Grey’s Anatomy Episode 1121 Recap: All Doctors Go to Heaven

Editor’s note: If you find the words of this recap comforting, thank Jenn. If you find the photos of this recap irreverent, blame Heather Hogan.

Once upon a time, there was a bar, and in that bar was a girl, and in that girl was a heart darker and twistier than any of us could possibly have imagined.

And then that girl fell in love.

When last we left Grey’s Anatomy, Meredith was clutching the phone, her face lit up with the flashing red and blue lights of the police cruiser in her driveway. We all knew something awful had happened, we just weren’t sure how awful.

This week, Derek is on a boat, looking so fresh-faced and happy that it’s pretty clear the level of awful is pretty high up there. Cut to Meredith herding her kids towards the door, her arms loaded with the detritus of being a mom.

Meredith: Get the lead out, we’re gonna be late. And who can never be late?
Zola: Surgeons!
Meredith: And why can surgeons never be late?
Zola: Foreshadowing!

Back to Derek. He’s heading to the airport to catch his flight to DC, and he takes a super-secret shortcut to get around traffic. The super-secret shortcut is a curvy, hilly road populated by assholes in black sports cars and moms in SUVs. The black car swerves and weaves, tires squealing. It shoots around Derek, and then around the SUV, which immediately flips over. And over. And over. The black car goes careening through the air. Derek jams on his breaks.

When everything comes to a halt, Derek has skidded to a stop on the side of the road, and the other two vehicles are smoking and upside down. Derek immediately starts scrambling for his phone, but when he can’t find it, he jumps out of the car and runs straight over to the SUV. There’s a woman, Sarah, hanging upside down, blood oozing down her face. She is yelling for her daughter, Winnie. Winnie is in the backseat, and she’s fine, so small graces I guess?

Derek asks her if she has a phone. Sarah says yes, but it doesn’t matter because there’s never any signal on this road.

heavenhotel

I’m sorry, sir. The McDreamy Suite is already occupied.

mcdreamyhotel

I need to speak to this imposter. I am the greatest neurosurgeon that ever lived. I will not be denied my eternal comforts.

Derek hops down off the SUV and sprints across the street to find the other driver, Charlie, and the passenger, Alana, have been thrown from the car. Alana seems okay—in shock and freaked the hell out, but okay. She scrambles for her phone, but it isn’t working. Derek tells her that she’s in shock and she might want to slow her roll because she probably has injuries she doesn’t even know about yet. He wants to know why she was driving like a bat out of hell. She tells him she wasn’t, that Charlie was.

Charlie is wandering down the street in a daze, and when Derek chases after him, he turns around to reveal that half his skull is bashed in. He can’t remember shit. As Derek is trying to calm him down, he passes out. He’s got about a foot on Derek, so when he goes down, he takes Derek with him. They collapse in the middle of the road.

Somehow, Derek manages to get Charlie off the road, where he’s checking his pupils, but without a proper first aid kid, there’s not much he can do. He runs back to his car, but all he’s got is basically a single Band-Aid. Can I just also say that his car is WAY too clean to belong to a man with two kids under five? I don’t see a single cheerio anywhere. No sippy cups, no Cheetos to get stuck to your butt. Derek grabs a crow bar, then runs over to the SUV. That mom has corporal kids, not invisible ones, so she’s got a legit first aid kid. Derek smashes the windows and grabs it and also helps Winnie climb free. He dispatches her to the other couple with some bandages so that he can get her mom out of the car. Alana is wandering around holding her phone up in the air, desperately seeking a cell signal so she can call for help, but alas, there’s none to be found.

mcdreamysuite

mcdreamysuitewhoops

Yes, hello. I need to speak to “McDreamy.”

dana-mcdreamy

You’re looking at her.

Derek has his crowbar at the ready again, and he smashes out the window of Sarah’s SUV so he can pull her out. Let me tell you about this mom. She’s hardcore. She’s got a dislocated hip and she just full-on lets Derek haul her out of the car and set it right there on the side of the road. Females are strong as hell, basically.

