Grey's Anatomy Recap: Baby Talk — Plus, [Spoiler] Confesses, 'I Love You!'
Thursday’s Grey’s Anatomy had babies on the brain. Not only was Jo freaked to the nth by Helen’s keen interest in having grandkids, DeLuca’s dad presented Alex with a project that could potentially save the lives of a lotta preemies, Maggie accidentally revealed to the world that she was Richard and Ellis’ love child, and Amelia made a huge decision about little Leo’s future. All that, plus someone told their, ahem, baby “I love you” for the first time. Who uttered those three little words? Read on and find out.
‘SOME GENETIC TRAITS ARE UNAVOIDABLE; THANKS, MOM’
| As “Blood and Water” began, Maggie had no sooner gotten finished answering Zola’s question about whether Grandma Ellis was her mother than Ellis herself was appearing to her daughter, tsk-tsking her for the typos in the paper she’d published. When Amelia entered the room, she told Ellis that she was Derek’s sister; surely, they’d met before. “I think I’d remember,” said Ellis. As the dream wrapped up, she told the women to take their vitamins and whispered something in Zola’s ear that she knew Meredith would understand. And apparently, she did understand, too, because when she awakened from the dream, she jotted down “the light in the blood.” (Had she just come up with the title to a great vampire novel?)
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Meanwhile, Levi and Nico were starting their day with some nookie when they were interrupted by a call from Schmitt’s mom, during which he covered his boyfriend’s mouth when he playfully tried to say hello. “Did you just shush me?” Nico asked afterwards. It was a rhetorical question, of course. Levi had shushed him, “but not in a shame-spiraling way,” he insisted. His mom was just a lot, and he didn’t want her to find out about Nico as the hot, shirtless guy in his bed. Ticked, Nico quickly removed himself as the hot, shirtless guy in Levi’s bed. At Grey Sloan, Mer cancelled all her surgeries for the day to work on the idea that had come to her overnight. “You dream science?” marveled DeLuca, who reported that his dad seemed stable and was, in fact, at the hospital that day to pitch a medical breakthrough “that will change-a the world.” As for Vincenzo’s diagnosis, Carina thought that he was bipolar, but it was impossible to tell since he refused treatment. “He just says he feels the world deeply,” DeLuca related before forgetting Mer’s no-kissing-at-work rule, much to her delight.
‘YOU TOLD THE ENTIRE MEDICAL COMMUNITY THAT ELLIS AND I HAD AN AFFAIR?’
| Nearby, Maggie was being interviewed for a medical podcast, during which she accidentally let slip that her biological parents were Ellis and Richard. “Maybe we could edit that” out, she suggested. But her interviewers were beside themselves over the fact that they’d stumbled onto such a scoop. Later, Maggie filled in Mer, whose reaction was, “Oh. Well, that’s not that big a deal.” Except that Maggie suspected that it was a big deal. “You said ‘oh,'” she noted, “and you made a face.” Again, Mer reassured her that it was fine, Richard would be fine, everything was fine. So naturally, when Maggie admitted to Richard that she’d made a gaffe, he was not fine; he was so pissed that his and Ellis’ past had been broadcast that he huffed away from his daughter. When Maggie subsequently sought out Richard in the gallery, he insisted that he wasn’t mad, it was her story to tell. “Right words,” she noted. “Wrong tone.”
Richard attempted to play it off as if he was concerned about Catherine. There she was, fighting cancer, and now she had to deal with it being made public that her husband was an adulterer. That, he added, was not a part of his story that he was particularly proud of. Stung, Maggie took a moment before reminding him, “It’s a part of your story that culminated in me, Richard.” And good for her, not letting him get away with that BS. Near the end of the episode, Richard sought out Maggie to tell her that, although he was ashamed of his past behavior, he was only grateful for her existence. She tried to say that she was a scandal, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “I’m a scandal,” he clarified. “You’re a miracle. I am proud to be any part of you, Maggie Pierce.” Though that upset was settled, Maggie still wasn’t quite out of the woods. Her adoptive father was going to hear her give Richard and Ellis the credit for her medical genius and be crushed.
