‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Season 18 Episode 15: Mer Makes Her Choice (RECAP)
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A confrontation with Bailey (Chandra Wilson) helps Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) make up her mind about David’s (Peter Gallagher) job offer in Minnesota in Grey’s Anatomy Season 18, Episode 15, April 7’s “Put It to the Test.”
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Grey’s Anatomy Season 18, Episode 15, “Put It to the Test.’”]
Meanwhile, Grey Sloan’s residency program is on the line, after the medical accreditation council discovered complaints of residents’ long hours at the hospital. As the episode starts, Bailey is getting the attendings ready to be interviewed by the two representatives from the council coming to the hospital that day to start their investigation.
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Bailey wants Richard (James Pickens Jr.) to be the first interviewee, but he has other plans for the day: He’s getting his physician assessment. And his assessors? None other than David and Kai (E.R. Fightmaster), whom Richard believes to be impartial judges.
The assessment goes well until David starts making small talk about him and Richard being older doctors who are watching younger doctors following in their footsteps or waiting for younger doctors to decide whether to follow in their footsteps. Richard’s eyes narrow. David’s small talk was all the confirmation Richard needed to know David was trying to poach Meredith, he says. “A+ on the reasoning skills section,” Kai interjects.
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Then, Richard makes an early break from the assessment when Levi (Jake Borelli) phones him in a panic. Earlier in the episode, Levi realized that his mom, Myrna (Michelle Gardner), was the one trashing Grey Sloan’s residency program online, and after they got into an argument about her tweets, she fell down the basement stairs. Levi called the paramedics, and then he called Richard, and so now Richard is helping by phone as Levi treats Myrna in the basement.
Richard is also there in the ambulance bay when the rig carrying Levi and Myrna reaches the hospital, and after Link (Chris Carmack) and Teddy (Kim Raver) take Myrna to be treated, Levi breaks down in Richard’s arms, claiming that it’s all his fault. If Levi hadn’t killed his patient Devon, he believes, then his mom wouldn’t have posted online complaints about Grey Sloan, and they wouldn’t have gotten into an argument, and Myrna wouldn’t have fallen down the stairs.
Richard also lets Bailey know what he inferred from David: that Meredith is considering leaving the hospital. Bailey finds Meredith sitting with Nick (Scott Speedman), and she chews Mer out for even thinking about leaving, especially with a historic physician shortage and with the residency program hanging by a thread. “This program raised you!” Bailey yells at Meredith. “I raised you, taught you everything you know!”
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Bailey also brings up Meredith’s early McDreamy years, calling her “that same little girl that’s following her handsome attending all around the hospital” and having sex in cars and breaking all the rules. But then Bailey clutches her chest and wobbles on her feet, and Mer and Nick help her off her feet.
Maggie (Kelly McCreary) checks Bailey out and finds that Bailey isn’t having another heart attack, just a panic attack brought on by stress. But Maggie warns Bailey that she’ll have another myocardial infarction if she doesn’t “do less.” (During that convo, however, Bailey also lets slip about Meredith’s job offer, not realizing that Maggie didn’t already know.)
While Meredith waits with Nick for word about Bailey’s condition, she tells him that she’s never had Bailey go off on her — or anyone else — like that before. She loves Bailey, but she doesn’t currently like Bailey, she says. And she’s also frustrated that Bailey reduced her to her less-than-professional past. She realizes that that’s why surgeons leave the hospitals where they do their residencies. When they stay put, coworkers “see you for who you were, not who you’ve become.”
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Nick, by the way, spends the episode working on giving a donor kidney to a brain-dead patient. Why? Because the donor is a pig. Yes, Nick and his resident students are conducting a xenotransplant, trying to prove that pigs can be viable kidney donors. If the transplant is successful, then that breakthrough could help get everyone off the kidney donation waiting list. And at the end of the episode, a catheter bag full of urine is proof that the transplant worked. “Look at you, changing the face of transplant medicine,” Mer tells Nick.
While Myrna is in the OR, Levi talks to David and Kai about Richard as a teacher. He has only the highest praise for Richard, but as it turns out, Richard had already passed the assessment with flying colors. There’s more good news, too — Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) says that Levi’s mom is going to be OK. (Amelia, by the way, apologizes to Kai for trying to get them to give Richard a pass earlier in the episode. Kai says they understand, observing that Richard “is your David.”)
Richard, meanwhile, sits down with the accreditors, telling them that the hospital has trained hundreds of successful surgeons (as we see clips from early Grey’s Anatomy seasons, with Mer and her intern class learning the ropes from Bailey and Richard). “I thought saving a life was the highest calling to aspire to,” Richard says during the interview. “Then I started teaching.”
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Richard also tells the accreditors that if he needs to step down as director of the residency program in order for the program to continue, he’ll do so.
That night, the accreditors give Bailey their verdict. They say that Grey Sloan has one of the best surgical programs that they’ve ever seen, especially because the residents seem genuinely excited about the work. But they’re still putting the residency program on probation, because the hospital simply does not have enough surgeons to give the residents a proper education. So now Grey Sloan has three weeks to make substantive changes, or else the program will be shut down for good.
Lilane Lathan/ABC
And speaking of ominous announcements, Mer tells Nick her decision. “I’m ready to just start over,” she says. “I’m definitely ready. I’m gonna take that offer.”
We’re not getting another new Grey’s Anatomy episode until May 5, so we’ll just have to spend the next four weeks figuring out how Grey’s can work with its title character four state lines away from Seattle!
Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, 9/8c, ABC
