She stomped back to me, shoved me off the hot seat, and sat there for the rest of recess.
Watching Amelia, the little sister in me aches for her, because we will always always always think our big sibling is stronger and better and can save us. Hell, I call my sister if I so much as smudge my nail polish. Amelia doesn’t ask for Dr. Shepherd; she asks for her brother. But the thing is that Amelia Shepherd doesn’t need Derek Shepherd. She doesn’t need a Katniss Everdeen. She doesn’t need saving. She’s a goddamn superhero.
Dr. Webber knows this. He tells Amelia he thinks calling Derek is a great idea, if her main goal of the day is getting Dr. GD all kinds of dead. Amelia stares him down, her mind whirling like mad. Then she turns and barks out “Navigation probe.”
Arizona is elbow deep in Bailey’s patient, whose name I can be bothered with. She’s in the wars too, but she must have superhero posed off-screen, because she’s just as calm as can be. She has Bailey hold the fetus up so she can perform a bit of in utero CPR. It’s successful and frankly pretty gross, so I’m going to leave it at that and not even think about screencapping it, and you’re welcome. You can send your thank yous in the form of cookies, or pictures of Shay Mitchell. Either are most welcome.
![greys 1114 6](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114-6.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
They took the TV?!?
Another round of hero music. Amelia is back on track, but Edwards should have taken that juice break. Her eyes glaze over and she nosedives right onto the OR floor like some kind of Mercy West intern.
Show of hands: who thought we were about to get a full on sucker punch in the form of Edwards dying of some sort of brain cloud that Amelia could have fixed if only she wasn’t already in surgery? Fortunately that’s not the case. She literally just passed out from exhaustion. I’m so, so sorry Cristina isn’t here to endlessly ridicule and mock her for it. Remember when she and George retracted that huge tumor for, like, seven or eight days? She would have zero patience for this kind of amateur hour.
Anywhoodle, Meredith scrubs in, because she is well versed in the Ways of Shepherd Surgeons. She has no problem with Amelia having basically no plan for inserting radioactive seeds into Dr. GD’s brain. What she does have a problem with is Amelia stripping off her protective gloves so that she can get a better grip on the seeds and their placement. Up in the Penis Gallery, Owen and Mr. Bailey hyperventilate and exposit that Amelia needs to move faster. Ugh, shut up, Owen and Ben. Shut up your whole faces. Amelia doesn’t need their outrage, or their concern. She’s a big girl. She gets the seeds placed, and Meredith, speaking for all of us, calls her a badass.
Back in the lounge where Arizona and Dr. GD have set up camp, Arizona looks at the empty Board of Babies. All those babies she and Dr. GD saved, and now she’s alone and Dr. GD is on a table with her brain full of radiation. She’s been holding it together pretty well, but then Callie comes in. It’s probably the first time Arizona has felt safe in ages, and she starts tearing up immediately. Callie takes her hand, and Arizona cries and leans into her, letting Callie take some of the weight, just for a little bit. Because that’s the kind of love they share. They lost sight of it for a while, and they didn’t nurture it like they should have, but theirs is the kind of love that says even though this pain is not mine, I will stand in it with you anyway.
Edwards wakes up from her little nap and sprints to the OR. Amelia is barely able to stay on her feet. She leaves Edwards to close and staggers from the OR. She collapses against the wall, plants her butt on the nearest horizontal surface and sobs.
![greys 1114 11](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114-11.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
Do you want to hug and see if it leads to amazing sex?
![greys 1114 8](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114-8.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
Yes.
Arizona’s patient is discharged, whole and healthy and still knocked up. Her first fetal solo, and she can’t even enjoy it, because every ounce of her heart is consumed with the knowledge that Dr. GD still hasn’t woken up, and there could be tough decisions—impossible decisions—that need to be made. Arizona doesn’t know how to make them alone, but she’s not alone. She has Callie. She’s always had Callie.
It takes a few days, but Dr. GD wakes up. Arizona and Amelia fly into her room on the wings of angels, only to find that while her motor function and mental faculties are intact, she’s lost her vision entirely. Arizona breaks the rules and cries, and so do I, but I’m out here and they’re in the TV box, so I’m too concerned about Dr. GD kicking my ass.
“You’re missing the point. You’re so thick, Robbins. You’re always just to the left of the point. The point is, I’m going to get to figure it out. Something is going to happen next. The point is, I’m alive.”
We are broken in some way. We’re all wandering around on this bit of rock that’s hurtling around in space, and for each of us, every person you meet, there is something in all of us that, if we sat and thought about it, could drive us to our knees. Those things make us stronger and they make us better. They’re our humanity.
![greys 1114 7](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/greys-1114-7.jpg?resize=640%2C360)
She did drop the ball on purpose. :(
We are all just humans. Some days we fall down during what’s important. And some days, we’re superheroes.
This episode was a roller coaster of feelings. I cried so much about so many different things…and the music! That song at the end, Saturn by Sleeping at Last, did me in all by itself. And the episode was followed by a similarly feelings-filled Scandal…Shonda just being Shonda, I guess.
Dr. Geena Davis and Arizona’s relationship is one of my favorite things. I love how, unlike the rest of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, it’s completely platonic but strong and close as hell. It’s beautiful.
I REALLY want Arizona and Callie to get back together. I think both of them fucked up but I don’t think it’s beyond salvation and I NEED them to stay together, because I feel like lesbian relationships in the media don’t last, and that’s aggravating and makes me scared about my own relationship futures.