Things are getting a little too calm out here, with the gushing head wounds and the dislocated hips, so it’s an appropriate time for Charlie’s car to explode. Whoosh, it goes, right up in flames. Alana is freaking out about how she’s a good girl, apparently, and good girls don’t kiss Charlie Evans and they don’t get in car wrecks, and all the while she’s bleeding into her mouth. Derek scampers over speedy quick and looks at her stomach to find out that her guts are, you know…rather on the outside of her body. I have never been happier that Heather Anne doesn’t recap this show. She would have passed right the hell out. [Heather Anne note: Yes, I would have.]

Derek uses this time to wrap Alana up with some dry cleaning bags while talking about Meredith, like any of these people give a single solitary shit about some girl they’ve never met. A barren field of fucks is what these people have right now w/r/t Meredith Grey.

Charlie’s blazing car has finally caught the attention of some first responders, and a host of paramedics and fire trucks pull up to load up all Derek’s patients. He hugs Winne, shakes some hands, then hops back in his car.

So up until this point, everything has been fine. I mean, not fine fine, but Grey’s Anatomy fine. What comes next is not.

As Derek is pulling away from the accident scene, his phone buzzes. He stops his car in the middle of the road and starts grappling around for it.

heavensupportgroup

I was a rich, handsome, straight white man! I never should have died! And now some lesbian stole my room in heaven!

Really? REALLY? No one could get a cell signal for ages and ages, and Sarah, who drives this road every day, says you can never get a signal, and now Derek gets a call? Now that he’s sitting in the middle of the road, which I don’t think Derek would do in the first place?

A truck careens into the side of Derek’s car, as we all knew it would. Two seconds later, Derek is on a backboard, being unloaded in front of a hospital that is not Grey-Sloan Memorial, while a doctor waves his hands and shouts “NOT IT NOT IT!”

Derek can’t talk, but he can hear, and a little thing like loss of verbal skills isn’t going to stop Dr. Derek Shepherd from mansplaining. As the doctors are working on him he’s all “probably multiple fractures, get a CT.” and “you have this, don’t back down,” when two of the surgeons get into an argument about his condition. The woman wants to get a CT, and the dude doctor doesn’t think they have time. The woman acquiesces, and they wheel him into surgery, but not before Winnie sees him and goes over to beg him to “stay not dead.”

“This isn’t right,” Derek tells us. “Check my head.”

“His pressure’s holding,” the lady doctor says. “Maybe we should get the scans.”

“YES!” says Derek.

“NO,” says the dude doctor.

“I’m stable. Guys, I’m stable. Take me to get the head CT.”

Eleven thousand surgeons hustle Derek into the OR as he tells us “I’m going to die because these people aren’t properly trained.”

This whole scene was so strange. Derek was talking (in his head, but still) to these doctors the same way he was talking to Winnie on the side of the road, like he wasn’t about to die. There was no emotion and no passion. It was like his ego was somehow bigger and more important than his own life. I don’t know; the whole thing was just so strange. I felt very disconnected from Derek, even though I was inside his head.

Inside the OR, the surgeons are making mistakes across the board as Derek begs them “check my head!” They finally check his eyes and see that one of his pupils is blown.

“Page neurosurgery,” someone shouts.

“GOOD FUCKING THINKING,” Derek yells.

But alas, the surgeon on call is at a dinner. He calls back to say he’ll be there in 20 minutes, but by then it’ll be too late. It’s too late anyway, because it takes him 90 minutes to get there.

You know what happens when surgeons are late, Zola? People die.

“It’s too late,” Derek tells us. “You’re too late.”

derekbrunch

Does anyone want to talk about how my death is the worst thing to ever happen on TV?

lesbianheaven

Nope!

Cut to Meredith opening the doors to the cops, then immediately to her walking into Derek’s hospital room where he’s…fine.

HAHA, PSYCHE! He’s not fine. He’s brain dead. The cops have come to get Meredith and take her to the hospital. That whole scene was just Shonda fucking with us.

Meredith packs up the kids and heads to the hospital in a daze, where she almost immediately demands Derek’s chart and starts telling everyone how badly they fucked up. Everyone wants some kind of absolution but Meredith doesn’t have any to give out. I hope she sues that hospital for eleventy zillion dollars and buys an island and she and Christina go and live on it forever.

