The following recap will have spoilers for Grey’s Anatomy Season 21, Episode 10, “Jump (For My Love)” – specifically and especially the gay bits.
Queer Emmy-award-winning multi-hyphenate Lena Waithe has once again put on her acting hat for a guest spot on Grey’s Anatomy, the #1 go-to destination vacation for queer actors and fictional doctors. Cynthia Erivo’s partner plays Evynne Moore, a surgeon and good friend of Catherine Fox, whose wife Tasha is at Grey Sloan for a liver transplant. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s jet back to the beginning.
The theme of this week’s episode, according to the voiceover: recovery!
Before recovery, though, is a little pain.
Remember when they said Meredith was leaving the show and Ellen Pompeo was only doing voiceovers from now on but then she kept being in every other episode? Well, she’s back, because she and Nick are going to Grey Sloan to check on Catherine’s stent and assist in her friend’s wife’s liver transplant.
When we first meet Lena Waithe’s Dr. Evynne Moore, she’s discussing penile reconstruction with Catherine. We learn that Evynne is a former student of Catherine’s, and they’ve grown very close. Catherine jokes that Evynne “couldn’t have cared less about a penis” before she met her, and Evynne says, “she’s not wrong” and everyone gets their gender essentialist giggles out before they start discussing Evynne’s professor wife Tasha’s case.
Obsessed with the trend of queer visiting doctors. Let’s keep it up!
Since Tasha’s case is so complicated, Catherine has called Dr. Webber to be part of her surgical team too, even though he’s still giving Meredith the cold shoulder. Tasha is confused about what’s going on, forgetting things almost as she’s reminded of them, and Evynne tells them this is part of her illness and that she’s actually very smart. Evynne is patient and sweet with her wife, and tells the team that they have been to other doctors who turned them down and there’s nowhere else they can turn. She hands them Tasha’s medical records on a flash drive, saying Catherine taught them to be their own advocates.
A healthy relationship, so rare to see in these halls!
Side note, later Evynne says that her and Catherine became so close that they used to call Evynne “kit” since she was so close to “cat” though that’s a nickname they’d never call Catherine to her face.
Outside the patient room, Catherine lectures Webber and Meredith about how they’re acting like toddlers and they have to put their beef aside to work together on this, and Meredith turns to do just that, but Richard has already stormed off, really committing to his toddler bit.
When Nick reviews the liver that had been chosen for Tasha, he says it’s too big, which could cause complications, but Evynne begs him to use it anyway, saying she’s not sure her wife can afford to wait for a new one. Meanwhile, Meredith and Webber are still fighting, this time about whether Tasha’s confusion is actually encephalitis, like Evynne said, or if it’s a stroke, which would impact the surgery decisions they’re making.
When Catherine confronts Meredith again about her and Webber fighting, she tells her a story about how when Evynne was still her student, Catherine made a mistake that she eventually caught and fixed, but she later learned Evynne had caught it sooner, and just didn’t say anything. So Catherine taught her to speak up, even against her, which sometimes bites her in the ass, but that’s the price of being a good teacher, and that’s what Webber is experiencing right now.
Dr. Evynne Moore is becoming impatient that the liver is taking so long, and it as at this point that I must briefly veer from the Moore storyline to tell you exactly how this liver got waylaid.
You see, Ben Warren and Dr. Ndugu were transporting the liver and talking about how Ndugu doesn’t go on second dates anymore when they spotted a motorcycle accident that desperately needed to surgeons to stop until the EMTs got there. In fact, even after the EMTs got there, they had to perform open heart surgery on the dusty side of the road if the man had any chance of survival. Luckily, they got his heart beating again and were able to get the organs back to Grey Sloan in time, and Ndugu even asked someone on a second date. She said no, but at least he tried. (Recovery!)
Once Moore is assured the liver is on its way, she asks to be in the gallery for the first cut so she rest assured that this surgery is finally, finally happening, and Nick reluctantly agrees.
