Grey's Anatomy recap: 'Danger Zone'

The drama-heavy hour opens in Baghdad. Owen awakens with a start beneath a ceiling fan in his barracks before hustling out to a chopper that’s ready to take the four of them to Fallujah. Owen asks Teddy and Megan where Nathan is. Megan explains that Nathan had been on call last night and that she’ll go get him.

The newly engaged couple jumps onto the helicopter with Owen and Teddy. “I said yes!” Megan giddily exclaims, showing them her necklace. Teddy surprisingly replies with an impassive, “Wow, that’s interesting.”

The group touches down at the medical treatment center in Fallujah and lines up for formation. Megan is trading barbs with a white guy’s white guy named John Matthews, who is also clearly up for the rank promotion that Megan wants: “Your mom could be CO and you’d still be last,” she snaps back. For the record, the best Army ranking burns are always the ones that involve “your mom” shade. A Humvee pulls up and a colonel gets out to drop the bad news that John is the one who’s being promoted. Before Megan can even register disappointment, an emergency call comes in that says there are two active shooters and four people were KIA (Killed in Action). They need all surgeons on deck.

In L.A. Farouk is telling Nathan how nervous he is about the changes to come. He’s also confused as to why they’re not all going to be sleeping in the same room like he did back home and doesn’t understand why he has to go to school when Megan had been his teacher in Iraq. As they’re talking, he drops a light bulb and is overly apologetic and almost scared for the consequence of his accident. Of course Nathan tells him it’s fine and puts Farouk up on the counter before cleaning up the mess.

In Iraq the foursome is tending to the various patients being rushed into the tent, the result of Iraq allies going rogue. We hear a woman who had been brought in yelling in Arabic. Megan quickly realizes she doesn’t want to be touched by men and goes to intervene. A soldier tells Teddy that the “Muslim woman tried to wrestle the gun away from the shooter.”

In the makeshift OR, Teddy and Nathan are operating when Teddy asks him where he was able to find emeralds while in Baghdad. The necklace reminds her of one that a woman named Felicia Philips had, only hers had her initials engraved on the back. This tidbit doesn’t seem to sit so well with Nathan.

Tension is also building between Owen and Megan, who is pretty convinced that Owen somehow stopped her from getting the promotion. She asks him about it while they’re operating — a surgery Owen allowed her to scrub in on in after she deftly handled Sana’s (the Muslim woman) unwillingness to undress.

Once again in L.A., Nathan is now trying to fix the sink while talking to a recruiter on the phone who is apparently not understanding Nathan’s worth or experience level. Farouk asks him for a screwdriver, but before Nathan can get off the phone, Farouk ends up leaving the house, sending Nathan on a wild goose chase looking for him.

Owen and Megan’s road trip takes a detour to an abandoned amusement park where they play ring toss, making bets as they go. Owen tells her if he makes the next one she has to stay in Seattle. This rightfully sets her off as she starts to unload all of her life choices that she feels Owen tried to impede: lifeguarding, serving in the Army, and her promotion.

As they continue on a road trip that is souring faster than Owen’s marriage to Amelia, Owen gets a call from his wife, whom he neglected to tell about his decision to join Megan on her journey to L.A. Oopsie. (Recap continues on page 2)

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Nathan finally finds Farouk, who left to go get him some food but became overwhelmed when he saw how many menu choices he had at the taco truck. This is the moment I fully understood just how deprived this poor boy had really been.

In the next flashback to Iraq, we see the siblings once again in the OR. Megan is trying to get Owen to admit that he tanked her promotion, that he doesn’t think she’s qualified, but he not only refuses to answer; he also reminds her that he outranks her. In a flash, she takes over the surgery and saves the patient’s arm and leg.

Teddy and Nathan are finishing up with their operation when we learn that Nathan’s proposal necklace did indeed belong to Felicia, his “side piece.” He tells Teddy he was going to come clean, but Megan found the necklace and he panicked. Teddy tells him he better tell Megan the truth and that if he does, there may be a chance for forgiveness — that is, if Owen doesn’t snap his neck first.

Nathan goes to tell Megan the truth, but before he can, she confesses that she cheated on him. He then admits that the necklace belongs to someone else before she throws it at him. They’re interrupted by the news that Sana needs to be intubated. Once the intubation is done, Megan wants to get her on a chopper to Baghdad. She calls Owen and asks him if he can break protocol to allow her to do that, though when he initially balks, she tells him that Nathan cheated.

In the present day, Megan and Owen’s road trip comes to a complete halt as Megan winds up throwing Owen out of the Jeep after her finally admits he stopped her from getting the promotion. After he apologizes, though, he again asks her not to move to L.A. He’s also still not thrilled she’s moving there with Nathan because Nathan had cheated on her; Megan confesses to her brother that she had cheated on Nathan as well. She also tells him that when she was held captive, the only thing that got her through was remembering one of their family trips to the beach. As a hostage, she would pretend that the sand was the beach and the screams and yelling were laughter and seagulls. She swore that if she ever got out, she would live near the beach and feel water on her feet. She tells Owen that all she’s ever wanted for him was to have happiness as well.

Despite the horrors that we are left to imagine that Megan endures after Sana presumably takes her hostage in the helicopter, in the present day at least, we are moved as Megan finally gets her house-on-the-beach, toes-in-the water moment with her two guys.

Owen, meanwhile, finds his own happiness back in Seattle after admitting to Amelia that she’s like a stranger to him. “You married a tumor,” she says matter-of-factly. They each admit that they’re not happy and give their wedding rings back to each other.

Owen’s voice-over closes out the episode, talking about finding freedom and finding peace before rolling into a PSA from Kevin McKidd. “Nearly 40,000 veterans are homeless” he starts out…