Meredith discontinues all life-sustaining care for Derek, and gives him permission to go, right after we’re treated to a heart-wrenching montage of their relationship, starting from that very first night in the bar while “Chasing Life” plays in the background. You guys know how I feel about Derek, and I was inconsolable. I’m crying right now typing this. All your MerDer shippers have my sympathy right now, because ouch. Bring it in for a group hug, yeah?

Final thoughts:

+ Ellen Pompeo deserves a fucking medal for her work in this episode. She was unbelievable.

+ If this is a vehicle for Owen and Amelia to get together, I will burn down the whole world.

+ Meredith is obviously pregnant, right? That’s a thing now, isn’t it?

Next week: buckets of ice cream, and crates of tissues!

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Jenn

Jenn is a yoga-loving, tea-drinking, music-obsessed bisexual writer who lives on the outskirts of Atlanta with her husband, her son, her retired greyhound Hops, and two identical white cats called Greatest and Leastie. You can find her on Twitter and Tumblr. Come and say hi! Bring cookies!

Jennifer has written 13 articles for us.

67 Comments

    • Girl you better OWN that judgment! When a fictional character is a dumbass, someone has to right these wrongs. You are the dark knight!

  1. I’ve been waiting for this recap. Derek was never a favorite of mine but I honestly did not think Shonda had the stones to actually kill him off. I hope she is somewhere safe right now because MerDer fans are a scary bunch. I wouldn’t be surprised if she received a number of bomb threats after this. I knew Patrick wanted to leave. That should have been obvious to everyone for a while now. I just didn’t think Shonda would actually kill off the Derek character as an exit. With Sandra and now Patrick gone not to mention the implosion of the two biggest ships on the show(MerDer and Calzona) what’s left for the show to do. I honestly feel like next season should be Grey’s last.

    As much as I want to be relieved that Shonda is fucking with somebody else’s ship for onceI just can’t gloat over MerDer fans’ misery. But that’s mostly only because I celebrated prematurely after Shonda killed Lexie and Mark and spared my Arizona a few seasons ago only to fuck me sideways with her treatment of that character(and the Calzona relationship as a whole) ever since. I read a description of the following episode that says Callie’s police officer is back and their may be a significant time jump so if yall would excuse me I need to run down to the pharmacy and stock up on KY Jelly because Shonda isn’t done fucking me yet.

      • Oh man I loved Lexi so much! In fact, I just did a quick imdb search of Chyler Leigh because I miss her on my TV every week. Apparently she’s going to be in the pilot of the new supergirl AND last year she was in some show where she played a cop with a very adorable haircut. I may have fallen in love all over again…

        • Ashley, I miss seeing Chyler on my TV every week too! I’m especially excited about Supergirl since she is in it. And the show she was on last year was called Taxi Brooklyn. I watched it, and I thought it was an awesome show, a really great mix of action, mystery, drama, and comedy – a combination that I’ve never seen before on a TV show. While I prefer Chyler with longer hair, she totally rocked the shorter haircut. I definitely fell in love with her all over again. (Especially after I started following her on Twitter last year. She seems like a really amazing person, someone who is real and honest and kind and caring, who has been through a lot of struggles in her life and come out the other side better for it. She also makes an effort to reach out to her fans and talk to them as much as she can, a lot more than other celebrities I’ve seen on Twitter.)

      • I will never be over Lexie. I loved her with all my heart. She was the character who was the most like me.

          • I related to Lexie because of her intelligence. And I feel like the decisions that she made in her career and her personal relationships, especially her love life, were also very similar to how I would react in those situations. When it comes to siblings, I’m actually more of a Meredith. (The parallels are kind of eerie, actually. My Thatcher has never been a part of my life either. I have yet to meet my Lexie and my Molly, who are also both my half-sisters. And there have been somewhat similar, very big struggles to overcome with my Ellis too. I guess I relate a lot to Meredith’s feelings from her childhood of being alone and abandoned, but luckily I also had my grandparents there to care for me and create stability for me growing up that I never would have gotten otherwise. So I’m pretty lucky that I started to find some of my people in the rest of my family very early on. I was actually very excited when I started watching Grey’s and I discovered that there were characters who were half-siblings because I had never seen that on a TV show before.)