I LOVE Amelia. I didn’t think I would, but I love her. I love how she’s fighting to be her own person, removed from her dick brother, and fighting to rise above her chaotic past. She’s the sister I care about–literally could care less about Meredith’s new secret half-sister because she will never ever ever be anywhere close to as amazing as Lexi.
And I’m so glad Shonda is, for once, being nice to Edwards. She’s had the shittiest storylines.
Now bring back Leah and we’ll all be good.
I miss Lexi SO MUCH. I wish I could care more about Maggie, but she just feels like a replacement for Lexi and I’m not feeling it.
I MISS LEXIE SOOOO SOOOO MUCH TOO!!! She was one of my favorite characters, and probably the one who is the most like me. I don’t think they mention Lexie nearly enough anymore, and she was so important to everyone (I mean she was Meredith’s freaking sister!).
YES EXACTLY. When they introduced Maggie, I was like GET THE FUCK OUT. NO. HELL NO. And yeah, it’s like everyone has collectively forgotten about Lexi and McSteamy and just…why? The hospital is NAMED after them. Lexi was Meredith’s sister and just the best thing every anyway and McSteamy, ya know, was McSteamy…Shonda just likes to ruin lives, that’s all.
I’m gonna miss Dr. Geena Davis and Arizona’s friendship
I also like Amelia and Edwards together. Actually I like Amelia way more than I thought I would. I will so try the SuperHero pose next time I have a job interview…
And In my opinion Fitz is the most punchable face in Shondaland
we should just line up all their faces and punch them one after the other and see what feels best.
Jenn, you managed to take me on almost as much of a roller coaster ride as the episode. Between the jokes about not screencapping the gory stuff and asking for cookies and or Shay Mitchel pics as payment and your rightful rage at all of the Monday morning quarterbacks, Bailey included in the episode I was so with you. Then, you brought us home to inspecting our own failings and successes. You have really hit your stride and you’re knocking it out of the park.
I don’t even know what to say to this comment. Thank you SO much. I’m so flattered and s.lkfjsf <3 <3 <3
So glad to see my predictions of “Shondaland = inevitable tragedy” did not come true this time!
I actually think that GD surviving the surgery but losing her sight is WAAAY more interesting, like with Arizona losing her leg. A very good friend of my lost his sight when we were in high school, and his journey to rediscover who he is without his sight (he was a AAA hockey player before he went blind) has led him to do incredible things. He rollerbladed across Canada to raise money to start his non-profit, Courage Canada, which helps blind youth play hockey, and he’s become a motivational speaker who talks to youth about overcoming the obstacles in their lives.
I think GD’s future storyline on Grey’s will be incredible to watch unfold, and I really hope Dr. Herman sticks around for a while so we get to see it!
And I can already see Calzona forging a path back to each other. I think the second half of this season is going to be just wonderful to watch.
I really hope we see more interaction with Arizona and Callie in the back half of the season. Remember when they used to make one another happy? SIGH.
Another amazing episode. I was starting to think that Dr. Geena Davis was probably going to be a goner, considering the very low success rate of former Grey’s characters in these types of situations. But my original prediction did come true: that Dr. Geena Davis would be forever changed by this experience and her life-saving surgery, that she would maybe lose some type of function in exchange for her life.
I’m so proud of Amelia, The Freaking Superhero. Her plan seemed so innovative and groundbreaking, so I was desperately hoping that she would be able to perform it successfully. I love how this sets up her story for future episodes. She is no longer The Other Dr. Shepherd. She is now legendary. Her procedure will be a part of the history books. I love how they compared it to Derek’s spinal tumor surgery from Season 6 in terms of importance for her, her career, and the future of medicine. This episode just validifies for me again why I have loved Amelia so much since her first episode.
I also wanted to open up a little discussion about the other Shondaland shows. I’m interested to know what other people thought about them.
This week’s episode of Scandal…
Last week’s season finale of How To Get Away With Murder…
i was SO proud of Amelia. I’m glad she’s standing on her own, and hope that she won’t just become a storyline for Owen.
Jenn, I forgot to tell you. I was also thinking about Cristina this episode. Because Amelia’s surgery was scheduled to go for so long without any breaks, the first thing that popped into my head was when Cristina and Lexie decided to wear adult diapers to make it through a really long surgery that had no breaks without having to limit their food and drink intake beforehand. (Coincidentally, they were doing this to participate in Derek’s spinal tumor surgery, which they mentioned during this episode.)
Yang. :( I miss her. :(
This episode reminded me of two of my favorite Grey’s quotes. Also, I am really glad that Dr. Herman is alive and hopefully we’ll explore how she copes with this drastic lifestyle change.
“We may feel caged. We may feel trapped, but still as humans we can find ways to feel free. We are each other’s keepers. We are the guardians of our own humanity.”
“I believe we survive, George. I believe that believing we survive is what makes us survive.”
I really hope that we see at least glimpses of Dr. Herman, even if we don’t see her full recovery on screen. She was such a great character.
I love your recap, especially because I also think that Fitz and Owen have the most punchable faces, with Derek only just behind. Also, the story about you and Heather is adorable.
I don’t know how I feel about Callie and Arizona at this point. On one hand, I would kind of like them to get back together because they’ve just been A Thing for so long and I love them. But there have always been things about their relationship that were really troubling to me and I don’t think they’ve really done anything to mend those bridges. If they became really good friends and co-parents, but then went on to meet other Dr. Ladies (or perhaps Ladies with other professions) and we could have TWO queer couples on this show that would be pretty awesome.
thank you for reading! And I know what you mean about feeling conflicted. The more queer ladies the better, but…I don’t know, I’m such a sucker for the “we fell in love, then fell apart, then found our way back together” storyline. SUCH A SUCKER.