‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Season 19 Finale: A Doctor Flatlines in the O.R. (RECAP)

Dan Clarendon May 18, 2023, 11:54 pm

Grey's Anatomy

Happily Ever After?

Season 19 • Episode 20

The two-hour Grey’s Anatomy Season 19 finale had it all: a wedding, a near-plane crash, a long-overdue award, kisses aplenty, and a doctor collapsing in the O.R. Oh, and Ellen Pompeo and Kelly McCreary come back to the show for guest appearances…

[Warning: The below contains major spoilers for the two-part Grey’s Anatomy Season 19 finale, Episodes 19 and 20, “Wedding Bell Blues” and “Happily Ever After?”]

As the episode starts, Griffith (Alexis Floyd) is getting ready for her wedding. Yes, despite Lucas’ best efforts to “speak now” last episode — you know, else he forever hold his peace — Griffith still intends on marrying Trey (William Martinez).

“I can’t deny that we have a connection,” she tells Adams (Niko Terho) in this episode. “But Trey does love me. And I think what he and I built together deserves this chance. And I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to lose you from my life. But I’m getting married today.”

But at the wedding venue, Griffith keeps seeing signs that she should be a runaway bride: Her wedding dress rips, her florist bails on the event, the thorns on her bouquet cut her fingers, and songbirds keep dying around her. Then, her grandmother (Marla Gibbs) mistakes her for her mother, and through that mix-up, Griffith learns that her mother called off a wedding to another man to run off with Griffith’s father.

Jonathan Adams and Alexis Floyd in 'Grey's Anatomy'

ABC/Bonnie Osborne

And so Griffith runs back to Grey Sloan, still in her wedding dress. She and Adams kiss, head to an on-call room, and… well, you know the rest.

But then Trey comes into the hospital with a fractured shoulder — he was in a car crash after the wedding. As a surgeon himself, he’s concerned about being able to operate again when he gets back to Baltimore. So Owen (Kevin McKidd) asks him which is his dominant hand. But then Trey spots Adams, leaps to his feet, and punches him. “That’s my dominant hand,” he seethes.

But the failed wedding wasn’t totally without romance. On the way to the nixed nuptials, Yasuda (Midori Francis) thanks Helm — and kisses Helm — after realizing how much she helped her sort out her life.

Midori Francis, Jaicy Elliot, and William Martinez in 'Grey's Anatomy'

ABC/Bonnie Osborne

Meanwhile, Richard (James Pickens Jr.), Catherine (Debbie Allen), Bailey (Chandra Wilson), Nick (Scott Speedman), Winston (Anthony Hill), and Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) fly to Boston on Catherine’s private jet to attend Catherine’s namesake awards ceremony. During the flight, Winston finally starts talking to Amelia, getting her to admit that despite her apology to him, she still partly blames him for Maggie’s departure.

Just then, the plane hits wind shear, causing severe turbulence that has the docs thinking they’re going to die… and Richard reaching for Catherine’s martini. (Don’t worry — Bailey smacks the drink out of his hand.) Amelia and Winston hold hands during the chaos, so maybe they’re back to being friendly again?

Scott Speedman, Anthony Hill, and Caterina Scorsone in 'Grey's Anatomy'

ABC/Raymond Liu

The plane lands safely in Boston, but the drama continues. Nick goes to Meredith’s (Pompeo) house to talk to her, but a handsome man named Michael (Gilles Marini) answers the door.

Then he and the rest of the Grey Sloan contingent get an urgent text from Mer, paging them to her workplace. They find her agitated and looking over research on the floor of her lab. She doesn’t even say hi. “We have to question everything we know about Alzheimer’s if we’re going to cure it,” she says, by way of greeting.

ABC/Raymond Liu

Mer has found evidence that the current Alzheimer’s research is built on a faulty premise — and, worse, doctors are doctoring brain scans to support their research. Richard warns Meredith that going public with her conspiracy theory will get her ostracized by the medical community. And so what does Mer do at the Catherine Fox Awards? She shares her theory with a big donor, telling a CEO that his money isn’t being spent well.