  2. I will admit that the picture of Tara made me (almost) sadder than anything else that happened in this episode/recap.

    Derek is not my favorite, but he’s always been on the show, so I will miss him a little. I wish there could have been another way to write him off – like maybe Meredith would meet someone who actually treated her like a person and decided to dump Derek or something. But I am sad because Meredith will be sad, and also because the drama from Amy is gonna be off the hook. And justifiably. I mean, you should probably call your brain surgeon sister-in-law before taking your husband off life-support.

    • Yes. I really hope the writers spend as much time on Amelia’s grief as they do Meredith’s because Amelia and Derek always had a very complicated relationship as siblings. They were finally getting to a good place and then he dies. The Amelia character has been through so much since we met her on Private Practice, maybe not as much as Meredith but still quite traumatic. The drug problems, loosing a child, and now Derek. The big brother who shielded from harm as a child while they both witnessed the senseless death of their father over a watch. Amelia is going to be absolutely rocked by his death and I really hope the writers don’t make this all about her relationship with Owen.

    • I was definitely surprised she didn’t call Amelia. I imagine we’ll see some fallout from that over the next few weeks.

  3. I mean, I could give fewer fucks about Derek. But killing him off just seems like a dumb/predictable move storyline wise IMO. It was also poorly executed (ha). The cell reception, the sheer stupidity about being parked in the middle of the road, ALSO could they not have helicoptered him out in the time it took for the neurosurgeon to get there? Or paged Amy perhaps? Or ANY OTHER DOCTOR?

    • Yeah, I don’t think you’re wrong at all. I had some real issues with the conception of the storyline.

  4. I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy since the very beginning. When Grey’s premiered, I was in high school, and I didn’t know I was gay yet. Callie actually realized she was bi before I realized I was gay, which wasn’t until summer 2009, which was the summer after season 5. So I’ve shipped Meredith and Derek for 11 years, and I shipped them long before I shipped Calzona. So Derek’s death still hit me pretty hard. Less for Derek himself, and more for how Meredith is going to cope with it from here on out.

    I wish this show had allowed Patrick Dempsey to leave the show by shipping Derek off to Washington, and not emotionally ruining me, but then this wouldn’t be Grey’s now, would it?

    This is most definitely going to be the thing that pushes Owen and Amelia together, but on the bright side, it is ALSO most definitely going to be the thing that pushes Calzona back together as well!

    From the looks of things so far, Meredith seems to be holding up REMARKABLY well. She’s matured so much over the course of 11 seasons. I don’t think she’s actually going to go all dark and twisty again. I think she’s going to be okay. Amelia, on the other hand, is going to have a complete breakdown. First Owen, and then I’m guessing she’s going to fall off the wagon pretty quick. I just hope Meredith is paying attention and is not wrapped up in her own grief so SHE can be the one to help Amelia. God willing, Owen doesn’t jump in and “save” her.

    Next week is going to be AWFUL, with Amelia finding out, but I’m holding out hope that we might get guest appearances from Addison and Cristina for the funeral. That would make Derek’s death ALMOST worth it.

    Oh, and just a PS – Shonda has made a habit of killing off straight white men – Denny, George, Mark, and now Derek – and she has yet to ever kill a lesbian (parking lots don’t really count). While most showrunners happily kill off female characters to further the storylines of the male characters, Grey’s has consistently done the opposite. So let’s thank Shonda for that :)

    • Everything about your first paragraph is exactly what I was thinking. Callie & Arizona were the first time I wondered “hmm, maybe there’s a reason the lesbian couple is always my favorite”, but MerDer was a huge part of what drew me into this crazy show in the first place. As much of as ass as Derek could be, I’m going to miss him and am so very sad that Meredith has to go through this.

      I didn’t even think about Addison showing up for a funeral – that would be the absolute best thing that could happen out of all of this!

