Mostly, it’s the pandemic that puts things into perspective for Richard and Catherine. At one point, Catherine and Maggie are yelling their frustrations at the top of their lungs because honestly, what else can they do? “I hate that everyone is dying!” “I hate that I can’t fix it!” And then Catherine gets quiet: “I hate that my husband hasn’t come back to me,” she says. When he returns to Grey Sloan he and Catherine are either avoiding each other or making snide remarks.
Suffice it to say, Richard was not having it. The two had been separated since earlier in the season when she thought Richard was cheating on her with Gemma, an old AA friend (he wasn’t physically, but a little bit emotionally), and Richard was left humiliated, first when Catherine didn’t back him up as Bailey fired him for helping Meredith commit insurance fraud, and then again when she bought the hospital he was working in just to merge it with Grey Sloan. Since the episode marks Richard’s first day, we’ll start with him.Īt the end of Grey’s shortened season 16, Richard had come out of his cobalt-induced haze and ordered Catherine to get out of his sight. Three of those stories took precedence over the rest, so let’s talk about them. We’ll have to wait until next week to find out what’s up with Mer.Īside from dealing with the pandemic, the two-hour premiere pretty much caught us up, even if very quickly, on where every character’s drama from last season stands. Which of course leads to Cormac Hayes finding Meredith in the parking lot and again, say it with me, DEREK SHEPHERD. But it’s been two weeks since she’s seen her kids or had any kind of break, so when DeLuca (we will get to him!) finds her asleep at the nurses station he forces her to go home and get some sleep. They force Grey Sloan to take it, which means Meredith gets to go into an O.R.
Her only real reprieve is when the Station 19-ers bring in a few teens burned in a wildfire they started while breaking quarantine. She’s exhausted and frustrated and angry and at one point she takes it all out on an unsuspecting supply closet. We mostly see the COVID-19 wing through Meredith, who spends her days calling codes and then having to tell people that their loved ones died alone. It’ll be interesting to see how the season progresses. This part is especially harrowing both from the standpoint of looking back at what things were like for doctors and first responders back in April and maybe even worse from the standpoint of knowing that today COVID hospitalization numbers are climbing at alarming rates. board is blank since only emergency surgeries are allowed, and the COVID-19 wing is a complete hellscape. Now in April 2020, when the episode takes place, employees have to line up for temperature checks before entering the building, there are no visitors allowed unless the patient is a minor, the O.R. The show wisely uses Richard Webber’s return to work after his cobalt-poisoning situation to give us a tour of how things have changed since the pandemic hit. As far as them having to deal with the emotional trauma of the pandemic, well, things are pretty terrible. As far as them having to deal with new protocols in their work - Grey Sloan is only taking COVID-19 patients for the time being and is closed to all trauma - they are doing the best they can. The reappearance of Derek Shepherd (sorry, I have to keep typing it to make my brain understand what just happened) was especially necessary after a two-hour premiere that focused on how our doctors at Grey Sloan Memorial are coping with the coronavirus pandemic. And yes, obviously we all know that Derek is not the sun, Meredith is, and I think we can all agree that Derek was kind of a dick sometimes, especially toward the end, but wow, wow, wow, truly what a sight for the sorest of eyes.
Thankfully, we’ll get at least a little more time with him in that dream next week. This time, when Cormac finds her in the parking lot unconscious and not breathing after two weeks at the hospital in the COVID-19 wing, in her mind, she’s on a beach and she can hear someone calling her name.
She’s already been to an afterlife limbo dream world once, but you know Grey’s Anatomy loves to have its heroine constantly teetering on the line between life and death. Perhaps the operative word in that sentence is afterlife, because unfortunately Derek has not been raised from the dead, but rather his appearance signals a dire situation for Meredith. We don’t see him for very long but could someone report back on how his hair is doing? Even in the afterlife, you know Derek is keeping things right and tight. There is no time for niceties welcoming you back to the world of Grey Sloan Memorial because, um, that was fucking DEREK SHEPHERD.
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