'Grey's Anatomy': Medical Mystery Tour

Welcome back, Grey's Anatomy. I'd missed your particular brand of neurotic self-involvement, combined with some gross-out surgeries. I love the smell of surgical gloves in the evening.

Many many points for spoilers ahead...

I would like to offer up a solid huzzah! to Meredith for getting into much-needed therapy. If there's ever been anyone who needed it, it's her. Even if she does go and sit with her eyes filled with tears, not saying anything. Three cheers for making an effort to untangle the many many issues.

Meredith's in the middle of not saying anything to her therapist (Amy Madigan), when her beeper goes of. "I've got to go," she says. "I'm in this contest." Where have I heard that before?  Ah yes. Thankfully, this is an entirely different kind of contest.

It's a surgical contest, which has had the residents living in the hospital for the past 14 days. There's a point system. And it's both ghoulish and awesome. The Chief, wearing a genuinely frightening pinkish-lavender shirt/sweater combo that I think I last saw in a JC Penney catalog, but never on a real-life person, confronts Bailey -- who pretends to know nothing about it. And how cute is lil' Tuck?

So Meredith, Cristina, and Izzie are explaining the contest to George. "I feel juiced and alive, and my brain is clicking and running -- I have never been more on my game," Izzie says. Yes folks, Annoying Izzie is back. First, can someone please trip her? Second, if I ever need surgery, I'm begging my loved ones not to let someone who's been living in the hospital for 14 days perform it.

In the midst of the contest frenzy -- literally -- walks Derek and Rose. They're a little googly-eyed, but they seem to keep it relatively restrained in the workplace. Yet there's an entire subplot of people, led by McSteamy Sloan, who just aren't down with this coupling. "What do you see in her?" Sloan asks McDreamy, wondering if she's "a lady on the streets, tramp between the sheets." Third, if I ever have male children and hear them talking like this, even if they're 40, I'm smacking them in the head. Oh, and it turns out that Derek and Rose aren't ... sharing intimacies. Yet. Skillful move, wily Rose.

Also during the contest: evidence of the ever-growing friendship between Callie and Dr. Hardcore, Erica Hahn. Just watching how that totally confounds and annoys Cristina is great fun.

Here comes the big trauma: A man, his wife, and his brother drive up in a station wagon, covered in blood. They've been camping in the woods. One brother pet a bear cub, whose mother did not find that amusing -- and the bears basically laid waste to all three of them. As they're pulling the other brother out of the car, his intestines fall out into Cristina's hands. Intestine in the hands. It's not quite bomb in a body cavity, but it'll do.

Meanwhile, Izzie's working on a patient (Cheech Marin) who came in with a broken ankle. Let's dispense with this storyline right away: convinced that she can solve a medical mystery, Izzie orders $120,000 of tests, including a spinal tap, on poor Cheech. And she concludes that he has a mild case of the flu. OK, that's done.

Also, there's the bit with George and Lexie sharing an apartment. George is enraged by the giant cockroaches that basically run the place, which admittedly is a dump. Lexie, determined to fix it up, goes on a fantastic spree of thievery throughout the hospital, pulling pictures off walls and finding new uses for pretty much everything in the supply closet. We like Lexie, and her cleptomania is one of the welcome light parts of the episode. It reminded me of Ally Sheedy's random stealing in The Breakfast Club. Though funnier and less off the wall.

Back with the bear attack people. The brother who touched the cub (known as Bear Attack Guy) is with his new wife -- a rebound girl, whom he married after knowing for 10 days. She can't believe that a guy like him -- cute, rich, a catch by anyone's standards -- would marry her, a waitress. Meredith notices she's bleeding from the scalp. She pulls off her hat, and a giant flap of skin falls -- the bear got her too, and she didn't even know it. But she'll be OK.

And Meredith's following up on a hunch about Bear Attack Guy. The impulsivity of the marriage, plus touching the bear when he knew it was the wrong thing, leads her to wonder if he has a brain tumor. She suggests that he have an MRI, which -- surprise -- shows a big brain tumor that can't be operated on. And he gets the news as they're telling him that his brother has died from his wounds.

Meredith solved the medical mystery, and she wins the contest. The prize: a sparkly pager, handed down from resident to resident. For the next three months, whenever her fellow residents get a surgery, they have to page her on this pager. If she wants the surgery, she has the right to take it. Cool. And it makes Cristina crazy. Bonus!

But the first time she's paged, she ignores it -- she's doing some research on helping patients with the same kind of brain tumor Bear Attack Guy has. She pitches the idea of a clinical trial to Derek, whose just come in with Rose.

In the end, we see Meredith back in her therapist's office -- and she's ready to talk.

Some other highlights:

• Cristina's mania when it comes to Dr. Hahn, and how much it drives her nuts that Hahn and Callie are friends. Her speech and movements are literally 25 percent faster when Hahn is around, because she's trying so hard to impress. And her coming home to find Callie and Hahn in her living room, triggering the irresistable urge to suck up to Hahn, is great.
• The conversation between the Chief and Karev, when Karev is working on the eviscerated brother. You're an underdog, and you're scrappy, the Chief tells him. Karev looks at his patient and says here's this guy -- his brother touched the bear, and here he is, fighting for his life. "That doesn't make him an underdog; it just means he has to work harder to overcome the cards he got dealt." Love the small insights into Karev.
• George on Izzie's new haircut, a side effect of the contest: "You cut off all your hot hair for a stupid contest?"
• Sloan having one more heart to heart with Derek about Rose. "I thought it was going to be just you and me -- after Addison, after Meredith," Sloan says. It's supposed to be just us, two guys on the prowl, on the hunt. Women are everywhere. I only have one person I can talk to." Derek reacts perfectly: "That's sweet." Sloan: "Shut up." Derek: "No, that's really sweet." Sloan: "Shut up!" Not quite "guy love," but it's funny nonetheless.
• The chief, consoling Izzie on her loss. He lost by two points his year. "The contest is a lion fight," he says. "Put your shoulders back, walk proud, strut a little. Don't lick your wounds. The scars you bear are the sign of a competitor. You were in a lion fight, Stevens. Just because you didn't win doesn't mean you don't know how to roar." Bleh. But sort of touching.
• Lexie's rehab of the apartment is great -- and her confession that she really doesn't have any friends here besides George, and doesn't really have a home besides the apartment, is just a little sad -- but not pathetic.

Also, this week, I'm launching the Izzie Annoying Scale. To calibrate, remember that Izzie's Annoying baseline is about 5.5 -- in this scene with Denny, she's far less annoying than she often is. Maybe that's because she doesn't speak. Her high score on the Annoying Scale (1 = She's Not So Bad, and 10 = Dear God, Make It Stop) is a 9.5 -- signified by her "I believe" speech when Meredith drowned. This week's score: 7.5.

What did you think? Strong episode to return from the writers' strike, with the good cases and the gore? Or cheap ploy? Will therapy help Meredith? And is Sloan right, that Derek and Rose won't last?

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