    • “Shonda has made a habit of killing off straight white men – Denny, George, Mark, and now Derek – and she has yet to ever kill a lesbian (parking lots don’t really count). While most showrunners happily kill off female characters to further the storylines of the male characters, Grey’s has consistently done the opposite. So let’s thank Shonda for that :)”

      ^^^ THIS!! I was actually surprised by how much I was wrecked by Derek’s death, considering that I have never cared much for the character when he was living (and like you, I’ve been watching grey’s from the beginning, the first season premiered during my freshman year of college). I think what got me most was watching Meredith’s reaction to it. I maybe never cared for Derek- but I care enough for Meredith for her not to have this weight on her. And DEFINITELY LOVE ZOLA- and hate the thought that she’s going to grow up without her daddy.

      That all said, one of the first thoughts I had during the “fans against Shonda” fall-out that seems to have spread across the internet since this episode aired was exactly what you brought up here. Shonda has built a habit of killing off straight white men from the main cast of her shows when she often spares women and/or people of color into their “happy endings” (Lexie being the one major exception, and Adele Webber- though she was more of a reoccurring character) and I would also like to add Scott Foley’s character Henry to your list.

      I can’t help but wonder if that is part of the outrage against Shonda…. fans bumping up against their own privilege and not knowing how to cope. White straight men aren’t supposed to die, even when they’re fictional. And black women aren’t supposed to kill them, even when it’s only with a pen.

      • Riiight, I forgot about Henry! But yes, he should definitely be added the the list. His entire existence, and his death, were solely to further Teddy’s storyline, and Cristina’s. And I also didn’t mention Reed and that other white male doctor who got shot during the season 6 finale, mostly because they were so unnecessary to the central plots of the show I can’t even remember that guy’s name. But he died to further BAILEY’s storyline.

      • What’s truly hilarious is that she just killed Scott Foley again on Scandal. Poor Scott can’t catch a break with Shonda.

    • Regarding your last paragraph (my phone won’t let me copy/paste, thanks phone) –

      She does deserve credit for that. I was outraged with a certain firefighter NBC show that killed off woman after woman after woman while all the many men sat pretty. Haven’t watched it since.

      • Now that Kate Walsh’s new show “Bad Judge” got cancelled, can we get Addison back on the show permanently? Especially since her ex-husband Derek is dead.

    • “Oh, and just a PS – Shonda has made a habit of killing off straight white men – Denny, George, Mark, and now Derek – and she has yet to ever kill a lesbian (parking lots don’t really count). While most showrunners happily kill off female characters to further the storylines of the male characters, Grey’s has consistently done the opposite. So let’s thank Shonda for that”

      I had never thought about this before. This is a very interesting observation

    • I like your point about who has gotten killed off. The other thing I’ve loved about Grey’s (until recently) was that of the folks who had big, fancy weddings the only one to work out long-term was Callie and Arizona’s – I wrote a paper about it for a class back in 2009 (I think). That was before Ben and Bailey though.

  5. I’m done watching this show because of how stupid that episode was. Painfully poor writing. So contrived and cheap.

    1) No cell reception that entire time, but then Derek gets a call.

    2) No cars come through the entire time and they have to rely on a car blowing up for EMS response, and when everything is cleared up and no one else is left, suddenly a semi comes along and plows into Derek’s car even though it was a straight stretch of road.

    3) Derek never ran back to his car for his phone to just try to see if he gets reception…yeah right. So it conveniently stays lodged in where it fell.

    4) Sunny when accident happens, night when he gets to the hospital… What? Also, EMS calls the hospital en route, it’s not “Surprise! Here’s a trauma!” Which leads me to…

    5) A non trauma hospital would fly that patient out immediately and may have obtained a CT in the meantime if the helicopter wasn’t already there to meet the ambulance that would’ve called for a dang helicopter.

    6) Derek narrating his surgery? I just… I can’t. It was stupid.

    7) Meredith doesn’t call his sister? Calls no one? Come on.

    8) Lol at surgeons standing around for an hour or so waiting for some other dumb ass surgeon to waltz in on a day he’s on call. A surgeon. On call. 90 min late.

