'Grey's Anatomy' recap: If/Then

By Zap2it Partner

February 3, 2012 2:40 PM ET

Like every episode ever done where a show imagines, "What if black was white and white was black?" the characters all start out as opposites of who they really are but by the end seem on their way to falling into the lives we already know. Meredith shoots tequila. And... scene.

Okay, okay, I'll give you some details. Meredith goes to bed thinking about how people say that life works out the way it is supposed to, and that causes her to have a crazy dream about what her life would be like if her mom was still alive, Chief of Surgery, and married to Richard -- who got together with Ellis so far back in Meredith's life that Mere's last name is Webber and she calls him, "Dad." Mere wears pink and is perky and wants to go into cardio, and seems to have a decent relationship with Ellis. Oh, and she just got engaged to a Buddy-Holly-glasses-wearing version of Alex, who is the peppy Chief Resident. Her Person is April, and everyone is scared of Cristina and they all make a lot of mean cracks about how she somehow managed to drive Burke out of the state when their relationship ended. It sounds like April had a thing for Alex but she assures Mere she's happy for her about the engagement.

As for the rest of the staff: Derek and Addison are still married, and she is about to have a baby. Everyone thinks that they are the picture of a perfect marriage. But Derek hasn't published or run any clinical trials, and his nickname among the residents is, "McDreary." His hair is much more limp than usual, so we know it's fitting. As they day goes on we realize that the two of them are miserable together and that Derek spends all of his nights sleeping alone in his trailer on the land where he wants to build a house one day. Callie is in cardio and is married to none other than Owen, and they have three kids. He is having massive PTSD issues but somehow has managed to convince Callie that he's getting over them. When he flips out and punches his fist into a window, Cristina bandages him up and it turns out she's been doing this for a while, but keeping it secret. He doesn't want Callie to know because she'll leave him and take the kids because she's scared he will hurt them, but Cristina wisely points out that he should probably be nervous about that, too. It's the only real emotion we see from her as otherwise she seems to be an angry, unpleasant loner. Callie winds up on a case with Arizona and they fight about the kid's treatment and seem to hate each other but when everything winds up working out, they seem to have a little spark as they hug and talk about going out for a celebratory drink sometime.

Bailey is nothing like the Bailey we know now but is instead the meek "Mandy" Bailey that we've seen in her first-year flashbacks. She has a surgery that Ellis steals out from under her -- Ellis just won her third Harper Avery and wants to do her fancy award-winning procedure on Bailey's patient. What she doesn't realize is that the guy has complications that mean the procedure isn't ideal, but Bailey is too meek to tell Ellis this herself. She tells Alex instead, but he doesn't pass it along and when Ellis realizes the problem (mid-surgery, with a gallery full of journalists watching), she gets so angry about being made to look dumb in front of the press that she fires Bailey. Or rather, she has Richard fire Bailey.

» Read the full recap at Television Without Pity

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