Happy Thanksgiving! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!  This week’s ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ gives us three, three, three holidays in one episode.  As a result huge plotpoints are glossed over.  Hey, show, you aren’t on the verge of cancellation.  What’s the rush?

Bizarre Love Triangle

Speaking of threes, the supposed love triangle for the ages Christina/Owen/Teddy moves into warp speed, making everyone look ridiculous.  And, in the case of Kevin McKidd, act ridiculous.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.   On Thanksgiving, Christina and Owen are getting it on, when Teddy pages her.  A patient, Chelsea, has a severely damaged heart. Teddy removes the heart and attaches it to machines to keep her alive.  The guy Chelsea is casually dating uncomfortably agrees to stay with her over the holiday.

At Christmas, Chelsea is wide awake and looks awfully perky for someone who has spent the past month in a hospital bed attached to machines.  Christina tells her there’s a good chance she’ll get an organ on New Year’s Eve because of all the fatal car crashes.  Hooray for drunk driving!  Chelsea wants to go outside so she can see the snow because it’s her favorite thing on earth and she might never get the chance again.  Teddy bundles her up, puts her in a wheel chair and takes her outside.  Chelsea manages to stand up, then passes out. Part of her bowel has died.  They don’t think she’ll survive surgery.  Bailey suggests skipping anesthesia.  The thought of someone cutting open my intestines while I am awake will give me nightmares. Thanks, ‘Grey’s.’  Chelsea cringes through the surgery while the doctors try to distract her by singing Christmas carols.  I refuse to believe that would work.

On New Year’s Eve, Owen drags Teddy into a room so that Kevin McKidd’s overacting will not cause all the scenery to fall down. It’s appropriate that he was cast as a character named Soap in ‘Modern Warfare 2,’ because the guy goes way over the top with huge hand gestures and facial twitches. And I say that as a hardcore soap fan.  McKidd was great last season. I don’t know what happened.  Owen demands to know why Teddy waited until now to share her feelings.  He melodramatically states that he had feelings for her all the time they were in Iraq.  She says “I have loved you” a thousand times as she makes declarative statements about their history in a ‘Grey’s’ McMonologue. She says she’s in love with him. He responds, “I’m in love with Christina.” Ouch!  Then why the hell did he tell her he used to be in to her?  Does he want her to keep pining for him? What an ass!  This would have worked much better if it had played out over half a dozen episodes.

Meanwhile, Chelsea’s kidneys are shutting down.  She needs a donor.  As Christina promises, a drunk driving victim materializes and Chelsea gets the organs.  Seemingly to punish Christina for being the object of Owen’s affection, Teddy makes her look at the crying father of the dead girl. Chelsea’s surgery goes well.  She wakes up on New Year’s Day, awfully chipper for someone who just had a multiple organ transplant.  Her boyfriend proposes to her, saying that what they’ve been through proves they belong together.  Christina is hilariously uncomfortable witnessing the genuine romance.  She finds Owen by the vent and tells him she doesn’t want him to choose her out of obligation. He melodramatically grabs her and kisses her and tells her he loves her. Kevin McKidd has clearly decided to treat this episode as his audition for the next ‘Twilight’ movie.  He’s pale enough to sparkle in the sun.

Drinking Buddies

The Chief tells Meredith that when she saw him drinking it wasn’t what she thought.  He had a problem a long time ago.  He misdiagnosed himself with alcoholism.  It was situational depression over Ellis.  I don’t know why Meredith, daughter of a drunk, would buy this.  Yet she assures him she hasn’t told anyone.  He offers to mentor her.  She actually has a conversation with Derek about it, in their only scene together in the episode.  He thinks the Chief’s using her to get to him.  That’s insulting to Meredith’s abilities. He’s actually using her to enable his drinking.

During Christmas dinner, Thatcher tells Meredith that the Chief is off the wagon, and his excuses are bull.  I find it hard to believe Meredith would invite him, even to make St. Lexie happy.  She asks him if he was drinking when he left her.  He says no.  Meredith says he can’t blame the world’s evils on alcohol.  I guess Meredith wants to believe the Chief because she thinks of him as the anti-Thatcher.  I almost wish for an on the nose monologue to explain her motivations. New Year’s Eve, the Chief tells Meredith he is quitting drinking but on New Year’s Day, Joe summons Meredith because the Chief is totally wasted at the bar.  Meredith is finally uncomfortable with her new job as resident enabler.

The Obligatory Sick Child

On Thanksgiving, Derek and Arizona treat a boy who needs brain surgery due to a problem with blood vessels called an ABM.  Derek tells the parents they need smaller instruments to work through his tiny sinuses. They have to send the boy home to die. They logically ask if smaller instruments exist.  Derek asks Mark to help create them.  In one of the few feel good scenes of the episode, the doctors agree to pay for the instruments themselves, since the hospital does not have the money.  The Chief finally apologizes to Derek.  He accepts.  That was anti-climactic and pointless. They save the boy as the clock chimes midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Still More Grey’s Daddy Issues

Bailey’s Dad Bill shows up for a surprise visit.  After watching her perform surgery, Bill makes a patented ‘Grey’s’ McMonologue saying “I’ve been a proud father” several dozen times, and concluding that he’s ashamed that she’s working on Christmas and has made a terrible mistake by sacrificing her marriage.  Why are all the parents on this show so awful?  Maybe Shonda needs therapy.  At Derek and Meredith’s Christmas dinner he scolds Bailey for talking about bowels at the table. He is really misreading that room.  She tells him her child is loved and she should not have stayed in an unhealthy marriage.  She says, “My child is healthy,” 500 times.  I think we all got the point the first time, writers.  On New Year’s Day, Bailey’s Dad abruptly makes amends, admitting he’s mainly upset that she hid the divorce from him. That’s the opposite of what he said, but when a show crams this much into an hour, this is what happens.

Sloane Versus Sloane

A trashy, bitchy 18 year old girl named Sloane Reilly, played by Leven Rambin of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles, announces to Mark that she’s his long lost daughter. Callie does an instant DNA test.  This should be a huge emotional moment, but it’s glossed over.  He brings her to Thanksgiving dinner and announces she is going to move in.  Lexie is so stunned, she accidentally cuts off the tip of her finger.  That could mess up her progress as a surgeon, but it’s treated as a joke.

On Christmas, Lexie’s finger  is still bandaged.  Mark has managed to go a month without speaking to Sloane. How? This is so improbable.  She calls him a perv when he tries to chat with her, which does not make any sense. Mark tells Derek he feels guilty because he knew her Mom was pregnant.  He gave her a couple hundred bucks assuming she’d get an abortion, then never saw  her again.  The moral of the story: always accompany the woman you knocked up to the clinic. On New Year’s  Sloane tells Mark she’s pregnant.  Her mother kicked her out of the house, which is so hypocritical that I suspect the girl is lying. She has no place else to go.  Mark’s going to be a grandfather. That’s hilarious.

Quotes

Mark, your kids are bickering. – Derek, about Lexie and Sloane

Private lessons with the Chief — those Daddy issues are really working for you. – Alex, to Meredith

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