    9) This season we got almost no Derek – started off with “omg will they get divorced” to “okay he’s def cheating, that jerk” to “so nvm he kissed another woman but loves Meredith and is now super happy to be home and not have any ambition whatsoever, everyone is so happy, happy, happy!” to “where is Derek!” to “oh he’s dead.” That’s what you get after 11 years, fans!

    I could keep going. I love MerDer and Shonda ruined the whole show because she was prob pissed off at Dempsey and she couldn’t just have Derek stay in DC until the series finale when he could come home and they could live happily ever after. Fans would’ve accepted that but NOPE. I get it’s fiction but that was terrible writing and storytelling and that’s a fact (okay, that’s an opinion, sue me!).

    • I don’t disagree with most of what you said. Numbers 1-5, and number 8, you’re entirely right. The fact that there was supposedly no cell service, the fact that Derek stopped his car int he middle of the road, the fact that the truck was the first vehicle to come by in all the time they were stranded there, the fact that he was taken to a hospital with no trauma centre, those things are all TERRIBLE writing.

      But my question is – what show have you been watching for 11 years? Because this was quintessential Grey’s Anatomy. Remember how Izzie cut an LVAD wire and didn’t get fired, but then got fired for something totally dumb in season 6? Which was identically to something Alex did in an earlier season which he didn’t get fired for? Remember how George failed his intern exam, even though it was MEREDITH who didn’t write a single thin on hers? I could keep going with about a million examples, but this is all just to say, this episode, while yes, completely contrived, was no different than so many other Grey’s catastrophes.

      As for #6, I actually liked Derek’s narration. It was weird, I admit, but we wouldn’t have known a lot of stuff if it wasn’t for that.

      #7. Yes, I agree this was dumb, but it’s also not unusual for Grey’s not to call in family members when someone is injured or dying. I also anticipate that this will be a major issue in the next few episodes.

      Finally, #9. If you notice, the actors Shonda dislikes get faaaaar worse exits than Derek got. Look at how Burke and Izzie left. Those are the exits she gives to the actors she dislikes. Actors she LIKES get long, drawn-out, emotionally-manipulative sendoffs, like Denny, George, Mark, Lexie, and Cristina. On Grey’s an emotional death episode is a hallmark of how valued your character is. This was not a fuck you to Patrick Dempsey, this was Shonda’s equivalent of a swan song for her McDreamy.

      Hate the episode all you want, you are more than entitled to that, but don’t hate it for the wrong reasons. This episode was quintessential Grey’s, it was the same as everything that has come before it.

      • I disagree that this was quintessential Grey’s. This writing was simply too crappy, even for a show that’s basically a soap opera. Quintessential Grey’s sucks me in, makes me a sobbing wreck, makes me ignore all the many far fetched elements that are particularly amusing to me because I work in emergency. This episode did nothing for me. I didn’t even cry and I cry at commercials. For me, it just comes down to what was terrible writing that seemed inconsistent with the rest of the series. I’ll give you that Meredith could believably not call anyone, but I don’t think this was a swan song at all. It was too rushed and asked us to disregard what we know of Derek. I don’t believe he wouldn’t go back for his phone and that he would stop in the middle of the road after just witnessing an accident caused by recklessness so that’s basically where the whole story falls apart for me. She could’ve done better.

    • Also, they really want us to believe that even if by some chance some signal snuck in for Derek to receive a call that Derek’s Porsche does not have bluetooth connectivity for the phone call to come through his car stereo? I mean my prius does, so i would hope that his porsche does..so many things in this episode were so far fetched that it was hard to suspend your disbelief that much..the whole time i kept thinking if this hospital isn’t a trauma hospital than what is he doing there? Why not life flight him to one that is..preferably the one that he works at..

      • Right. There were too many times that required us to suspend our disbelief that overall it became too nonsensical. It would’ve been more dramatic and believable if he were flown off to Grey-Sloan and Amelia had to operate on him.

    • It feels like the outrage over the contrived phone call thing is pretty universal. It just felt really cheap.

