BWW Recap: A Change is Gonna Come on GREY'S ANATOMY

The 7th episode of season 13 of GREY'S ANATOMY, entitled "Why Try to Change Me Now" aired Thursday night and it looks like 'change' is indeed coming to Grey Sloan Memorial. With a new consultant at the hospital, the Attendings quickly fall into paranoia and defensiveness...and it may very well be warranted!

Change has come in the form of Dr. Eliza Minnick (played by Marika Dominczyk). After her conversation with Catherine Avery in last week's episode, Bailey has asked Dr. Minnick to come and observe the hospital's teaching program and provide some advice on how it could be made better. As it turns out, she does a little more than just observe...and she might be at the hospital for a little more than just a consultation. She's gunning for Webber's job! Despite (or maybe because of) the fact that all the staff knows about Dr. Minnick is what was presented in a vague email from Bailey, paranoia is running rampant. The paranoia only grows after Minnick holds a meeting with the Residents and asks for their confidential evaluations of the Attendings. Maggie finds and steals a notebook that Minnick was writing in and discovers that she has apparently ranked the Attendings based on those evaluations. Maggie is at the bottom of the list...and according to Maggie, she is never at the bottom of any list, so this is very upsetting for her. So upsetting, that it becomes her storyline for the rest of the episode. She stresses about it to her colleagues, she has an awkward first encounter with Dr. Minnick, and she asks Murphy point blank for her impressions of her as a teacher. It turns out that Maggie was great as a student, and is a genius as a surgeon, but as a teacher, she thinks so far in advance, and assumes her students can read her mind...so...not great. This is very humbling for Maggie. Poor Maggie has had a lot of humbling experiences lately-first in her love life, and now this. It will be interesting to see how she tries to improve herself moving forward.

Maggie is far from the only person caught off guard by the addition of Dr. Minnick. Richard spends the episode stressing about her, and resisting her new ways of teaching. After all, he is the head of the Residency Program. Just as he comes around to the idea that change is inevitable, we as viewers learn that Dr. Minnick works solo and so Richard should maybe continue to be concerned after all.

Another person who is concerned about Dr. Minnick and her list of Attendings? Arizona. Why? You ask...well, because she isn't on that list at all. She spends the episode wondering what this means, only to discover that Eliza doesn't need to write her name down to remember who she is. I guess this is the new love interest for Arizona that we were promised. Better than Murphy, so I'll take it.

Just as a side note, Dr. Minnick's style of teaching involves getting the Residents into surgical action sooner than what the doctors are used to. She really emphasizes the "teaching" in "teaching hospital". This is great! This is actually something that had been bugging me because the Residents never seem to get to do anything in surgery. I was all for it....until she intentionally severed a blood vessel of an elderly patient for 'teaching' purposes (don't ask me what organ the blood vessel was connected to...those details never stuck). Apparently the vessel was eventually going to be severed anyways and so by doing this, the doctors got to see that Deluca would know what to do...but I don't care. I never want to be a patient in a teaching hospital if it is actually a "teaching them a lesson" hospital! I was all about Dr. Minnick and then she immediately lost me!

But then....I made a discovery...and it was very relevant to Broadway World so stick with me here! Marika Domincyk is married to Scott Foley. It was revealed on SCANDAL last season that Scott Foley's character's middle name is HAMILTON. Marika Domincyk's character is named Eliza...and Shonda Rhimes is known to be a huge fan of the musical HAMILTON. This is not a coincidence, ladies and gentlemen. What it is, is awesome! What is even more awesome is that every episode of GREY'S ANATOMY is named after a song and next week's episode is apparently entitled "The Room Where It Happens". Seriously. Amazing.

Moving right along...to Owen and Amelia. Oy. After last week we knew this was going to get ugly. Amelia's almost-pregnancy brought up a whole lot of past trauma from when her baby died on her PRIVATE PRACTICE days. Understandably, she is struggling to know what it means that her first emotion when she found out she was not pregnant was relief. This has gotten to her head and she has been avoiding Owen as she tries to figure it out. The avoidance has led to petty, yet realistic fights (Like seriously, who fills the gas tank before the light is flashing???) One has to believe that despite how much he wants a family, Owen is a good guy who would totally be there for Amelia as she works through her fear. All she has to do is communicate with him. She could basically say anything. Really, the only thing she shouldn't do is yell "I don't want to have a baby" in his face after fighting with him all day. Oops. So that didn't go well and she is now crashing at Meredith's and continuing to form an unexpected, but really sweet bond with Alex. This is honestly my favourite friendship on the show right now.

The decisions by some characters in this episode made it occasionally frustrating to watch...but the show is definitely revving up for what is bound to be an explosive midseason finale in two weeks.

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