Grey's Anatomy: Extraordinary Expectations

Grey's Anatomy: "Freedom"
Well, here's to Grey's for proving that it still can be rather extraordinary, as Ellis Grey would say.

Grey's season 4 finale last night was worlds better than the monstrosity of depression that was its season 3 finale. During last year's finale, there was just horrible thing after horrible thing after horrible thing. In this year's finale, sure, several horrible things did happen (one of the clinical trial patients died, Ava/Rebecca proved to be unfixable by Alex, etc.), but then--amazingly, mercifully--several really nice things happened too! And that, my friends, is how you make your season finale both touching and watchable.

The episode even got off to a great start with some very vintage Grey's banter among the core group of former interns. Izzy's play-by-play of how Alex and Rebecca were acting was amusing ("And he was like, take a bite, take a bite!"), and also great was Meredith's "Now, George, we have had this discussion and we decided it's not appropriate to call Izzie crazy. She's sprited!" It's important for Grey's to not lose sight of the fact that it can be pretty darn funny when it wants to be.

Another highlight was Jurnee Smollett's guest role as the first person to survive Meredith and Derek's brain tumor/virus treatment. Jurnee certainly made a strong play for the Best Acting by a Former 'Full House' Child Actor award, not that she has all that much competition in that area these days. After tearfully parting with her boyfriend before his surgery, I absolutely loved her delivery of the line, "Do not kill him."

I do wonder, though, how it is that all the people who find their way into MerDer's clinic trial seem to have such complicated/unusual/dramatic love lives. There was that first guy and his supposedly unextraordinary wife, the gay soldier with his soldier boyfriend, the lady with her "made up" boyfriend, and now two kids with brain tumors who are in love. Who knows what the other 8 people we didn't see were up to?!

I liked that George demanded his second chance (nice job pointing out that everyone else in the hospital seems to have gotten at least one second chance). I could do without the Hahn/Callie/McSteamy stuff, probably because I don't like Hahn and I'm not a huge fan of Callie. I did like Christina finally telling Hahn to shut up and the chief giving Hahn a lecture. And Bailey coming through on her promise to save the boy encased in cement was great.

I was a big fan of the Izzy/Alex stuff (but, then, I'm always a fan of interactions between those two). It's nice that lately they've had Izzy toughen up. She handled the Ava situation very well. And, poor Alex, with his admission that as a child he used to have to take care of his mother. The scene of him crying at the end was heartbreaking (very nicely done by Justin Chambers). We've always known that there were some painful secrets in his background, so it was nice to finally learn a bit about them.

Also sharing some painful childhood secrets was Meredith. After hearing about Ellis' half-assed suicide attempt, it's no wonder Meredith is so messed up. But good for her for finally working through it and figuring out that she can try to do better in love than her mother ever did. Her candle/blueprint grand gesture was lovely, but what was great was that she was annoyed and ranting about it by the time Derek showed up. I don't think Meredith should apologize at all for admitting that she still doesn't really trust Derek, because he's certainly had his moments of buttheadedness. But, yea for them finally reuniting to be "extraordinary together."

I cannot refrain from one final dig at McDreamy: he knew he was going to find Meredith. He knew he loved her. He knew they were going to open the champagne and make out. But he didn't bother to break up with Rose before going to find Mer? So he had to kiss her and immediately run away? What a loser. It's like he seriously wanted to string that other poor (pathetic) girl along just in case things didn't work out... Whatever. The important thing is that this year--unlike last year--things did work out. Hallelujah.