I wouldn’t know how to say no when faced off with these two, either.
At the same time, while looking over her scans, Meredith thinks Tasha might not have encephalitis or a stroke, but some form of dementia. At the same time, Webber tells her that he called and got Tasha’s ACTUAL medical history and she was diagnosed with Alzheimers, which was conveniently left off the digital records Evynne handed them, and explains why other hospitals rejected the surgery. Meredith and Webber march in to confront Catherine about this, together (recovery!), but she assures them she also had no idea.
Meredith crashes the OR to stop the surgery, and looks up at Evynne in the gallery. She’s not going to see that first cut after all. But surely this isn’t the end of this conversation. For one thing, Meredith has no leg to stand on re: being mad at Evynne for lying to them to help her wife. (Meredith has done worse for less.) For another, who better than to tackle a tricky case involving Alzheimer’s and transplants than Dr. Meredith Grey and her boy toy? Of course, you never know on this show which cases will end in tragedy, but I haven’t given up hope on this team’s ability to save Tasha just yet.
It seems Lena Waithe’s Dr. Evynne Moore will be back again next week, but in the meantime, let’s catch up on all the other gays in the hospital, shall we? (Note: Teddy and her flirtationship Sophia Bush are MIA for this episode.)
First up, Helm is on the case of a woman who jumped off a bridge to fetch her wedding ring after tossing it into the water during her divorce party, but then realizing she could sell it. Helm is working this case with bi icon Amelia, but instead of bonding over being queer badasses, Helm spends the episode making really bad jokes (like talking about clean breaks while looking at the woman’s literally broken back) and causing awkward moments, as if they’re trying to have her fill the Schmitt gap, a gap I personally think doesn’t need to be filled.
At this point I’d almost rather her be written off than written into the ground. GIVE HER GOOD STORYLINES FFS.
She does declare she never wants to get married, though I don’t know how she could, since this show only remembers she exists and could have a love life of her own for like three episodes every other season. The tl;dr of this storyline is that Link proposes to Jo and she says yes.
As for Jules, she’s spending the day with her fellow interns at a retreat day at Bailey’s house. A man named Danny Ford comes to lead them in teambuilding exercises like icebreakers, human knots, spaghetti towers, and more. I’d say this is ridiculous but when I worked in Corporate America we had to do training like this and it was equally as silly. Jules, however, has thrown a wrench into the teambuilding by still giving Griffith the cold shoulder. And of course, they keep getting paired together, just adding fuel to the fire. When they get to the part where they’re meant to talk about silver linings, Jules breaks down about how they lost a classmate and no one is acknowledging it and it seems like everyone but her has moved on and now she’s just expected to play games. She says they can’t do team bonding because their team is broken and storms off.
Bailey finds Jules crying and looking at pictures of her and Mika like a good dramatic gay, and Bailey asks about her. Jules says Mika is fine, but doesn’t elaborate.
Portrait of a Sad Gay
Bailey offers Jules the chance to let out her frustration and anger on her, but Jules just looks at her sadly, having no fight left in her. Bailey says she organized this day of games and bonding and cooking because she knows the team is broken and she wants to help fix it. She asks Jules if she wants the same thing, and leaves her to ponder that.
Danny Ford packs up his bags and leaves before the activities are over because he realizes the doctors of Grey Sloan Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital for the Disaster Prone have gone through more than he’s equipped to handle. Bailey sighs a defeated sigh and is ready to let them go but then Jules comes in and meekly says they didn’t get to cook together yet. So Bailey apparently sends the off-shift interns home and OUR interns cook a meal together. Griffith joins Jules to help her wash dishes and offers to give her airline miles to visit Mika, but Jules says Mika said she needs space. Later, Jules reciprocates the olive branch offering by showing up at Griffith and Luca’s house with a bottle of wine. Recovery!
Forgiveness? Can you imagine.
Here’s hoping Grey’s never stops adding queer doctors to the roster, and that Owen Hunt stays wherever he was this episode and never comes back.
