‘Grey’s Anatomy’: Blue’s Return Turns Richard Against New Chief

Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) may always feel like the chief at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, but under its brand-new administration, his words carry a lot less weight than they ever have before.

Thursday’s (October 29) new episode of Grey’s Anatomy saw the chief emeritus quietly overruled on multiple occasions by Seth Norton (James Wolk), the Catherine Fox (Debbie Allen) recruit who ushered in the era of the VIP floor. And things got prickly in quick fashion. Warning: Spoilers for Grey’s Anatomy Season 23 Episode 3, “It’s All Wrong, But It’s All Right,” ahead!

After Seth decided to bring Benson “Blue” Kwan (Harry Shum Jr.) back into his residency, Blue made the terrible mistake of requesting Richard’s service, thinking he’d walk back into running an assist on a whipple procedure. Instead, though, Richard quarantined him to postsurgical care in the VIP ward and forbade him from entering the OR. When Richard’s high-profile patient’s organs popped through his stitches, though, Blue had to jump into action, and since Richard was away, Seth took the lead and brought Blue in to help. Richard soon found out and kicked Blue right out of the room, but Blue got the last word.

At the end of the day, as Richard reviewed his beloved board, Blue walked up and was summarily dismissed by his former boss. However, Blue had some news for him: Seth had a surgery the next morning that he wanted Blue to scrub in for, and so he was standing there to put his name on the board before calling it a night.

The very mention of Seth as “chief” seemed to leave a bad taste in Richard’s mouth, so there’s no way this new tenure is going to continue without a fight. Watch this space.

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Also clearly a situation to monitor is what’s going on with Atticus “Link” Lincoln (Chris Carmack) and Jo Wilson (Camilla Luddington). After facing a grueling surgery that took as much out of his brain as his body, he was in agony and secretly called his doctor to request a pain pill refill behind Jo’s back. Jo’s suffering, meanwhile, was on full display. After helping Simone Griffith (Alexis Floyd) by performing an impromptu awake surgery — more on this in a minute — on her, Jo began to question whether she really wanted to walk away from her job for good or not. As anguished and triggered as the work made her, she also knew she was very good at it, and plenty of patients need her. Something’s bound to break between these two, no?

About Simone, it was Jules Millin (Adelaide Kane) who discovered something amiss in her ultrasound. Reluctantly, Jo checked out the scans and realized Simone would need an evacuation procedure on the tissue, since her already-taken abortion pill treatment wouldn’t help with the threat of sepsis this new diagnosis posed. Simone, still traumatized by what happened to her mother in this very hospital, simply couldn’t bear to go under anesthesia, and fortunately for her, Jo was able to perform it with a nerve block to keep her awake.

Also, Wes Bryant (Trevor Jackson) really came through in this situation, so if there was ever any doubt about her choice to stay with him, well, he put that to rest with his thoughtfulness and grace under fire here. All class, top to bottom. No notes.

Disney / Ser Baffo

More on Millin: She and Winston Ndugu (Anthony Hill) are still struggling with their newfound power imbalance, but there are signs of life for the couple. And Ndugu’s admission to Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) that her micromanagement of his residency direction, which is a favor to her, was getting to be too much gave her a lightbulb moment that she was also doing the same to Ben (Jason George) over chore duties at home.

Another big awakening came for Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone) when nephew Lucas Adams (Niko Terho) pointed out that she was essentially putting him down, which is rich for someone who knows what it’s like to be the underdog. Eventually, Amelia caved and realized that she did want to shepherd her nephew into the neuro world, even if it meant him doing it a different way than she or even Derek did.

In other words, there was a lot of humble pie being served at the hospital on Thursday, and some characters tolerated the taste of it a lot better than others.

Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC