I have to admit I wasn’t overly impressed when I watched the season premiere this morning. There were a couple of things I loved and a few things that annoyed me. But most of the episode just left me felt … detached. If that’s the right word for it. It got better, meaning it felt more like Grey’s when I watched it the second time this evening. So maybe I just had to get into it again. I still didn’t think it was a great episode, but it wasn’t a bad one either.
The boat accident case didn’t really do much for me. I didn’t understand at all why this backpacker girl acted the way she did. I loved the other case though and Martha Plimpton did a great job as the mom of a teenage boy. But boy, did I feel old. She was one of the “Goonies” and that didn’t feel like 25 years ago. Except, that it was… :-)
The chief continued to annoy me to no end. If I were on the board I would totally fire him as well, because he does in fact do a bad job running this hospital. He doesn’t have any plan at all. He is whiney and unfair (that’s the McDreamy fan talking, because seriously Derek had his back and the chief was a jerk). I’m not sure what to think of the merger with Mercy West yet. I know there will be a few additional characters and I’m not sure if that will work out at all. I hated it when there were too much of the intern drama storylines last season, because I just didn’t care about Steve and Ryan and whatever their names were. So I still hope that the original SGH staff will stay the center of the show.
I somehow expected the first part to be much more tear-jerking, but I actually was glad that I didn’t have to get out the Kleenex too often :-) I felt so sorry for Callie, because she was the first one who openly grieved for George and it just broke my heart. And Bailey, oh Bailey was totally at loss. One of her “babies”, the guy how helped her give birth died. Oh poor Bailey. I did start to cry when she questioned all the surgeons about the patients who would get George’s organs. I am still not sure what to think of Bailey’s reaction to all of this. I get why she thinks she has to keep her emotions out of her job, but I don’t think it’s the right way to deal with what happened. Totally loved that Derek stopped the elevator to get her to talk. Those two share such a special bond. The song that played sounded so familiar and I checked with the old episodes and they used this song in 2.06, when Bailey stopped the elevator to give Derek a moment to grieve. Great idea to use that song again…
When Izzie walked away from the funeral and the others followed I had this strange “why are there only four of them? There are five of them!” feeling and that was the moment it sunk in. There will only be four of them from now on. The laughter at the funeral felt completly wrong and not in the way it was obviously supposed to feel, if you know what I mean. I understand that sometimes laughter can be the only release and that it was all more or less caused by the grief they went through, because the idea of George being dead is too absurd to be true. But this didn’t come across at this scene, not to me at least. To me it just felt mostly inappropriate.
I have to admit I wasn’t overly interested in the Owen/Cristina storyline this time. Can’t actually say why, I just wasn’t. But I actually liked to see Cristina being Cristina. With Bailey and all. Hardcore like she always has been. I also really liked Arizona and how much she cared for her patient and even crossing the line with asking Callie for the 3D MRI. But Callie let her cross the line so that’s ok. They are such a beautiful couple. And Arizona cares so much about her, it’s just really adorable.
Lexie was doing a great job with the backpacker girl and she was really cute when she talked to Callie about Mark. “On a scale from 1 to gay?” *g* Mark, Lexie and Callie provided some of the needed comic relief. Like when Mark asked what George had to have women fall in love with him. So typical Mark. But he was so sweet to Lexie in that scene too. And it was also great comic relief when Derek he told Mark about being the next chief. I have to admit even I believed Derek for a moment and was confused, because I thought I had missed something :-)
The way the post-it-wedding was brought up a couple of times felt forced to me as well. I actually was and still am totally ok with the post-it. I know a lot of fans weren’t and those voiced their opinions loudly over the summer. But having it adressed in this episode again and again to me seemed like the writers felt the need to justify their decision to come up with the post-it-wedding in the first place. So that’s another thing that felt weird to me. But I have to admit I DID love it when the post-it came up in the scene with Arizona, Derek and Alex. Yes, he is McDreamy but he also is a guy and of course he had to brag about the married sex *g*
There were just a couple of MerDer scenes, but I actually liked those. Even though Meredith still kept parts of her feelings (her grief) to herself, at least she didn’t run and still wanted Derek to be around her. And he was there for her in the end, when she finally broke down. And they had lots and lots of sex in between, which is nothing new for those two. I have to admit I actually have a hard time believing, that they didn’t have sex on the kitchen counter before. For most of season 4 having sex was all their relationship was abou…
In these first two episodes they actually did a very good job of hiding Stella Luna :-). Yes, I admit I paid special attention to Ellen’s baby bump when I watched the episodes a second time. I think I got a glimpse of Stella Luna (I could say that name again and again, it just has such a pretty sound) in the scene with Izzie, Cristina and Mer eating icecream and talking about sex. I so loved Meredith’s “Why would Derek withhold sex?!?!” Good question! LOL
And I can’t say often enough how much I love Alex. He is such a dark & twisty person and had to live through so much already and it just broke me heart to see how he wanted to protect Izzie and to hear him talk about his fears at the end in the trailer. I have to admit I’m not sure that this marriage will actually survive. Yes, he loves Izzie and she probably really loves him as well, but they got married so spontaneously and they have to deal with so much stuff and I’m not sure they will be able to do that without hurting each other. It would make me really sad to see Alex having his heart broken again (I don’t really care much about Izzie anymore, but Alex… *sigh*)
Last but not least I loved the way the episode started and ended, which was true Grey’s style. Perfect music and perfect voiceovers and I always love it when the cast shares a voiceover in episodes like these, when it’s about all of them.