BWW Recap: GREY'S ANATOMY Takes Us Into The Room Where It Happens

Well. That was different! Once every season or two, GREY'S ANATOMY offers up an episode that breaks convention and tries to be a little different. This show has had varying success with this type of episode. The one that aired tonight, entitled-get this, HAMILTON fans-"The Room Where It Happens", may not turn out to be the most memorable of them all, but it was done very well...and it may well have been the best.

A term that can be used to describe this episode is "Bottle Episode". These are episodes that take on less of a budget, usually include only a few main cast members and take place predominantly in the same location. When done right, the creativity behind it allows for a different kind of experience than what the viewer usually gets, and despite the low budget, it can turn out to be very rich in drama and character analysis. This one was done right. Director Debbie Allen treated it like a play. All scenes were filmed in order (which is incredibly rare) and the audience was made to feel like we were right in the action. Each actor involved rose to the occasion. This felt like a piece of art.

The episode takes place predominantly in an Operating Room. Meredith, Owen and Stephanie are all commenting that they have not slept in DAYS and are hoping that the trauma case in front of them proves not to take too long. Richard joins in because he, as always has apparently just been wandering around the hospital looking for something to do. Richard is well rested though, so it is probably a good thing he is there! Fresh off the humbling experience of being told that the Residency Teaching Program needs a major upheaval, Richard really emphasizes the importance of teaching in this surgery. He becomes dismayed at how the other surgeons seem to be treating their anonymous patient in a very mechanical fashion (admittedly, in part because they are tired and their focus is to save him and ask questions later). He relays the importance of the doctors feeling a personal connection with the patient. It will help them fight harder for them. Now this trope in medical dramas of the doctors trying even harder when the patient is someone they care about, has always been problematic for me. I would like to hope that they always give 100%. That said, this episode almost explores that a little. Richard is telling them the same thing. He is saying, if you don't know this patient, then make someone up, or use someone you know. Make them human and make it personal so that you are never at risk of not giving it your all-even if you haven't slept in 48 hours! Personally, I'm not sure that is possible. I think I would want a surgeon who operated mechanically but was well rested, than one who dropped a scalpel into my body cavity because they fell asleep mid-surgery-but felt really sad about it. Luckily though, no scalpels were dropped and our surgeons managed to rise above their extreme exhaustion.

Richard's encouragement for the surgeons to give the patient an identity, allows for each of them to be haunted, but eventually empowered by key figures or moments from their past who have shaped them to be the doctors and the people they are today. Richard thinks of the patient as "Gail" (played by Monique Cash)-A talented Cellist and a loving, yet stern mother to her three children. We see Gail playing her Cello, talking to Richard throughout the episode. It becomes clear that this is Richard's mother and he later admits to Meredith that it is not uncommon for him to picture her during surgery. He could not save her from her Pancreatic Cancer when he was a 10 year old, but after an experience where he was completely numb when talking to the family of a patient he lost from the same disease, he swore to himself that he would picture his mother and make it personal during surgeries so that he would never again lose that human touch.

Owen experiences flashbacks of sorts to his time in the army with his sister, Megan. That's right! We finally get to meet Megan Hunt! (Played by Bridget Regan). It isn't a flashback though. Megan is more of a ghost like figure and she is commenting on the surgery Owen is performing in the present. She is everything we could have hoped for. She is the classic pesky 'little sister' as she questions Owen about why he is being so stubborn about the case. She makes comments about his new marriage and past mistakes without mincing words-in a way that only a sibling could. She eventually pops up in the operating room and reassures Owen that he should not feel guilty about "giving up" on her being alive. She becomes his source of strength when he decides to make the tough decision to remove the patient's damaged liver and put him on the emergency transplant list. Now that we have "met" Megan Hunt, I really hope she is in fact alive and that Owen and Amelia are able to sort out their current struggles-because Megan and Amelia appear to be pretty darn similar and would likely become fast friends. Seriously, can't you just picture that duo lovingly tormenting Owen??!!

It is important to note that of all the doctors who are visited by "ghosts from Christmas past", Owen appears to be the one who has less of a handle on it. At one point, he lashes out at imaginary Megan, leaving the rest of the surgeons very confused. This was a clever decision by the episode's writer, Meg Marinis. After all, Owen has struggled with PTSD and slipping out of reality in the past. This seems very true to his character-especially since he is sleep deprived.

Stephanie's "ghost" is actually a young version of herself from back when she was a patient in her Sickle Cell Anemia trial. Stephanie spent most of her childhood in a hospital, and as 'Young Stephanie' (played by Kendall Joy Hall) puts it, "When you're stuck in bed for most of your childhood, you kind of get obsessed with what put you there". This is why Stephanie is an encyclopedia of knowledge about even the rarest of medical conditions. She spent her entire childhood reading up on them. This allows Stephanie to catch that there is something up with the patient's blood platelets. She diagnoses a rare autoimmune disease and with the help of her invisible younger self, she fiercely advocates for the patient to be given steroids (despite now not having a liver). Stephanie has never not been one to speak her mind, but we have never seen her push this hard before.

Lastly, Meredith's journey to making this patient's case personal comes after she learns his name (Hey! Isn't that cheating???). His name is Carl and he has a wife and two young children. This hits home for Meredith and her "ghost" is of course, Derek, but more than that, it is the memory of telling her children that he had died. In a dream sequence-like scene that will leave your Kleenex box empty, we see her explaining to Zola why no one can "fix" her daddy...and then we see her leave her children, put her surgical mask on, and get back into the mindset of her surgery so that she doesn't have to tell someone else's children the same thing. Meredith comes up with the idea to fix the liver outside the body and then 'autotransplant' the patient's own liver back into him (good thing they kept that liver on ice!).

The surgery is a success, and the doctors move on to the next one. Powerful stuff.

Every single GREY'S ANATOMY character would have a story to tell in an episode like this...but I really like the characters that were chosen for it. This episode allowed us a deeper look into each of their psyches and I suspect we will be able to understand them on a whole new level in future episodes.

As a finale note: Because this episode took place entirely in an operating room, we heard a whole lot of medical terminology and saw a lot of medical procedure. Medical dramas often catch flack for some of the medicine not seeming accurate. This is going to happen in an hour-long character-based drama. There just isn't enough time for extreme accuracy. BUT sometimes there is a good reason things are done the way they are...they just don't have time to explain it. What is so unique about this particular TV show is that the medical consultants for GREY'S ANATOMY actually tweet with fans and encourage questions. For example, I asked why the patient's liver was kept on ice if the doctors didn't think of autotransplanting it until the end of the episode. I got a great response. Apparently, this would not always happen, but sometimes it does if the organ might be used for a clinical lab later on. Ice helps preserve the structures of the organ. Learning this made me (who really appreciates accuracy and continuity) enjoy this episode even more. Shout out to GREY'S Medical Consultants, Zoanne Clack and Barbara Kaye Friend who tweet using the handle @greysmedical !

GREY'S ANATOMY airs Thursdays at 7pm on CTV in Canada and 8pm on ABC in the United States. Tune in next week for what is bound to be an exciting Midseason Finale!

Photo Credit: Richard Cartwright/ABC

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