GREY’S ANATOMY: ‘Superfreak’

Gather round everyone, it’s exposure therapy time on GREY’S ANATOMY. Could you directly confront the one thing that scares you the most? ‘Cause that’s what it’s all about for doctors and patients alike in this week’s episode.

For some of our Seattle Gracers, that means dealing with some residual phobias leftover from the shooting. Alex, for example, has developed a fear of elevators after nearly bleeding to death in one. Fortunately Chief Webber is able to cure him pretty quickly by making him ride it until he’s not so much afraid of elevators as he is sick of them.

Others have fears unrelated to their trauma. Lexie has a hard time going near people with rare and disturbing skin conditions, like our Patient of the Week. He has a rare combination of HPV plus an immune deficiency which causes him to develop huge tree-like growths all over his body. It’s an intriguing and entirely original story which is not at all a complete rip-off of the Tree Man in Indonesia. Seriously GREY’S, I know that a lot of cases on the show are inspired by real life medical anomalies, but maybe in the future you could pick stories that don’t run on the Discovery Channel a thousand times a day. That way I can go back to my blissfully ignorant place where I marvel at the creativity of your writing staff and we can all be happy. Sound good? Thanks GREY’S, I love that you listen to me.

Anyway, Lexie’s grossed out and Bailey makes her face her disgust by staying with the guy every minute of the day, including during the surgery where they clip off his many deformities. Lexie gets the last laugh though, as a spider crawls out from one of the growths and Bailey screams like a little girl. Apparently Bailey’s arachnophobic, and it’s a fear she doesn’t plan to face anytime soon, preferring instead to run towards the company of a good bottle of brandy.

Teddy happily shares in Bailey’s solution, since she has her own pain to deal with. Despite her best efforts, she’s become attached to a certain yummy therapist even though he’s leaving town. She admits this to him, and he hugs her while giving his expert opinion that she has a habit of falling for unavailable men. It’s…a bit condescending, actually. C’mon dude, can’t you say something like, “You make me wish I could stay, but damn it, I can’t deprive the world of my good-looking psychoanalyzing awesomeness for any longer…” I mean, throw her a frickin’ bone. I may have just fallen out of love with you. (Oh I totally didn’t mean it! I take it back, I swear! How could I ever fall out of love with you? Why don’t you come over here and we can talk about it while Teddy and Bailey keep drowning their sorrows in brandy…)

Cristina, on the other hand, has issues that even the biggest bottle of booze couldn’t solve. After her freak-out last week she’s afraid to even enter an OR, and the attendings are a heartbeat away from putting her on administrative duty for a few months. That’s when Derek unequivocally states that he will leave the hospital if they don’t keep her on surgical duty. She can be on his service, he says, since no one else wants her. Wow, Derek, that was…really nice of you. I know she’s Meredith’s best friend but I really didn’t expect you to stick up for her like that and ohhh right there was that whole thing where she saved your life. Okay that makes a ton of sense actually.

Derek’s plan doesn’t go very well at first. Though he forces Cristina into an OR, she refuses to touch any surgical instruments and bolts the second the procedure is finished. Derek doesn’t quit, though. He gets to the root of the problem by making her relive the surgery she did to save Derek’s life (on a cadaver). Free from the stress of keeping someone alive, and from having a gun in her face, Cristina finally takes the first step towards getting back in the saddle.

When he’s not serving up tough love, Derek has his own issues to deal with. One of his sisters (the one who’s apparently on PRIVATE PRACTICE now) is in town! You’d think they’d turn up more often, since he has four of them. Whatevs. This sister’s name is Amelia and she’s a bit of a spitfire. She gives Derek an earful for not calling her about the small matter of him almost dying. He brushes her off for most of the episode before finally talking to her about why he didn’t call. We find out that the two of them were present when their father was shot, and having witnessed her anguish firsthand all those years ago, he couldn’t put her through that again. They have a very nice brother-sister bonding moment and we all say “Awwww.”

What else? Oh yeah, April’s a virgin. She gets teased pretty mercilessly after that little tidbit comes out, until finally she gets fed up and calls everyone out for having things they don’t talk about either… like the fact that Mark is in love with Lexie and that’s why he stares at her all the time. And with that piece of news, Lexie rushes back to the hospital, makes up with Mark, and they run happily off into the sunset and have lots of sex and babies. Except that last part doesn’t happen because when Lexie gets to the hospital, Mark is making out with Derek’s sister. Mark!!! This would have been a good time to turn OFF the McSteamy charm. Well, guess we’ll have to wait a little while longer for these two to reunite.

And that’s it for this week, fellow GREY’S lovers. Your turn to sound off! How long will it take for Mark and Lexie to get back together? What do you think of April being a virgin? Leave your thoughts, comments, and witty remarks below!

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