Here’s one of my most fiercely held Grey’s Anatomy truths: Amelia Shepherd is a menace to society. Listen, I know she’s been through a lot — she’s going through a lot — and her addiction is her constant companion. And yes, she warned us last week that she has deep abandonment issues and when she feels abandoned she spirals and when she spirals she lashes out in anger. But, like, just because you warn people that you’re probably going to be an asshole for a while doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole. As famed fictional journalist Bradley Jackson of The Morning Show once screamed into a guy’s face, “There is a human cost! And it is exhausting! I’m exhausted!” There is a human cost to Amelia constantly taking out her shit on other people with not even a hint that she wants to grow into a person who does not take her shit out on other people, and that human cost is me. And everyone else watching this show. Amelia being a mess and not taking any steps to change that isn’t endearing, Grey’s Anatomy. It’s exhausting. I’m exhausted.
Meredith left. Maggie left. Kai left. Amelia is so distraught that she can’t even bring herself to get up off the couch and go to work. Eventually, Owen and Winston send Mika over to Amelia’s place to get her to the hospital — their patient, Russell Porter, has 11-year-old bullet fragments leaching lead into his bloodstream and spinal fluid and they need her to remove some of them from his spine. She pulls herself together enough to get to Grey Sloan, but again I ask, at what cost? She basically spits venom at Winston every time he opens his mouth. I’ve never liked Owen Hunt more than when he says “Amelia, we don’t have time for whatever this is.” It might be the only time I’ve liked Owen Hunt! This does not stop Amelia. She blames Winston for Maggie leaving and eventually dresses him down in the scrub room, telling him that his ego is what pushed her away and he’ll never move out of her shadow and that Amelia will never forgive Winston for his “smallness.” It’s both very mean and also very wrong? Winston and Maggie ended their marriage in part because Winston didn’t have enough ego and ambition, but Amelia doesn’t care about facts; she is fueled by anger and pain only. It’s very healthy!
Thankfully, by the time Amelia’s in the middle of reaming Mika out for dropping a tool on the floor during surgery, someone who knows Amelia well enough to give her some tough love arrives to put us all out of our misery: Addison’s back. She’s in town to check up on Bailey, but winds up getting a two-for-one emotional breakdown assist. Addison is really the only person at this point who could tell Amelia that she’s a “self-obsessed ass” who needs to get to an AA meeting to shut her spiral down right now because all she’s doing is causing everyone around her pain in an already very fucked up and painful world. It is harsh and true and I cheered. She also reminds Amelia that if she doesn’t do something now, they both know how this ends: with her using again. In the end, Webber recognizes Amelia’s pain — he, too, feels like he’s in the middle of an “alcoholic self-obsessive spiral about abandonment” (no doubt about losing Catherine), and they go to a meeting together. Will going to a meeting help? Will Amelia ever apologize to Winston? Does Amelia have another brain tumor that’s turning her into a monster of a human being again? Time will tell!
Now, about that other emotional breakdown Addison assists with — the level of harassment Bailey’s facing because of her reproductive health-care clinic is escalating. The anti-choice crowd is no longer just terrorizing her with phone calls anymore. Instead, one guy pretends to be a patient in pain and requests Bailey’s help, and when she arrives at his side, he threatens her children, he knows that she’s moved, and he begins screaming at her for murdering babies before lunging at her. Thankfully, Kwan is able to tackle the guy to the ground before he lays a hand on Bailey, but still, it’s terrifying.
Addison gives Bailey space to rage. She lets her take it out on her. She screams about the hypocrisy of these people calling themselves “pro-life.” As always, Grey’s Anatomy nails just how infuriating, to say the least, this war against reproductive rights is. While that part really works, the storyline gets wrapped up in an almost naively idealistic way. Addison has a brilliant idea: She wants Teddy to get all the other doctors to begin calling all of the people who’ve been calling Bailey to harass her and try to have rational, kind conversations with them. And so we get a montage of all of our doctors — plus some familiar firefighters — calling people to explain that Miranda Bailey is a talented, caring doctor and that the clinic offers a whole swath of life-saving services. It just seems too easy. The storyline does offer us a lovely little button, though: As Bailey is helping Addison load up the PRT with fresh supplies, they open a box — one of many — full of mifepristone and other much-needed items that come with a hand-written note all the way from Zurich: This should keep you in business for a while. Keep fighting — Yang. That’s right friends: Cristina Yang has saved the day. I miss her so much.
While Grey’s certainly has the best intentions, it seems to have bitten off a little more than it can chew with “Gunpowder and Lead.” While the show tries to wrap up Bailey’s storyline in a not-completely-successful way, it also doesn’t do justice to its other big topical storyline of the evening. That patient with the decades-old bullet fragments? He was the victim of a mass shooting. The episode does a wonderful job depicting the trauma Russell has literally and metaphorically been carrying around since being shot at in a grocery store. It’s such a powerful storyline that it deserves to be front and center of the episode, not crammed in with, like, seven other plots going on. Grey’s Anatomy is uniquely situated to explore the long-term effects of gun violence and mass shootings. Imagine if, instead of a shoehorned-in, clunky speech from Owen about gun violence in America, we got a scene in which Owen, Teddy, Bailey, and Webber reflect on what happened in their own hospital 13 years ago. It could be so powerful! Perhaps we’ll get that eventually and Grey’s will dive deeper into the whole thing, but for now it feels like a majorly missed opportunity.
The OR Board
• Oh, I am very much here for Winston standing up for himself and telling Teddy he wants to be considered for the Chief of Cardio position because he’d “be good at it and [he] wants it.” His moment in the OR teaching Simone how to get through a crisis was great and it would be satisfying to see him step out of Maggie’s shadow (take that, Amelia!).
• The whole “Helm yells at Teddy to treat her interns better after seeing Mika on the brink of burnout” thing was so odd. Either bring Helm into the show or cut her out, this in-between where she has big moments every few episodes is just awkward.
• After realizing that all he wants to do is tell Simone about his big medical win — he does an unsupervised crike on a patient and saves the guy’s life — and gets those butterflies when she is genuinely interested in hearing every last detail and seems proud of him, Lucas finally sees that being her man of honor is a terrible idea. He asks Jules to be her maid of honor and in exchange he’ll do all of her scut work until the wedding. “You must really love her,” she says, only half-jokingly.
• Jules is really railing against love and marriage again. She explains to Lucas that the reason she’s in this reject group of interns is because she flunked a bunch of classes in med school thanks to an obsessive crush on a guy — an obsessive crush that her parents encouraged. She refuses to prioritize her heart over her career ever again. Although, she certainly does clock Kwan leaving for the night with some other woman. Interesting!
• Link and Jo Couple Watch: Jo learns that Luna doesn’t have an underlying condition, she is experiencing isolated hearing loss, which is a huge relief. Such a relief, in fact, that she runs through the hospital looking for Link, who lifts her up in celebration of the news. They do not make out while professing undying love for each other, but soon. I mean, the guy already starting learning sign language as a way to show Jo that he’s there for her and Luna. Dreamy!