‘IT IS A BABY IN A BAG!’
| When it came time for Vincenzo to pitch his medical breakthrough, he turned down Carina’s offer to help with the English. “You can barely speak it yourself,” he scoffed. But he did allow both her and DeLuca to stick around while he talked to Alex. So what was Vincenzo’s big idea? Since so many preterm babies don’t survive outside of the mother, he proposed transferring them to external gestational sacs to finish their development. And he was not only already in trials with bovine subjects, he’d delivered a healthy lamb from one of his bags. Speaking of babies — again, that was always the case this week! — during a break from refiling books around the hospital, Helen left Jo all but speechless when she showed her the hats she’d begun knitting for her and Alex’s kids. “Are you pregnant and you didn’t tell me?” Jo asked her husband afterwards. Helen had inquired whether they wanted children, he replied, and he’d said yes since they do. Oh, and she was making the hats extra big on account of he has a big head… which he realized as soon as the words had left his mouth must sound daunting. Later, Vincenzo expressed his amazement that his son was with Mer. “She is beyond you,” he said. “Andrea, even I have heard of Meredith Grey all the way back home!” But Papa had an idea of how DeLuca could become worthy of his girlfriend: He’d bring his son in on the baby-in-a-bag project and “put [him] on the map.”
When Alex visited Mer in the lab, he sounded awfully high on Vincenzo’s idea. “Ten years in peds,” he remarked, “and I never thought of something so cool!” He’d asked for a couple of days to think over the proposal, but he’d wanted to tell Vincenzo yes right then and there. In response, Mer advised him to “dig deeper” into the elder DeLuca’s reputation. What did she know? “Read my face,” she told him. “Constipated?” he guessed. And he never did get any closer to what Mer wasn’t at liberty to disclose. (Suddenly, she can keep a secret? When HIPAA isn’t involved?) When Mer subsequently ran into her beau and his sister, she sensed tension. Carina, DeLuca said, “is trying to shut down my father’s research project.” Hearing that Vincenzo might conduct said research at Grey Sloan, Mer asked about his untreated mental illness. “He’s not dangerous,” DeLuca said. “Until he is,” Mer replied. Carina added that a) their father hadn’t trained in this field, b) she’d spent the last three months with him and knew firsthand how unwell he was, and c) since Andrea hadn’t grown up with Vincenzo, the elder DeLuca knew he could manipulate his son better than his daughter. After DeLuca stomped off, saying that he was teaming up with his dad, period, Mer suggested that, if she were Carina, she’d talk to the chief.
‘DOES THE CUTE OUTWEIGH THE TERROR?’
| After Jo fled from all the baby talk to a surgery, any surgery, she beseeched Link to get her into the O.R., stat. When she was done being horrified by her pal and Jackson’s elaborate secret-handshake thing, she convinced the guys to let her scrub in as they turned a cancer patient named Hunter’s ankle into a knee. Irked at being replaced, Levi accused the chief’s wife of getting special treatment. With a glance at Nico, she sassily shot back, “Oh yeah? How’d you get in on it?” With that, Schmitt was dispatched to work with Bailey on the case of a guy named Frank who turned out to have a rare blood-clotting disorder. Though he and husband Dan had never wanted to know which of them was the biological father of their daughter Ella, they now insisted that she be tested to see if she, too, had the disorder. Turned out, she was Frank’s. But “it never mattered to me which one of you was my biological dad,” she told them, “because you’re both my dads. So let’s not flip out.” Speaking of flipping out… Off a conversation with Hunter’s mother, in which she expressed her rage at being kept in the dark for months about him undergoing chemo, Jo admitted to Link and Jackson in the O.R. just how wigged she was that Helen was knitting lots and lots of gender-neutral hats for her future bigheaded babies. Mind you, Helen hadn’t meant to freak out her daughter-in-law, she told Alex over lunch. Just maybe “give her a little nudge.” (How great is Lindsay Wagner in this role — jeez!)
Alex, his mind still on Vincenzo’s baby bag, asked his mom if she’d ever heard an idea that was so good, she was angry that she hadn’t thought of it. “Yes,” she admitted, “but it usually means my meds aren’t working.” As a matter of fact, she’d spent years furious that she hadn’t invented the cordless phone! When he was a kid, she’d always expected him to be an engineer, she told him. But in his mind, “I’m a fixer, not an innovator.” Regardless, she’d always been in awe of his brains. Back in the O.R., Jo’s freakout continued. If she had a baby, she’d worry forevermore, just like Hunter’s mom, who was having a nervous breakdown “all because she made the choice to ruin her life with a child.” With a glance at Jackson, she added, “No offense.” Post-op, Jo apologized for dissing Harriet, which prompted Jackson to admit that children are “sleep-depriving, sticky little monsters that demand snacks endlessly… but when they lay their head on your shoulder, everything seems right.”
