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Grey’s Anatomy Recap: Stress Test

Grey’s Anatomy

Put It to the Test
Season 18 Episode 15
Editor’s Rating 3 stars

Grey’s Anatomy

Put It to the Test
Season 18 Episode 15
Editor’s Rating 3 stars
Photo: Liliane Lathan/ABC

Wow, wow, wow, everyone is stressed the hell out at Grey Sloan Memorial. We need one of those old-school parties at Meredith’s house where people are chugging tequila and jumping on couches. People need to dance some things out, you know what I mean? But that will not happen today. For today there is stress. Feeling the brunt of that stress is our fearless (perhaps today, fearful) leader, Miranda Bailey, because today the Medical Accreditation Council has sent two representatives to evaluate Grey Sloan’s residency program. If it’s not up to snuff, the program will be put on probation and can eventually be shut down completely. Harrowing, no? This show was built on this residency program! If not for the residents, who will embark upon inappropriate relationships with the attendings?! Where will the drama come from? Have these Medical Accreditation Council reps no decency?! Anyway, we’re all doing fine here.

To make the day just a little more complicated for Bailey, Webber — the director of the residency program, mind you — also has his physician-competency assessment scheduled for today. Ah yes, thinks Bailey, just what the Accreditation Council needs to learn, that the director of the program they are here to evaluate is, himself, getting an evaluation because he’s not sure he should be allowed in an OR anymore. It’s all got a very nothing-to-see-here-folks kind of vibe. So Webber is off getting his evaluation by a doctor who, per his request, doesn’t like him very much, who turns out to be David Hamilton (I find the Webber/Hamilton animosity delightful), and David brings Kai along to assist. So yes, the whole Minnesota gang has found their way back to Seattle, because sure, why not? Even Nick is in town. His presence, however, is a calming one for Bailey — at least at first — because Nick is there to perform a xenotransplantation. That is, he’s transplanting a genetically modified pig kidney into a human. The human is a man named Mason who is brain dead after being hit by a drunk driver; when they weren’t able to donate his organs, his wife agreed to donate his body to medical research. It’s a big deal for Nick, who could help change the face of transplant medicine if this works, but it also has Bailey pretty hyped up since her residents will be working on the case — and that’s an impressive feat to show the council reps.

Bailey spends the day with the reps, and it mostly goes okay — most of the interviews with attendings end up being a disaster because they’re so scared of saying the wrong thing — and Webber’s evaluation is going well. Until it’s not. Two things derail him a bit. First there is a panicked phone call from Schmitt, who got in an argument with his mother after finding out that she’s been trashing the residency program on social media, which ended when Mrs. Schmitt took a bad fall down the stairs. Schmitt knows he needs to do something to relieve his mother’s tension pneumothorax, but it’s taking the paramedics forever to arrive — so he calls Webber to walk him through the procedure. Webber abruptly leaves his evaluation to help Schmitt save his mother. When Schmitt arrives in the ambulance, he pretty much has a full-on emotional breakdown in Webber’s arms about how everything is all his fault. Just really weeping out there in the ambulance bay. And who should catch the whole thing? The Medical Accreditation Council rep. So that can’t be great. (Don’t worry, Mrs. Schmitt ends up being fine.)

The other hiccup in Webber’s eval comes when he realizes that David has offered Meredith a full-time position in Minnesota. The guys get into it and it doesn’t take long for Webber to let Bailey know.

Oh buddy, Bailey does not take this news well. This news added to the stress of the day has Bailey primed to explode. And explode she does! She finds Meredith sitting with Nick, whose pig-kidney transplant seems to be going south and who has had to deal with Mason’s emotional wife (he is very good at dealing with the grieving families, we know this), and Bailey goes off. She starts yelling at her about abandoning the program that built her, how Bailey raised her and then … then she really gets into it. Bailey, who seems so unlike herself here, calls Meredith the same little girl she’s always been, following around the handsome attending. She goes on about how Meredith breaks the rules, has sex in cars, doesn’t care about anyone else but herself, how she had sex with her married boss — just some real season-one deep cuts. It’s awful! Meredith yells at her to stop talking to her and Nick that way and seems both angry and confused, until a dazed Bailey collapses.

Maggie checks Bailey out and while it wasn’t another heart attack, but rather a panic attack, Maggie gives her boss a stern warning that she’s headed for another heart attack if she doesn’t slow down and take some stress out of her life. Very cute of her to think that’s possible!

When Bailey finally sits down with the council reps to get the verdict, the news, at first, is good. They had a great interview with Webber, who gives a passionate speech about the importance of teaching and his love for helping foster the careers of future surgeons, et cetera. He is impressive, they tell Webber. In fact, they were impressed with a lot of what they saw today. They could tell attendings really care about their residents (I mean … sure) and that there was a strong sense of community and family here (LOL, they have no idea). And yet still, they just don’t think there are enough doctors here to properly run a residency program. So the program is being put on probation, Bailey is handed a list of improvements and changes to make, and they’ll be back in a few weeks to reevaluate before deciding whether to shut the program down permanently. It was always going to be about that physician shortage!! Bailey doesn’t take the news well, and leaves the hospital looking just as dazed and out of it as before.

There is some good news, though: Thanks to a nice interview with Schmitt, who explained not just why Webber left his evaluation early but also how great of a teacher and mentor Webber has been to him, on top of Webber acing his cognitive-skills tests, Webber passes his evaluation. Let this man operate!

And then there is some other news: That fight with Bailey really has Meredith reeling. She realizes that staying in the same hospital where she did her residency has its own set of problems. Mainly, people, especially her teachers, will never be able to see her as anyone else but who she was when she started here. She can never fully shed that person, those mistakes. While standing with Nick as they let Mason’s wife come say good-bye to him — Mason did great and the kidney transplant seemingly worked, so it’s a big day for Nick — she hears her tell her husband that it’s okay, and that she’s going to be okay. There’s no way this doesn’t remind her of letting her own husband go — Meredith told Derek the same thing. It’s yet another part of her past that she can never fully get out from under in Seattle. She tells Nick that she is “ready to start over.” She’s going to take David’s offer.

At least, that’s what she says. Us Grey’s fans who have stuck around for 18 seasons know better than most that the pull of Seattle and Grey Sloan Memorial is a strong one.

The O.R. Board

• Can Link get over his Amelia stuff already? That ship has sailed, dude. Petty is not a good look on you. No one cares about this story line anymore. Move on.

• When the council reps interview Jo to find out why she left surgery for OB, she explains that her husband left her, she had a nervous breakdown, and there was a pandemic. Enough for anyone to need a little life change, right?

• Bailey lets it slip to Maggie that Meredith got a job offer in Minnesota and Maggie is none-too-pleased to hear it. So that should be a fun, sisterly confrontation to look forward to.

• Okay, that “he’s your David” line between Kai and Amelia about Amelia’s deep affection for her colleague was very sweet.

• I don’t care what else is happening in an episode, when Grey’s starts cutting to scenes from early seasons, I have so many feelings. We were so young!!

Grey’s Anatomy Recap: Stress Test