Grey's Anatomy: Forever Young (Episode 69)

"There comes a point in your life when you're officially an adult," says Meredith as this episode begins. Meredith then reminds us that despite our privileges as adults - voting, drinking, etc. - we really are still the same as we were in high school, whether that be the band geek or jock or prom queen. As the episode goes on we start to find out what clique each of the docs fell into in high school, and believe me you'll be surprised by some of them.

We start out at night with Derek and Sydney on a date at Joe's, Meredith and Cristina are watching their every move. Why they don't go some place where Meredith won't be watching them is beyond me. But, the point is that Derek is on a date, so where exactly does this leave him and Meredith again? The next morning Miranda posts notices throughout the hospital of her new Chief Resident position. She's not bragging or anything though. Miranda is taking her new position very serious. She talks to all the junior residents and lets them know that her hospital will be ran differently. She lays out her rules and tells them there is no place for their personal problems or dreams. She then catches Izzie talking to Meredith about her and George's "tragic" sex and tells Izzie her point is to grow up. Right... like that's going to happen. Maybe she forgot that she's at Seattle Grace (aka gossip central).

Now under Bailey's control Cristina finally gets a chance at being Hahn's resident. Cristina immediately begins sucking up to Hahn as much as humanly possible, which just pisses Hahn off. She tells Cristina she needs to be more like Izzie. Ouch! Cristina spends much of the show complaining to everyone about Izzie and gossiping about how her and George's fling has already ended. Callie suggests to Cristina to quit the brown-nosing and maybe Hahn will respect her more. Cristina tries to take Callie's advice, but she is going crazy not brown-nosing. She manages to not brown nose long enough to make some difference with Hahn, so it paid off.

The big drama this episode is a high school bus accident. There are lots of injuries so the hospital is in a frenzy. One of the patients just happens to be a guy that Miranda (or as he calls her "Mandy") went to school with. He was a chaperone on the bus. She used to tutor him, well more like do all of his homework for him. She spends the episode acting more like the geek she was in high school flirting with the popular guy, rather than the married, mother and Chief Resident that she is today. The other docs, including the Chief, take notice of Miranda's actions and try to call her out on it, but she doesn't see what she's doing. As Miranda is filling out the guy's paperwork for him he starts having problems and they have to rush him into emergency surgery. After surgery he's fine, but he still has her fill out his paperwork and she doesn't speak up and tell him to fill out his own paperwork. He continues to treat her the same as he did in high school with no respect whatsoever. We later find out that in high school while she was tutoring him basically every night she had a crush on him and she thought maybe he'd ask her to the homecoming dance, but he never did, in fact it appeared to never even cross his mind. By the end of the episode Miranda has had enough of her high school ways and takes it out on Derek. She demands that he sit down, so he asks if everything is ok. She asks what does he care with his pretty face and perfect little life. He asks if she's paid any attention to his life? She tells him that she pays attention, she pays attention to all people of all types of life, it's he who doesn't notice her. He's wondering what she's talking about. She tells him that it's not him, it's guys like him that don't see girls like her, except to do homework for them or build their ego up. She names her accomplishments as a wife, mother and Chief surgeon, yet he still doesn't see her. She may as well still be the band geek in high school. Derek informs her that in high school he was 110lbs, didn't know how to use hair gel so he had an afro, bad acne, and he too was a band geek - he played Sax. He tells her that he would've been honored to take a girl like her to homecoming.

Another patient is a student, a young guy I'm guessing to be a senior in high school. He has a pencil in his eyeball. It is the second nastiest thing I've seen on Grey's, second only to the scene a few weeks ago where George stuck that thing in the kid's eyeball. As you may have noticed I'm not too good at handling problems relating to eyes. I've had a few surgeries on my own eyes and I'm just not a fan. Anyway, before they can do anything they need to run a scan and see what's going on internally with the guy. As they are running the scan Lexie and Izzie are talking. We find out that Lexie was prom queen and she tells Izzie she just never really understood kids like this guy who were always loners in school. It turns out that there is slow bleeding going on in the guy's head and they need to do surgery before it gets worse. The guy's girl friend (but not girlfriend) is beside him throughout the day. They're the loners who love each other, but never tell each other that because they're too afraid of rejection. Complications happen in surgery, after Derek takes out the pencil his brain starts to swell. After surgery Derek talks to the girl friend and she asks how things went and he tells her he hasn't woken up yet. But, Derek knows the truth - there was too much swelling, the guy will most likely never wake up from the coma he's in now. When Derek finally tells the girl she breaks down crying. All of the other high school kids are crying too which just makes the girl mad because none of them even knew him. Izzie tells the girl that although it may not seem like it now, she will get through this. The girl tells Izzie that she's just the prom queen like the rest of them and doesn't understand. Izzie informs her that she was actually the trailer park girl wearing cheap clothes and got pregnant, BUT she got through it, and the girl will get through this.

