'Grey's Anatomy' recap: Meddling Mama

By Zap2it Partner

October 14, 2011 7:05 AM ET

I don't know what I did to deserve this gift, but Jackson's mother is in town this week and she is played by none other than the spectacularly fantastic Debbie Allen. She is in town to do a groundbreaking penis transplant surgery, which means that Mark and therefore Jackson will be helping her. Because she is both a famous surgeon a la Ellis Grey and also his mom, Jackson can't help but be embarrassed by her at every turn -- to the point where he sends Lexie away so he doesn't have to deal with them meeting each other -- and also feel all sorts of pressure from her about every life and professional choice he has made. She's appalled to hear that he wants to go into plastic surgery but when April accidentally messes something up during the transplant, Mark suggests a procedure that Debbie has never heard of and has Jackson actually do it, which saves the day and the patient's new manhood. She seems to finally respect Jackson's choices at least a little more than she did before, though as she sort of connects with Mark she realizes that he is in love with her son's lady and warns Jackson to keep an eye on him. It's not all of the relationship advice she doles out, either -- she realizes that April is sorely lacking experience with the opposite sex and orchestrates a meet-cute between April and the transplant patient's brother. There's no indication if April is finally ushered into womanhood, but it's implied that it might happen sooner than later.

Through a surgical contest, Alex had almost earned the right to assist on the transplant when gets a page that's important enough that he chooses to forfeit -- that's because the page is that Zola is in the hospital having seizures. She needs surgery right away and Janet tells him and Arizona in no uncertain terms that Meredith and Derek can't be told because they currently don't have custody of Zola and if they got involved it could jeopardize the adoption. Alex isn't entirely sure he can live with this so he finds Cristina for support, and she winds up telling Mere and Derek what is going on. Derek flips out that Zola is still his patient so he should get involved, but Meredith manages to talk him out of it so that they don't lose their chances of getting her back for good. Arizona convinces them that she and Alex will take awesome care of Zola, and they do, and she is fine. Derek spends the day enraged at Meredith anew about the whole situation but once they find out that Zola is okay and Mere breaks down, Derek at least manages to rub her back and seems for the first time in a long time to not hate her completely, though he's still a long way from being a full-on supportive husband. Cristina assures them that she will stay at the hospital with Zola all night and then she calls them so that they can sing her a song to go to sleep.

That night, Owen hangs out for a little while with Cristina and the baby but when he sees her basically being awesome and sweet and loving with Zola he can't handle it anymore and takes off to a dinner party that Teddy and Henry are throwing. The party is for all of the couples, and Bailey and Eli were invited, but she forgot to invite Eli and when she realizes that, she realizes that she also can't keep going on hooking up with him since she doesn't want to be in a relationship with him. This seems directly related to her having to work with Ben again, and though she insists it doesn't, Ben is mighty cheerful when he hears about the breakup and obviously thinks that he might have a chance again with her at some point. But for now, she goes to the dinner and enlists her new date, White Wine, to help keep her mind off of the hot anesthesiologist.

» Read the full recap at Television Without Pity

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