GREY’S ANATOMY Recap: ‘I Will Survive’

Meredith and Derek, for example, spend the episode interviewing with a social worker as a first step towards adopting the African baby. We don’t actually get to see Derek’s interview, but he’s McDreamy so I’m just assuming he smiled and ran his fingers through his hair and the social worker melted. Meredith doesn’t have McDreamy’s hair, though, so she’s a bit nervous. She does fine, and shows the social worker that she really cares about baby Zola and wants to be a great mom to her.

Meanwhile, Owen spends the episode conducting final interviews for Chief Resident, while several of the residents try last-ditch efforts to try to impress him. April comes up with a “checklist” system for all hospital patients to ensure that proper protocol is followed, which annoys the crap out of Cristina, who’d rather “streamline” the steps. Her streamlining works great sometimes, like when she’s able to quickly diagnose a guy with a tree growing in his lung (which would be more shocking to me if I didn’t remember seeing the real-life version of this on the news a while back), but it gets her in trouble at other times, like when she tries to bypass Teddy and do the surgery herself. Fortunately for Cristina, the patient has taken a liking to her and insists that she do the operation. Chief Webber allows it after Teddy reluctantly admits that Cristina is good enough to do it. Cristina’s on cloud nine – until Owen flat-out tells her he’s not going to pick her as Chief Resident. She’s understandably pissed until she realizes that Owen is right – the administrative duties that come with being Chief Resident would only distract from her real mission to be the most awesome surgeon ever.

Jackson also finds himself out of the running after he quits Chief Webber’s diabetes trial. Owen accuses him of quitting everything when things get difficult…until he realizes that Jackson only did it because he believes Chief Webber has a shot at winning the presitigious Harper Avery award – as in, the award hand-picked by Jackson’s father. Jackson didn’t want to hurt the Chief’s chances. Owen tells him never to let his last name hold him back, though he respects his decision. Looks like Jackson’s still not going to win though, leaving Meredith and Alex as the front-runners.

Meredith’s chances seem pretty good at this point, as long as Alex doesn’t spill the beans that she tampered with the Alzheimer’s trial. And her chances go up even more, because Alex almost drops out of the race when Arizona suggests he apply for a great position at her old clinic in Africa. He’s seriously considering it without so much as a second thought to his developing relationship with Lucy, but after noticing how disappointed she is, and after a talk with Arizona in which she tells him not to make the same mistake she did when she went to Africa, Alex tells Lucy that he’s staying. Only one problem – Lucy’s not staying. She called the African clinic and took the job right out from under Alex’s nose. (Allow me to interject here. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that Alex isn’t my favorite character. But I do have to say, he really has terrible luck with women. I don’t think he’s faultless in the current situation, but that was still a dick move on Lucy’s part. And here I was hoping Alex could finally be happy with someone so he could stop whining about his crappy life. There goes that.) Given Alex’s state of mind, his final act of the episode isn’t all that surprising – he tells Owen that Meredith messed with the Alzheimer’s trial. Splat! That was the sound of Meredith’s chances dropping to the floor, leaving Alex as the sole front-runner and April as a possible dark horse.

A couple other plotlines this episode: Lexie is pining after Mark. Again. She thinks he looks cute holding a baby and boy am I starting to get tired of their on-again, off-again rollercoaster. It used to be cute, now it’s just exhausting. Also exhausting (but still cute) are Teddy and Henry. Teddy decides to move to Germany with the hot therapist because apparently she has LOST HER MIND. Poor sad Henry, who is now poor sad employed Henry after he gets his old job back, asks for a divorce. And now I am sad like Henry.  Boo.

It’s so hard to believe there’s only one episode left! So much to resolve, so little time! (Although, given the aforementioned doomsday warnings, many things may not be resolved at all. Oh, GREY’S, why do you do this to us??)

What did you guys think? Are Lexie and Mark going to have yet another reunion? What will the consequences be now that Meredith’s secret is out? And who will be chosen as Chief Resident? Leave your thoughts below!