If you were looking for a lighthearted escape from the current state of affairs, this week’s
Grey’s Anatomy (Thursdays at 9 pET on CTV) won't give you that relife. Instead, the show delivers an emotional and heart-wrenching deep dive into the lives of four of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital’s doctors and left the future of one of the show’s original stars hanging in the balance. Time to restart your
Grey’s Anatomy support group.A medical conference set the stage for Thursday’s episode and kicked off trips back in time for Cormac (Richard Flood) and Teddy (Kim Raver), giving viewers insight to the love and heartbreak that shaped who they are today. Maggie (Kelly McCreary) reunited with a former resident, who finally gave the heart surgeon some much deserved l-o-v-e, but because this is
Grey’s and we can’t have nice things, Maggie’s weekend romance came to an abrupt halt when Richard’s (James Pickens Jr) hand tremor took a devastating turn. Consider all of us shook.
Cormac’s heartbreak
We don’t know much about the newest addition to the
Grey’s Anatomy cast, but we do know that Cormac is a single dad to his two teenage sons after losing his wife to cancer a few years ago. This week’s medical conference took Cormac back to the spot where he and his wife Abigail met, litreally. Well, that’s triggering. She was a starving artist, he was a doctor with a wig. Over a tote bag full of marketing pens for erectile dysfunctional medication, the pair fell in love. The devastation over Abigail’s death became more tangible in this episode when the unrelenting heartbreak over the loss of a wife and mother was put on screen. A confrontation with a medical rep revealed that Abigail’s death was the result of a medical device that caused her cancer to break apart and spread throughout her body. Without the use of the device, Abigail would have survived her cancer. We didn’t think the death of a young woman with two children could get worse, but there it is![video_embed id='1789625']RELATED: 'Grey's Anatomy' stars disclose their off-screen medical skills[/video_embed]
Teddy’s throwback
The emotional gut punches kept coming when the spotlight moved from Cormac to Teddy. If you’ve ever wondered why Teddy named her daughter Allison, other than it being a great name, that question was answered on Thursday’s episode. Teddy was an Attending in New York early in her career and lived with her best friends Claire and Allison, who were a couple. Teddy and Allison were having an affair and in love, which made Allison’s death in 9/11 a complicated and devastating loss for the two surviving women. A chance encounter of the former friends at the medical conference gave Claire the opportunity to confront Teddy about the affair. We’re usually Team Teddy, but right now we’re really hoping Claire’s new wife is awesome.Teddy’s affair and grief over losing Allison may explain a lot of Teddy’s questionable decisions. She fell fast and hard for Owen (Kevin McKidd) in Afghanistan after enlisting even though he was with Megan. She married Henry (Scott Foley) even though she knew he was dying. Now she’s cheating on Owen with Tom (Greg Germann). It’s possible that Teddy picks people she can’t have and sabotages relationships once she is in them because of the guilt she still carries over the affair. Teddy is purposely living so that she doesn’t get a happy ending. Or maybe we've been looking at the same four walls and are starting to see things differently.
Maggie gets her groove back
As for the one ray of sunshine in this outstanding but very, very sad episode, Maggie finally had some fun. Yay Maggie! Reuniting with her former medical resident and then *really* reuniting, Maggie spent the weekend in bed with Dr. Winston, who is already in love with Maggie and ready to move to Seattle to be with her. The entire episode felt like there was going to be a second shoe dropping at any moment (after all the clothes dropping), but it didn’t happen. Could Winston simply be a super hot, super smart, super nice guy that appreciates Maggie? And isn’t her stepbrother? The perfect man does not exis…well, maybe he does.
Richard’s medical emergency
We’ve seen a lot of scary stuff on 16 seasons of
Grey’s Anatomy (shooters, bombs, fires, car crashes, airplane crashes; been there, have the nightmares to prove it), but watching the reveal that Richard had imagined his reconciliation with Catherine (Debbie Allen) was truly chilling. Richard’s presentation of his PATH pen at the medical conference was the culmination of months of work. It was also the culmination of whatever has been causing Richard’s hand tremor. A livestream of Richard’s presentation meant that it wasn’t only Maggie, Teddy and Cormac who watched Richard’s medical emergency in real-time. Was it a stroke? A heart attack? A brain aneurysm? We don’t know. (We’re not real doctors, we just watch them on TV.) Whatever it is, it’s causing an awful lot of water to stream from our eyes. Now is not the time to take Dr. Richard Webber,
Grey’s Anatomy. Now is not the time.Watch new episodes of
Grey’s Anatomy every Thursday at 9 pET on CTV and catch up online anytime at
CTV.ca.[video_embed id='1928864']BEFORE YOU GO: Angelina and Kylie both make $1M donations to fight coronavirus pandemic[/video_embed]