Another surprise at the awards show? The foundation is awarding this year’s award to a non-nominee, someone who has fought the good fight for reproductive rights: one Miranda Bailey.

ABC/Raymond Liu

Yes, Bailey is getting a long-overdue Catherine Fox Award — and even Maggie (McCreary), who’s a little salty about the award going to a non-nominee, has to admit it’s about damn time.

At least Maggie had a hell of a consolation prize: a pre-awards show hook-up with Winston. Despite the fun they have between the sheets, however, Winston tells Maggie he’s thinking they might want to get a divorce. He just became chief of cardio at Grey Sloan, and he needs to focus on his career.

ABC/Raymond Liu

At the awards reception, Amelia tells Richard she’s going to attend a meeting. She realizes that Mer’s conspiracy theory threatens to blow up her late brother’s legacy, and she needs some support. Richard says he does, too, since he reached for booze during the in-flight turbulence. So Amelia heads off to find a meeting, telling Richard she’ll send him the details. And after she leaves, Richard takes a long, hard look at a vodka tonic he’d previously ordered from the bar.

Later, at the hotel, Mer and Nick come clean with each other. Mer admits to pretending not to hear Nick that time when he called her to profess his love when she was leaving Seattle. She says she was “tired and scared and overwhelmed” at that moment. And now that she may have talked her way out of funding, she’s tired and scared and overwhelmed all over again.

Scott Speedman and Ellen Pompeo in 'Grey's Anatomy'

ABC/Raymond Liu

But now, it seems, she’ll have Nick in her corner again. Once Mer tells Nick that Michael isn’t her new guy — he’s just Zola’s tutor, one who exclusively dates men — he kisses her.

“I never should have let you walk away,” Nick says. “I want to live a whole life with love and mess and pain and you.”

Back at Grey Sloan, Sam (Sam Page) is on his fourth day post-op — and still flirting up a storm with Jo (Camilla Luddington). And Link (Chris Carmack) is still judging Jo about it. (“You slept with an intern,” she replies. “Did I judge you?”)

Later, Jo tells Link she thinks he should move out, since he apparently can’t bear watching her live her life. So then he bares his soul. “I’m in love with you, Jo,” he says. “I’m so completely in love. How do you not see that?”

“You unbelievable dummy,” she replies. “I love you, too.”

And then they, too, start making out — in the rain, no less. So much face-sucking in this episode!

Kwan (Harry Shum Jr.), meanwhile, has a busy day at work. He sticks up for a Spanish-speaking woman whose child suffers an opiate overdose and then tests positive for fentanyl. Kwan believes the mother would have never knowingly given the little guy access to drugs. As the cops eventually determine, the boy found fentanyl left behind by previous occupants of their vacation rental. Kwan’s instincts were right.

And later in the day, Kwan swings into action when Maxine (Juliet Mills), Millin’s (Adelaide Kane) friend and roomie, starts coding. Even though Max has a DNR order in place, Kwan intubates her. Millin is furious, thinking that Max is just going to be on a machine for the rest of her life, which is precisely what Max didn’t want.

But then Max wakes up, and Millin has a change of heart about Kwan. “You saved my favorite person, so now I don’t get to just hate you,” she tells him. “I have to love you, too.”

Which of the New 'Grey's Anatomy' Surgical Residents Are You?

The big shocker, however, comes with just minutes to spare in this two-part episode. Sam’s aorta dissects, and Teddy (Kim Raver) rushes him into surgery. But Teddy, who’s been suffering from a toothache all day, collapses in the ER, and Yasuda can’t even find a pulse.

Realizing they’re alone without a senior surgeon to watch over their work, Griffith and Adams start Sam’s surgery, knowing they don’t have a second to spare. Elsewhere in the hospital, a nurse finds Owen and tells him to get to the operating room. He finds Griffith and Adams cutting into Sam with a pool of blood on the floor. And he sees Teddy, unconscious, with Yasuda using the defibrillator. Cut to black! See you next season, Grey’s fans!

Grey’s Anatomy Season 20, TBD, ABC