'Grey's Anatomy' season finale: Did Izzie survive?

Oh, Shonda Rhimes, you minx. You get us all excited for the long-awaited marital union between Derek and Meredith, and you pull a great big bait-and-switch with Alex and Izzie. Happy 100th episode, "Grey's Anatomy." And congratulations on the very nice looking bridesmaids' dresses.

The line between standing up for ourselves and alienating everyone around us is a difficult one. But sometimes a person just has to take that chance if they're going to be who they are. Which sounds awfully existential for a television medical drama -- but it's definitely one of the main points of tonight's "Grey's Anatomy."

What do you get when you cross manic wedding planning with a patient getting killer chemo, an overbearing father disapproving of a lifestyle, a surgeon finally beginning to face his demons, and a desperately sad pediatric case? Yep -- this week's "Grey's Anatomy."

Tonight was not your average episode of "Grey's Anatomy" -- which you could tell from the opening moment, when Alex and not Meredith did the voiceover. But while everyone waited for Izzie to go into -- and then out of -- surgery, and while saw in an up-close and horrifying way what PTSD can do to someone, you couldn't help but come away with one thought: You need your people.

Damn you, Shonda Rhimes! I've spent plenty of time while watching "Grey's Anatomy" raging about Izzie being annoying, cheering for Bailey, wondering if Meredith and Derek were ever going to get their act together, and counting the number of words George gets to speak in any given episode. And now you've made me believe again. I may be a sucker, but this was a great episode.

These days, the docs of "Grey's Anatomy" are all kinds of broken and messy and troubled. So it's pretty much like any other day at Seattle Grace. Except that with Derek's wallow through his surgical past and Izzie's focus on getting the interns to diagnose "Patient X," coupled with some diagnostic surprises and a real jerk turn by the chief, it turned out to be a pretty good hour of TV.

Technically, this episode of Grey's Anatomy was the end of the "crossover arc," but it was just pretty much Addison working on Derek's case and a lot of conversation about who was a god and when. Plus there's another freaky guest star.

So after last week's crossover fake-out, this week we get real action on Grey's Anatomy. Addison and Naomi show up at Seattle Grace with an ailing Archer, and Derek's their only hope to save him. But even I have to admit, this one is gnarly.

This week's Grey's Anatomy is part 3 of an arc -- the Return of the Jedi, if you will -- of a couple of very compelling storylines and the continuation (start?) of the one that's been driving many of us nuts for weeks now. There's also some interesting character development and a genuinely stupid injury (not that I'm unsympathetic to those who've suffered it -- ow). So let's get rolling.