GREY’S ANATOMY Season Finale Recap: ‘Unaccompanied Minor’

After all of Shonda Rhimes’ warnings that the season finale of GREY’S ANATOMY would be the emotional equivalent of last year’s shootout, I expected to feel like I was run over by a truck. Well, I don’t think it was quite that bad…maybe a car instead of a truck. A tiny car…like a Smart Car or a Mini Cooper. Painful, but recovery is possible. Mostly.

The only relationship that might suffer permanent damage is Owen and Cristina. The short version: Cristina is preggers. Nope, you haven’t accidentally switched on your GREY’S season one DVD. Cristina has the unlucky distinction of being one of the only television characters I can think of to get accidentally knocked up TWICE. Last time, her life was very different: she had just started dating Burke, her career was just beginning, and a lot of things were up in the air. Now, she’s a married senior resident who’s grown up quite a bit in seven years. But one thing hasn’t changed – kids are still not in the picture. Owen isn’t down with this. He tries desperately to get her to want the baby, but in the end she remains adamant and schedules an appointment to have an abortion. He kicks her out of the house, yelling at her that she’s not listening to him and something about his feelings, and I tune out because he’s being a jackass. She is listening to you, dude. What she won’t do – what you really want her to do – is agree with you, and she doesn’t deserve a guilt trip about it. Why should your feelings about the pregnancy matter more than hers? And seriously – it’s Cristina. Not once since the beginning of the series has she shown the slightest hint that she’ll change her mind about having kids, and if you weren’t okay with that, you shouldn’t have married her.

All that said, she’ll probably end up keeping the baby. Whatever anyone thinks about a woman’s right to choose, you have to admit it’s a right that women on network TV don’t have. I’m surprised ABC even allowed the “A” word to be spoken instead of using gently alluding to it, as is usually the case. I’ll be stunned beyond belief if Cristina actually goes through with the procedure. I guess we’ll wait and see.

Meanwhile, Meredith and Derek have the opposite problem. Unable to have kids of their own, they’re trying everything they can to win over the social worker who will decide if they can adopt little Zola. The social worker seems skeptical at best, but that problem seems minor as the truth starts to come out about Meredith tampering with the Alzheimer’s trial. Both Chief Webber and Derek are furious when they find out. Chief Webber’s initial reaction is to fire Meredith, until he finds out that Adele was the patient she helped, and he quickly downgrades the firing into a suspension. Derek is not so easily calmed. He accuses Meredith of not knowing the difference between right and wrong, and when she argues that life isn’t as simple as that (oh how the writers must have been dying to insert a “shades of grey” pun) Derek flat-out tells her she’ll be a bad mother. Why are all the husbands such jerks in this episode??? You know you’re acting like a D-bag if Alex looks good in comparison, because even though Alex totally sold Meredith out last week, he has the good sense to feel guilty that he almost got her fired. Even better, he does something to make up for it: he speaks to the social worker on Meredith’s behalf, leading the social worker to grant Meredith and Derek immediate temporary custody of Zola. But Derek wouldn’t know that because he’s stopped returning Meredith’s phone calls, and when Meredith brings Zola home, she finds Derek gone.

Whew! Depressing stuff so far. Let’s talk about some happier developments. First up is Happy Couple #1: Bailey and Nurse Eli. Things have obviously progressed beyond their original carefree arrangement. After an emotional day, Bailey takes Nurse Eli home to meet her son for the first time. Yay happy couple! On to Happy Couple #2: Lexie and Jackson. Sloane tells Jackson he can have Lexie, because that’s not at all condescending, and when Lexie tells Sloane to stay out of her beeswax (that’s right, I’m bringing it back), the two of them have a conversation in which it they appear to finally let each other go, and Lexie happily returns to Jackson’s side. Yay happy couple! And finally, Happy Couple #3: Teddy and Henry. They don’t start out happy, but after Henry mans up and tells Teddy he loves her (actually, he kind of yells it at her and tells her to get out), Teddy finally ditches the hot therapist and plants a kiss on an adorably confused Henry. IN YOUR FACE, HOT THERAPIST! Oh, and yay happy couple! Thank you GREY’s writers, for finally getting those two crazy kids together. Now please don’t kill off Henry. Pretty please?

One more depressing thing and one more happy thing before I conclude this final recap of the season. Let’s start with the depressing thing… It looks like Alex and Lucy are officially dunzo. In a weird reversal from last week, Lucy walks up to Alex and tells him to tell her not to go to Africa (you know, for the job that she stole from him). He tells her to go to hell. Dunzo. Now on to the happy thing… It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for all season, the moment we find out which one of our beloved residents will win the coveted “Chief Resident” position. And the winner is…April! Funny story, Owen would have picked Alex if he hadn’t tattled on Meredith, but since he did Owen doesn’t think any of the residents will respect him. I’m not sure they’ll have much more respect for April, who is ecstatic for about five minutes until she realizes she’ll have to learn how to boss people around. That should be fun to watch.

Well, kids, that wraps it up for GREY’S season seven! It’s going to be a long summer without our favorite surgeons and their crazy drama. I hope you all have enjoyed reading these recaps as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. Have a fabulous summer, everyone!

Don’t forget to let us know what you thought of the finale! Will Meredith and Derek work it out? What about Owen and Cristina? And how will April do as Chief Resident? Tell us all your thoughts below!