  6. I never hated, nor specially loved Derek, and his death, unlike 95% of the dramatic happenings at Grey’s, didn’t make me cry. I think it’s because I was mostly astounded that Meredith, after losing parents, siblings and friends in the most terrible ways, is not even going to get the life she wanted with him. I may sound childish but fucking hell, that (fictional) woman has been through a fucking lot, I just wanted at least one piece of her life to be intact.

    And as for the actor leaving, hell he could have gone to Washington and they could have a long distance marriage. There was no need for him to die.

    I mean, considering, thank G-d Yang managed to stay alive.

    • AMEN. After everything Meredith has been through, after everyone she has lost, this just seems so unfair.

    • I really hope that she won’t fall completely apart now. I mean, I don’t know how she wouldn’t, but I’ve been loving Boss In Charge Meredith and I don’t want to lose her.

    • I am hoping she will be sad for a while and then find someone better than Derek. That’s my cynical, cranky anti-McDreamy heart talking. (And that person SHOULD NOT be Alex. No.)

      • I have low level shipped Meredith and Alex for years, but I don’t actually want them to be together. I wanted S2-S4 Alex and Meredith to be together when they were both all fucked up and dark.

  7. Jenn, when I was reading the last line of your recap (“Next week: buckets of ice cream, and crates of tissues!”), I could hear Bailey’s voice in my head perfectly, saying that line just like she sarcastically dead-panned this line (“Just special. Original. Magical. Squeals of joy.”) back in Season 6 when Callie and Arizona were being adorably romantic after exchanging the heart-shaped necklaces that were their Valentine’s Day gifts to each other.

    Heather, those pictures and those captions were perfectly and hilariously irreverent, so they were exactly what was called for in this recap.

    I definitely agree that Meredith is pregnant with the last ever MerDer McBaby. At least I hope this happens because Meredith and her hostile uterus both deserve one more truly good thing in this world.

    I was surprised that Meredith didn’t totally lose it with the neurosurgeon and the male attending and their incompetency, and tear them both new ones. I thought she would have been way more enraged and critical of their actions, but maybe she was in a bit of shock and/or showed some restraint that I wouldn’t have had for them. Especially that neurosurgeon, who dared to say that he had long admired Derek’s surgical techniques even though he couldn’t bother to care about his patient enough to show up to operate on him in anything remotely resembling a “timely” manner. And that neurosurgeon also had the galls to say that it was an honor to operate on Derek (a fucking honor!), even though it was his extreme and inexcusable tardiness that in part resulted in Derek’s death, so that his surgery 90 minutes later could have done absolutely nothing to possibly save Derek.

    • when that neurosurgeon called killing Derek an honor, I thought Meredith was going to kill him. what the fuck, man.

      • Anyone who says that killing someone was an honor deserves to be killed themselves. Meredith should have completely attacked him (the neurosurgeon) as well for being so late. And she should have also attacked the male attending far more for not ordering the head CT.

  8. Just a teeny tiny thing. It was Chasing cars not How to save a life. Also I really hate to be the Hermione here (not) but it’s CRISTINA not CHRISTINA.

  9. So Cristina is coming for the funeral, right? And Addison too. Please tell me Cristina will be there for her person
    Oh, and a big hug to you MerDer shippers. I know that pain. You have my support.

  10. Not a Derek fan, saw his death coming, and not at all sad to see the show continue on without his character; HOWEVER, Ellen Pompeo killed it in that episode. She was SO good, I couldn’t help but cry.

    I am really hoping Shonda turns this season around in the last few episodes. The first half intrigued me with Geena Davis, but since then, has almost completely lost my interest. And now, a funeral.

  11. This gif perfectly sums up all of my feelings about Derek’s death and all of the other characters’ deaths on Grey’s Anatomy.

  12. OH, I just thought of something. What if the phone call that distracted Derek was FROM MEREDITH?

    I really hope it’s not, but I wouldn’t put it past Shonda.

  13. Derek’s dispassionate inner monologue actually makes sense / feels real to me, as a certain type of trauma response.

  14. Just because I’m a lesbian and have been devastated by the deaths of lesbian characters does not make the death of a straight white male any less devastating. Derek Shepherd was an egotistical ass sometimes, but dammit, I loved him. And I will miss him. I’m not confident in Grey’s future.

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