Another student patient is a cheerleader, head captain actually. She has some injuries to the face - mostly just deep scratches and whatnot - knee and leg fractures, and her butt is broken. Yes, really, her butt is broken. Sloane is thrilled to get to do some work on some "hot cheerleader ass." Before the girl goes into surgery some other cheerleaders who are supposed to be her "friends" visit and make her feel worse than she already did. As they're leaving they tell the girl "hope they don't mess up your face." Oh, don't you miss those people from high school? After the surgery, which went fine, Callie talks to the girl. She tells her how she was recently fired from being Chief, but it's sort of a gift because now she gets to go back to what she loves most about the job which is surgery. So, maybe the girl not being head captain of the cheerleading squad could be a gift, maybe she can get back to what she loves the most.

Our only non-high school bus accident patient for the episode is Thatcher Grey. Yep, it's Meredith and Lexie's dad. He's drunk and he put his hand through a window. The Chief tells Alex not to let Meredith know that he's there, just tell Lexie. When Alex tries to tell Lexie she blows him off thinking that he wants to talk about the incident from last episode and tells him it's not his problem. He lets it go without telling her that Thatcher is at the hospital and just tells Meredith. While she is bandaging his hand he goes on and on the whole time apologizing for not being in her life and wondering what he missed out on and tell her how great she is. Lexie eventually finds out that Thatcher is in the hospital and gets pissed that Alex didn't tell her. Later Meredith talks to Lexie about Thatcher. She tells Lexie that she knows it was her mom's birthday and that is why Thatcher was drunk, and she tells him how he seemed charming, but she tells Lexie she needs to keep a better eye on him. Lexie then goes off on Meredith and tells her that it was not her mother's birthday he just pretends every day is. She tells Meredith that she's glad that she found him charming, he is charming after five drinks but after nine drinks he gets a little mean. She then tells Meredith that she's sure he told her how wonder she was and sad he was about not getting to spend time with her, but the fact is that he's a liar and an alcoholic. Yesterday he told Lexie that she was his favorite daughter, the day before she was an ungrateful bitch, and the week before he wrote her a check for $20,000 because he told her that she deserved it and he was so proud of her. So, she tells Meredith thanks for letting her know that she needs to keep a better eye on him and storms off.

The Chief pulls Meredith into his office after the blow-up between her and Lexie. He tells her that he needs to take care of her because that is what her mom asked him to do, and he promised he would.

At the end of the day in the elevator Alex tells Lexie that he doesn't do the whole high school thing of "I'll tell you, but don't tell anyone else" game. Lexie tries to defend herself telling Alex that this was a private family issue. He tells her that he had to start cleaning up his drunk dad at age 7, that's when he had to be the grown up in the family. She got to wait till she was 24 so good for her.

As the episode is wrapping up Izzie and George try to figure things out. They used to be able to tell each other everything. She tells him that she can't make it through this without her best friend. They want to be best friends again. Derek makes an effort to notice a girl he might not have noticed much before, a female doctor named Rose. She's worked on 36 of his surgeries and today was the first day he noticed her. Derek and Sloane go to Joe's and get a drink. Sydney comes and tells Derek that she just doesn't think he can handle a woman like her, Derek doesn't argue with her. Later as Derek is walking out with Meredith (you know as the usual standby) he once again notices Rose and she notices him. Hmmm... there's definitely going to be something there. I'm about ready for Meredith and Derek to go separate ways, at least for a little while, and get some new drama going so I hope we see Rose more.