Looks like Private Practice isn't the only Shonda Rhimes show that can toy with the Rashomon style this season. Grey's Anatomy also implemented a point-of-view storytelling device Thursday night to return to the scene of the crime crash. (For the record, they also did it back in Season 6 when April was initially fired.)
[SPOILER ALERT! Naturally, this is where you stop reading if you haven't actually seen the episode since spoilers galore lay ahead.]
As promised, the second episode of Season 9 flashed-back to when the doctors were rescued from the plane crash and revealed how each doctor made it back to civilization. In the case of Lexie Grey, it was in a body bag — literally. We really didn't need to see that. And in other cases, like Mark's, it was a triumphant return that we already knew would end badly. Let's take a look at how each doctor got back to Seattle Grace:
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Meredith, the trouper: Initially brought to a Boise hospital, Meredith panics, asking the doctors where her sister, husband and person (aka Cristina) are, but it's Zola, Bailey and Webber who are the first familiar faces she gets to see. After learning they're being flown home, Mer later tries to seek comfort from Cristina, explaining that Bailey plans to sedate them on the plane ride home — during which Bailey makes a Lost crack about the plane crashing and landing on an island with polar bears — but Cristina is catatonic, refusing to answer.
Back in Seattle, Derek tries to convince Meredith to still go to Boston, but she doesn't want to leave her home. At the hospital, our favorite residents attendings gather around Cris during lunch in hopes she'll finally come out of this state, but she's not budging — even when Meredith begs.
Derek, the damaged one: After mangling his hand in the crash, Derek is brought to Boise where the doctors do an initial surgery; Callie completes a second upon his return to Seattle Grace. In order to get him back in the OR, though, he'll need another surgery, with an attending only promising him 80 percent functionality. Derek concedes that he could just be a teacher and that he's happy to just be alive — but that doesn't last long after a neuro attending botches a surgery Derek knows he would've nailed, as he explains to a cheerful Mark.
After Callie doubts the surgery technique to be used on Derek's hand, Derek enlists her to do the risky surgery — during which there's a complication with Arizona. And his surgery doesn't work; it doesn't look like he'll ever get back to 100 percent again.
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Cristina, the silent one: Cristina only responds with violence when the doctors try to treat her in Boise. Owen, however, is able to calm her. But back in Seattle, we see that her condition is serious: When we see the world from her point of view, it's as if we're looking through a fishbowl, and we can't hear anything. Her recovery is slow, and happens in true Cristina fashion: When she overhears the new interns badmouthing her, she chucks a vase at the window they're standing behind.
Once Owen gets her home, she finally reveals what happened to them in the days that they were stuck in the woods: She stayed awake for four days. She had to keep the bugs out of Arizona's wound. She had to revive Mark every time he died. She drank both the fuel from the plane and her own urine. She also heard animals fighting nearby, but they never came to get them because they were fighting over Lexie's body, which she tried to protect. Yeah, so going quiet... totally understandable. Even after Meredith protests, Cristina decides to flee Seattle, but not before a giant fight between the twisted sisters where they say they're not each other's person.
Mark, the doomed one: Even though we knew Mark's fate already, it was heartbreaking to see his progression from near-death, to alive and well and back again — especially since we knew he was thinking of Lexie the whole time. It was because of her that he immediately broke up with Julia upon his return to Seattle Grace. In a rare moment when Callie left his bedside, she returned to the hospital to find Mark recovered and making inappropriate sexual comments to the interns. But Webber feared it was the dreaded "surge," where a terminally ill patient suddenly gets better before getting worse, sharing their epiphanies about life before succumbing to their illness.
Alas, when Mark started waxing poetic to Jackson about love and life before asking to see baby Sofia, his protégé realized Mark's time was coming to an end. By the time Jackson returned, Mark had already made his end-of-life choices with Webber and had slipped into a coma, never to regain consciousness — and never giving Callie and Derek a proper chance to say goodbye.
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Arizona, the traumatized one: By the time they were rescued, her leg was so infected that the doctors in Boise were already recommending amputation, much to Arizona's consternation. She makes it very clear that she withholds consent and needs to go home to Callie because her wife will know what to do. When she returns, Alex tries to apologize for his part in her ending up on the flight — and she really lets him have it, actually putting the blame on him.
After at least one surgery, Callie does everything she can to keep Arizona from losing her leg, as Arizona has made her promise they won't amputate. In the end though, as Alex tries to apologize again and say goodbye, Arizona codes and Callie is forced to have him amputate the leg.
As the episode closes, Meredith leaves Cristina a voicemail, explaining that she was right about everything — during which Mark crashes, Sofia nearly witnesses her father's death, Alex amputates Arizona's leg, April flies home without conferring with Jackson and Derek comes out of his (unsuccessful) surgery — but there are still great things about Seattle that make her want to stay, like meeting her "person." Cristina responds by returning her call with a simple, "You are my person. You will always be my person."
What did you think of the doctors' survival? Are you glad the twisted sisters have been reunited... sort of? Are you sad we've said goodbye to Mark Sloan for good? Hit the comments with your tears, sadness — or maybe joy!
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Looks like Private Practice isn't the only Shonda Rhimes show that can toy with the Rashomon style this season. Grey's Anatomy also implemented a point-of-view storytelling device Thursday night to return to the scene of the crime crash. (For the record, they also did it back in Season 6 when April was initially fired.)
[SPOILER ALERT! Naturally, this is where you stop reading if you haven't actually seen the episode since spoilers galore lay ahead.]
As promised, the second episode of Season 9...
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