'Grey's Anatomy': It's fine. I'm fine.

Busy, busy night in Seattle Grace, and a really strong one too. My only real nitpick: Even if Izzie isn't going to deposit that $8.7 million check just yet, could she at least put it someplace safer than on the door of the fridge?

Thursday's episode was a good showcase for Katherine Heigl, even if half her lines were "It's fine. I'm fine." Izzie wasn't really fooling anyone, but her little bits of self-sabotage with the check and the time she spent at her locker showed just how much she was trying to fool herself into believing what she was saying.

Chandra Wilson, week to week the most consistently strong performer on the show, also had a big, meaty story, beginning with Bailey throwing herself under the bus at Denny's M&M (morbidity and mortality) conference. Subsequently she backed away from a breast-cancer patient (Six Feet Under's Justina Machado), against her better instincts, so as not to get emotionally invested in the case as she had -- and as she let her interns do -- with Denny. You knew how this was going to end, of course, but Wilson sold it really well.

Even McDreamy getting all McHuffy when Addison told him about her affair with Mark made sense this time, given how long she'd kept that from him for a good year and that he'd just signed away a bunch of property in the divorce. It also allowed Mark to show some of his first flashes of humanity in his reaction to Addison's continued keeping of that secret: "I'm just the chump who seduced his wife for the hell of it. Real fair."

Then there was the funny medical case (Arye Gross!), which started out as an exercise in detente between Meredith and Addison and then became the serious medical emergency that brought togehter Izzie's latent desire to get back into surgery, Burke's struggles getting his game back and Addison's lingering guilt. Grey's has done this sort of theme-expressing case a number of times in its history, and this was one of the show's better efforts in that regard.

And all that activity means we got to push Meredith and Derek to the background this week, which is just fine with me. Nice to see them riding the elevator again (first time this season, right?), but there's more interesting ground to cover elsewhere on the show at the moment.

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