‘IF YOU WANT THIS CHILD IN YOUR LIFE, YOU’RE GONNA NEED TO GET ON THE SAME PAGE — FAST’ | Visiting a lawyer regarding Leo’s custody, Owen and Amelia were relieved to hear that the matter was almost too uncomplicated. That is, until the attorney asked Leo’s address… in other words, their address… and they revealed that they weren’t living together. Though they had no intention of fighting one another for custody, their simple case had just become complex. They hadn’t even thought about how they would divvy up their time with Britney’s son, and any judge would want to know their plan for that. In a matter of seconds, the ex-couple was arguing over whether the teen would’ve given them both custody if she’d known that Amelia had just left Owen, and the lawyer was bailing to go to another meeting. You two, she said, are nowhere near ready to go before a judge. Left alone in the office, Omelia worked out a schedule, which Amelia speculated would go right out the window when Teddy returned from her trip with Koracick and gave birth. By and by, Owen admitted that he didn’t just want Amelia in Leo’s life, he wanted her in his life, too.
Sadly, Amelia maintained that things had changed between her and Owen when Teddy had returned to Seattle pregnant. What’s more, breaking up with him had been a moment of clarity for Amelia. It was no one’s fault. “It hurts,” she said, “but it hurts less than the alternative.” At that, Owen snapped. This was someone’s fault, he argued — Amelia’s. He’d tried to write off their past split as being due to her brain tumor, but he couldn’t anymore. “Apparently, there’s just some fundamental part of you that can’t love or be loved.” Ow. True, but ow. When they next sat down with the lawyer, Amelia surprised both the attorney and Owen by saying that she needed to be removed from the paperwork. She’d still be in Leo’s life, she’d just be “Auntie Amelia, who is fundamentally incapable of love. I have clarity on this, too,” she told Owen. “Leo is yours.” And somehow I don’t see Omelia coming back from this one. (That night, Owen even signed the documents to make Leo his own.)
‘YOU ARE MY FIRST LOVE’
| As Nico was leaving for the day, Levi ran after him to blurt out, “I love you.” The reason he hadn’t come out to his mom yet wasn’t because Nico wasn’t amazing but because Mother Schmitt would spin out. Apparently, that’s her thing. She even found a way to turn her son’s purchase of a backpack into a life-and-death scenario. So “I wanna lock you in through my eyes,” Levi said, “before I see all the deathtraps through hers.” Do I need to mention that the scene ended with Schmico closer than ever? That’s a given, right? Right. Nico even admitted that he loved Levi back, he just wasn’t gonna tell him for a coupla minutes for the fun of watching him sweat it out. Stopping by Alex’s office, Jo assured her husband that she wasn’t afraid of passing along his mom’s mental illness to their kids. What she was scared of was her own genes, which were an entirely unknown entity. “So we’ll hire someone to track down your family,” Karev suggested. No, no, she replied. She didn’t want to meet them. She was going to take a DNA test instead.
Having heard from Carina about Vincenzo’s mania, Alex asked Meredith if she’d known. Well, duh! She’d told him to read her face. But since she’d been confided in by someone she cares about, she hadn’t been able to blab. (Again, what does that say about her relationship with Catherine that Grey did reveal her cancer diagnosis to Maggie?) “If it wasn’t for the guy’s history, I wouldn’t think twice” about greenlighting the project, Karev said. Coming in as Alex left, DeLuca learned from Mer that she’d advised Carina to speak to the chief. “I need you to try and trust me on this,” he told Mer. Whether she could, Alex seemed to, because Project Baby in a Bag appeared to be a go. “I hope you’re right [about our dad] this time,” Carina told her brother. But I think we all know that this can’t go well, right? Finally, Maggie, Jackson and Amelia congregated at the end of the day at Mer’s, and at last Grey revealed what she was working on: “What if there was a non-invasive way to diagnose diseases as easy as taking a vitamin?”
So, what did you think of “Blood and Water”? Mer’s sudden ability to keep a secret? Schmico’s “I love you”? And how many of you think Jolex will be expecting by season’s end? Hit the comments.
Launch Gallery: <i>Grey's</i> Season 15 Photos
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