‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Season 15 Episode 23: Going Clear (RECAP)
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 15, Episode 23 of Grey’s Anatomy, “What I Did For Love.”]
It happened with Callie and George. It happened with Penny and Callie. And now it’s happening with DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) and Meredith (Ellen Pompeo). One person says, “I love you,” before the other person is ready to say it back. Here’s what happened with that storyline and with everything else in Grey’s Anatomy Season 15 Episode 23, a.k.a. May 2’s “What I Did for Love.”
This week’s installment is the first half of the show’s two-hour crossover event with Station 19, and one of the patients of the week is Fire Chief Ripley (Brett Tucker), whom Schmitt (Jake Borelli) saves from a syncopal episode at a flower shop. (“I am a hero!” Schmitt exclaims after realize who his John Doe is.) Station 19’s Andy (Jaina Lee Ortiz), Sullivan (Boris Kodjoe), and Ben (Jason George) arrive and find out from Schmitt that Ripley was buying flowers for someone named Vic, much to their collective surprise. Schmitt is worried that he outed some dude named Vic, until the firefighters tell him that Vic is their colleague Victoria. The Station 19 crew is scandalized to realize Vic is in a relationship with the Chief… until Owen gently reminds Ben that Ben is in a relationship with a Chief himself, i.e. Bailey (Chandra Wilson).
Ripley eventually regains consciousness and yells at his subordinates until they leave, but only because he wants to make a stealthy exit. Maggie (Kelly McCreary) is on to his tricks, though, and tells him to stay put. The two of them get to talking about their romantic indecisiveness: Ripley didn’t give Vic a yes or no when she proposed, and Maggie didn’t give Jackson (Jesse Williams) a yes or not about moving in. They both resolve to say yes to their respective partners, so Maggie finds Jackson and tells him she should have said yes from the get-go, but she just needed time to think about the pros and cons.
Jackson snarks that he’s never heard anyone mention “pros and cons” in a rom-com. “I am a scientist,” Maggie tells him. “I like to weigh and measure. I need to weigh and measure.” They embrace one another, but Schmitt interrupts the love fest to show Maggie something dire on Ripley’s pre-op lab results. They rush to his room and find only an empty hospital bed: He fled the scene, presumably to find Vic, despite Maggie’s warning that his heart could stop if he leaves.
(ABC/Scott Everett White)
The other patient of the week is Gabby, who is in America on asylum with her father, Luis, who is barely scraping by as an office janitor. (Luis’s wife is still in detainment.) Gabby has an ileocecal mass that’s obstructing her colon, but Luis doesn’t have insurance and can’t afford the surgery. Paradoxically, however, Luis earns too much to qualify for state coverage. Mer boldly tells him not to worry about money, and she pretends that Gabby is her own daughter, Ellis, who has excellent insurance coverage. “The system is broken,” she tells DeLuca and Richard (James Pickens Jr.). “We know it is. So what does that say about us, that we’re not willing to fix it?”
After the surgery, Richard chews her out in his office, telling her that knowing about her insurance fraud is a danger to his sobriety. “I am committed to rigorous honesty in all my affairs.” He warns her that she could lose her medical license and even her children, saying, “They don’t put your children in jail with you, Meredith.” She claps back, saying, “Unless you come here looking for asylum.” (Snap.) Finally, Richard comes up with an idea: They will make Gabby sicker so that she has to stay in the hospital for 30 days, at which point state coverage will kick in by default. It’s kinda brilliant. Illegal, probably, but brilliant.
All along the way, Mer mistook DeLuca’s astonishment with her as judgment of her, but he later tells her she has him all wrong. “I’m in awe of what you did today,” he says. “I was afraid that if I open my mouth, the only that would come out of my mouth is, ‘I love you.’” Her response? “Oh, OK. Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.” (Yeesh.)
Meanwhile, Jo actually smiles for the first time in a long time when she gets a call from a hospital that actually has a patient with Rh-null blood, the super-rare blood type that her and Alex’s (Justin Chambers) young patient Gus needs so desperately. She tells Gus’s mom, who excitedly calls her family members to relay the good news. But there was a miscommunication: The other hospital thought Gus was the donor, not the donee, and Jo got too caught up in the excitement to clarify. Once Jo finds out, though, she seems to reach an even lower rock bottom and mopes around the hospital, much to the concern of Ben and Teddy (Kim Raver). “You don’t seem quite okay,” Teddy tells her. She and Ben separately approach Bailey about their concerns, while Jo breaks the bad news to Gus’s mom and ends up sobbing in her arms, which is where a very concerned Alex and Bailey find her.
(ABC/Scott Everett White)
Nico (Alex Landi) is also having a bad day at work, having made a critical mistake that killed a patient last episode. Schmitt went to the florist to buy him flowers in a show of support, even though he still (understandably) feels that Nico owes him an apology. But Link (Chris Carmack) tells Schmitt to give Nico space, since there’s nothing Schmitt can do to get Nico out of this particular rut.
In happier news, Koracick (Greg Germann) decides to stay in Seattle until the birth of Teddy and Owen’s baby. And when Teddy tells him that she misses her apartment in Germany, he goes out and finds her a dream apartment in Seattle, even holding up a pair of keys… which he later confesses are the keys to his file cabinet. Alright, we like the guy. We used to want Owen and Teddy to get together if Owen and Cristina couldn’t be together, but now we’re thinking Teddy belongs with Koracick and Owen belongs with Amelia (Caterina Scorsone).
Speaking of whom, Amelia is anxiously waiting to see if her stem cell treatment is going to help her quadriplegic patient get control of her arms, and she also has to deal with the awkwardness of Owen seeing Link’s arm around her that morning. Owen wants details, but she tells him he’s not entitled to know her business anymore.
Later, though, Owen tells her that he’s been getting therapy and that he’s sorry for saying she’s incapable of love. “It was me that I was talking about, not you,” he says. “And I’m sorry I said that. It’s not true. It’s the opposite of true.” Amelia sincerely thanks him, and her eyes follow him as he leaves. Chemistry, chemistry. We know they’ve gotten together and broken up more times than Meredith and Derek ever did — probably — but we’re still rooting for them.
(ABC/Scott Everett White)
Owen also tells Amelia to get some quality bonding time with Leo, and Link finds her preoccupied with the tyke when he goes to ask her out on a date — another sign that perhaps Link was just a pit stop on Amelia’s road back to Owen.
At the end of the episode, Owen goes to see his therapist again, commending the guy and saying that he feels clear now for the first time in a long time and that he wants to continue with the treatment. “I wanna feel perfectly clear when I tell her I love her,” he says. But who?! We’ll have to wait until next week, apparently. And don’t forget to tune into this week’s Station 19 to see what happens with Ripley!
Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC
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