Grey's Anatomy recap: 'Someone that I Used to Know'

Yang has two problems: She’s fighting with Meredith, and she needs sex. Her work suffers; it’s bad for humanity if she’s not havin’ it! Luckily, Intern Shane (Dr. Smashané) is there to cure one of those problems and exacerbate the other. Hey, 50 percent ain’t all that bad. It’s the score Zola would get on a poultry pop quiz that asked her to point to both a chicken and a turkey. And we all know Zola is very bright.

Look, it’s absurd that Yang and her intern are hooking up. Yes. But… I mean, what’s really at stake here? Sandra Oh’s leaving soon; the show’s gotta be almost over. Yang could do a lot worse than Smash from Friday Night Lights is all I’m saying. Owen’s moved on. She’s gotta sleep with somebody. Do you expect her to SLEEP in the on-call room? That’s crazy! It’s like you don’t even understand how a hospital works.

Yang and Intern Shane (is it that annoying if I keep calling him Dr. Smashané because he’s that sassy? yes) are still waiting for Meredith’s new magical printing machine to conjure up a new vascular graft for their infant patient. They wait. And wait. The machine effs it up. And they wait again. Meredith doesn’t want to wait. She has research to do; she doesn’t have time for some crappy patient!

Frustrated with her current frenemy, Yang brings Mer to the baby. “That’s Nathan. That’s a real baby,” she informs the mother of two. And Meredith freaks out. “Have you lost your mind? Do you think every time I see a baby I’m gonna start lactating and lose my ability to research?” Whoa, dude. Calm down. Mer is obviously still hung up on Cristina’s non-embracement of her motherhood. But this is a living, hopefully still breathing patient at the hospital. Didn’t Dr. Grey used to know the difference?

Intern Shane overhears Alex encouraging Cristina to “get your ya-ya’s out and leave me alone,” so he strikes while the opportunity is hot/still on Grey’s Anatomy. “If you ever need me…. ya-ya…. extraction…. you know….” Nice. Good one, Shane. Smooth.

NEXT: But he’s got her back in the non-sexual sense, tooWhen Meredith catches Yang and Shane printing out another sure-to-be-contaminated conduit, she launches into another smelly word-vomit: “It’s not working! You are not Christ child reincarnate! You do not walk on water! You have failed to revolutionize modern medicine and save a baby all in one fell swoop!” Jesus! I feel like she just unleashed five weeks’ worth of overblown insults. Has she snapped for the final time or is this fight destined to continue until the at least the midseason break?

Smash put his Under Armour-sponsored foot down and said hell no to Meredith’s lack of reason. “YOU’LL GET THE PRINTER TOMORROW, DR. GREY,” he boomed. The nerve of this guy! Yang loves nerves almost as much as she loves (medically) broken hearts, so she swoops in and smooches her intern. Then she gives one of her trademark Dr. Yang’s Very Slight, Very Grave Smiles and we know she’s confident with that most recent move.

Dr. Smashané has totally stepped up as the best intern at this point. I loved the way he left no room for discussion after passing off his dirty work onto Steph and walked away briskly, shouting “DYING BABY WAITING ON A HEART.” He’s baby Yang! That baby’s about to get lucky. With Yang. Now it sounds gross. I guess you’re right. It was gross to begin with.

So Meredith doesn’t invite Yang to the Thanksgiving dinner (apparently being prepared by Emma) as they all stand there in stony silence. That’s Owen’s new girlfriend, by the way. Dr. Emma Muffins. She showed up early in the morning (?) to write a grant proposal and be near the chief, then darted away to whip up the quickest turkey dinner ever created. Maybe THAT’s why Mer’s printer malfunctioned. Dr. Muffins was totally asking it to produce a well-seasoned feast.

Line of the night: “You kiss my kids with that mouth?!” –Meredith, after Alex reminded her that, like Jo, Mer had once been “an intern balling an attending.” This was in response to Mer’s slight eye roll about Alex inviting Jo to her impromptu party. Alex and Jo seem to be going strong — after he said he didn’t wanna be at Mer’s dinner if she didn’t come, Jo 1) called him “sweet” and 2) said “I think I love you” and Karev didn’t even flinch! He was likely too distracted by the thought of eating takeout fried chicken in the car, like they both had been raised to do out there in delicious trashyland.

Interns Jo, Leah, and Stephanie wisely chose the more reliable way to eat (I don’t believe for a second anyone ended up gobble-gobbling at the Dreamhouse): They’ll share a Thanksgiving fried chicken dinner with Dr. Webber, who’d intentionally failed his stress test by ticking the treadmill a few decimal points too high, then breaking some ribs after the unforgiving moving walkway flung him mercilessly to the floor. Now that’s what I call chaining yourself to a hospital bed!

NEXT: Bailey has OCD now Webber refused to check into a rehab facility; now these broken ribs will buy him some more time. Ooh, should he and the interns have ordered BBQ ribs for Thanksgiving instead? And wait, where’s Catherine? I know Debbie Allen directed this episode, so couldn’t she have stepped in front of the camera and joined the chicken picnic on Webber’s hospital bed? Eh, probably not. Not fabulous enough. Zero jazz hands.

“The bucket lacks dignity!” Webber cried in a feeble attempt to pretend he wasn’t jonesing for fried chicken. But it was too late. Sides had been put on the (kids) table. Gravy. Coleslaw. Honestly, this was almost too cute.

Non sequitur of the night: “Does she put mushrooms in the stuffing? I find it makes them soggy.” –Webber to Meredith re: Emma’s culinary plans

Speaking of insisting with all one’s might on terribly specific things (worst segue ever?), Bailey has full-blown OCD now. She’s arranging her surgical instruments and even regular daily life items just so, and she can’t help it. Ben tries to get her to seek psychiatric help after he noticed her keeping a patient under anesthesia for an hour longer than he should have been. But Bailey refuses — she has “a busy schedule, and navel-gazing is not on it.”

Well, Ben made the mistake of blabbing to Derek about this while Derek sketched something asymmetrical that had to do with brain mapping on his highly evolved science chalkboard. (This doodle brought to you by something about the way McDreamy’s toothpaste hit the sink. The man can’t even spit without having a genius idea!)

Ben was just looking out for his wife. But Derek’s on the board (ooooooh, the board, what do you want, a medal?) so he couldn’t just ignore the disclosure. Bailey was furious: “You told the chief of surgery I have a psychiatric condition!” Well, when you put it that way…. But in the end, Bailey had to confront reality. Once she and Ben got home, she shoved a chair to the ground and then had to place it upright. Can’t get any more OCD than that.

Intern Leah has to work with Callie and Arizona on Ella, a 6 year-old who suffered a femur fracture after getting hit by a car. And she won’t give up on the sexcapades she had going with Arizona. But haven’t you heard? Callie and Arizona are back together now. (No one had heard.) Dr. Robbins makes it clear Leah should bark up a different forbidden fruit tree and get over her. “You don’t wanna be the person who says ‘I’ll wait for you’ in case it doesn’t work out with your wife.” Ugh, yes, that is tragic. Walk away, Leah! She does stomp away… right down a shame spiral on the stairs of despair.

NEXT: Jackson promises Steph that he and April are probably going to be awkward forever Arizona probably could have picked a better time than the middle of a Callie-Arizona-Leah doctoring three-way to tell Callie she’d been with somebody while they were apart. Was it once? No. More than twice? More than 10? Doesn’t matter, Arizona said. It’s over.

But surgery on Ella’s leg has just begun! Yay, let’s give the unstable drama queen a drill. Stupid Intern Leah drills not only through Ella’s leg (intended) but into the operating table (not). “MURPHY, PULL IT TOGETHER,” yells Callie. And after watching the way Leah pleads with Arizona to “do something,” Callie realizes those two have a shared understanding, a closeness beyond the OR. “It was her?” she asks. “Ten plus tons? That’s…. just… perfect.”

Later, patient Ella’s babysitter, wracked with guilt and shame, went on and on about blaming herself for Ella’s accident, concluding, “I guess it’s my fault for getting so attached.” Leah barely buzzed with vague recognition at that one. Zzzzzzzzzz.

Meanwhile, April and Jackson engaged in possibly the last “close talk” of their lives. Yeah right! Those two love getting all up in each other’s faces and having intense, quiet, sexually charged conversations. Basically, April’s wedding is not happening. There’s no way. For starters, April told Steph she “couldn’t deal with an Evite.” Um, the fact that sending out an Evite was even an option on the table suggests this wedding should not be taken seriously!

April, who is 4 years old, had to remove Jackson from her wedding guest list because his last name starts with A so he was always right at the top of the list, taunting her. She works with the guy every single day, yet can’t handle the idea of being in the presence of both Avery and Matthew. DO WE THINK THAT MIGHT BE A RED FLAG?

Intern Stephanie gets it — well, after pouting her way through her dying patient (returning guest star “pancreas lady”)’s matchmaking efforts to set her lover — not her husband — up with another woman, she finally saw the light re: Jackson not being over April. She also could have just USED HER EYES (did her recent Lasik surgery not take?) to see this blatantly obvious situation at any point in the last few months. But patients-of-the-week who have meaningful lessons for our interns take up more screen time, so Grey’s went with those.

Yangism of the night: “I don’t get all that worked up about cranberries,” she told Owen as the chief desperately attempted to refrain from inviting his ex to his new girlfriend’s Thanksgiving dinner at ex’s new mortal enemy’s house.

Whew! Your thoughts on “Someone That I Used to Know”? How the heck did Arizona make it back to the bed so quickly after her hookup confession? Yang and Shane: Horrifying or Why the Hell Not? And is Meredith’s freaking printer going to ever do anything right?!

Discuss!

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