‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Season 16 Episode 3: Charmed, I’m Sure (RECAP)
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 16, Episode 3 of Grey’s Anatomy, “Reunited.”]
The power of three! Or… two! As part of ABC’s “Cast from the Past” week, Grey’s Anatomy brought together two of the three sisters from the original Charmed series for Season 16, Episode 3, a.k.a. October 10’s aptly-titled “Reunited.” (The episode marks another reunion, too: Grey’s showrunner Krista Vernoff was a producer on the WB drama.)
Charmed’s Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs play Haylee and Heidi, two sisters who arrive at Pacific Northwest General Hospital after being notified that their estranged sister, Heather, fell 30 feet into a dig site and now shows no brain activity. They start bickering over taking Heather off life support, with years’ worth of sibling resentment coming to the fore. Finally, Richard (James Pickens Jr.) sets them straight. “At least your sister will have given you back to each other,” he says. Haylee and Heidi tearfully say their goodbyes to Heather as Richard turns off the machines… and then Heather’s cell phone rings. To Heidi’s surprise, it’s Heather calling her own phone.
Turns out, the woman in the hospital bed stole Heather’s purse, so Haylee and Heidi have no idea whom they just took off life support. (Hilariously, Haylee starts yelling at the woman, “Do not go toward the light!”) Richard sees the silver lining in the situation, though. “You should thank God you’re all still alive and have another shot at life and at forgiveness and at sisterhood,” he tells the sisters. “Don’t waste this.” (The episode ends before we see the sisters reconnect with the very much alive Heather, but we bet the Grey’s producers tried real hard to get Shannen Doherty or Rose McGowan, the other two Charmed stars, to guest-star.)
Richard isn’t all-wise this week, however. Elsewhere at Pac North, he runs into Gemma (Jasmine Guy), his AA friend who accidentally impaled herself on her high heel last season. Turns out, she had gotten herself a job in the billing department, and happily, she’s 62 days sober. But Richard says yes when she asks him out to dinner at the end of the day. Sure, he probably thinks it’s a friendly date, and maybe it is, but you know where this is going, right? Hint: Every time Richard calls Catherine (Debbie Allen), he gets his wife’s voicemail.
The other big medical case this week is a liver tumor patient named Shirley who insists on working with Meredith (Ellen Pompeo), her original doctor. Jo (Camilla Luddington) tries to convince her that she’s capable of performing the complex ALPPS procedure — especially since Bailey (Chandra Wilson) is supervising — but Shirley will not be swayed. So Jo comes up with the idea of having Meredith on video chat throughout the entire surgery, with Mer calling in from her work crew site. Jo rocks the ALPPS, of course, barely needing Mer’s help. And Bailey spitefully hangs up on Meredith.
Speaking of people insisting on working with Meredith, Qadri (Sophia Ali) confronts Bailey about Meredith’s exile. “I put everything into matching here and working with her, and you fired her,” she tells Bailey. “We all had our choice of program, but we all picked this one. I picked this one, and it wasn’t to watch Meredith Grey on a TV screen.” Bailey, incensed, gives Qadri her walking papers. “You’re fired, Dr. Qadri,” she seethes. “Now you and your hero have something in common.”
In other patient news, Maggie (Kelly McCreary) treats an 83-year-old man named Bertie who gives her advice about moving on from Jackson (Jesse Williams). (“He just walked out of the fog with a new girlfriend,” she says of Jackson earlier in the episode.) Turns out, Bertie knows a thing or two about heartache. “Just give it a few decades,” he tells her, ruefully.
Not unrelatedly, Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) and Link (Chris Carmack) find a disoriented and dehydrated woman in the hall. The woman speaks Korean, but she keeps repeating the word “bird.” Nico (Alex Landi) does the translating for the docs, and they realize she’s at Grey Sloan to see a man she calls “Bird.” Yep, that’s Bertie. Turns out, they fell in love during the Korean War — with Bert pointing to the word “bird” in a dictionary to convey his name — and they had never forgotten about each other. The woman tracked down Bertie on the Internet, learned about his surgery, and traveled to Seattle to be with him. “I don’t know what will happen in the next life, but I didn’t want to leave this one without seeing you again,” she tells him in Korean. (“I never felt that away about anyone,” Maggie mutters to Amelia, who replies, “I’m hormonal. I feel that way about everyone.”)
Jackson, meanwhile, has a special patient this week: Vic (Barrett Doss), his love connection from Station 19. They start the episode on a hike, and she’s every bit the outdoorsy type that Jackson so desperately wanted Maggie to be. She later comes to the hospital with a small head laceration, and Jackson promises to make it disappear. As he treats the wound, they laugh about how she’s stronger than he is. (Hell yes!) But what he may lack in strength, he makes up for in attention to detail and bedside manner, as he tells her with innuendo-laden braggadocio. (”I do have a great number of skills I think you’ll find come in handy,” he says.) They kiss for the first time, and it’s less of a peck and more of a hot-and-heavy makeout sesh.
Later, Maggie spots Vic in the hallway and tries to avoid her, but Vic hails her. (“Hi, Dr. Hughes,” Maggie stutters. “I mean Officer Hughes. Um, agent? Agent?”) Vic says she doesn’t want there to be any awkwardness, but Maggie puts her foot in her mouth by observing that some people “move on faster than others.” She’s talking about Jackson, but Vic thinks that she’s talking about her. And Vic reminds Maggie that her last relationship ended because her guy, Chief Ripley, died. Oh, hi, awkwardness!
And in the last bit of patient-of-the-week news, DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) is operating with Schmitt (Jake Borelli) when Schmitt loses a guidewire in his patient. DeLuca saves the day and even says he’ll take the fall for the incident with Bailey. Later, Nico gives Schmitt tough love, telling him to “demand more” from himself and making him practice threading a guidewire a hundred times in the skills lab. But because he’s a loving boyfriend, Nico offers to stay with Schmitt in the lab, saying they can order pizza. (D’aww.)
Meanwhile, Owen (Kevin McKidd) is chafing against Koracick’s (Greg Germann) restraining order, since he has to leave any room that Koracick enters. Luckily, Owen gets ample distraction when Teddy (Kim Raver) shows up at the hospital with baby Allison. Teddy is itching to get back into the OR, so Owen offers to swap places with her: He’ll go on paternity leave so she can return to work. Teddy, to put it mildly, is ecstatic.
And in other baby news, Amelia tells Maggie she’s “bewildered” about her pregnancy — and ambivalent about sharing her news with other people. She feels like she’s lying by omission, but Maggie rightly tells her that honesty and privacy “are not mutually exclusive.” Ultimately, though, Amelia decides she wants to “share this good” with her loved ones. Later that night, as she and Link unwind at Chez Grey, Amelia blurts out the news to Mer and DeLuca. To Amelia’s surprise, Mer is thrilled. “I’m going to be an auntie,” she raves. “Auntie Mer!”
That has a nice ring to it, right? Anyway, catch y’all next Thursday, Grey’s fans!
Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, September 26, 8/7c
