May 22, 2008
Episode Name: "Freedom"
Season 4, Episode 16
Original Airdate: May 22, 2008
A Guy Encased in Cement; Everyone Come Running, Stat!
In a Word: Derek and Meredith finally have some success. Most of the surgical team works to save a guy from a prank gone wrong. George gets his groove back.
The Action: Meredith and Derek's clinical trial isn't going all that well. They've lost patient after patient, and both of them are losing hope. It appears Meredith's damage is that her mother slit her wrists right in front of her when she was a little girl and asked Meredith not to call 911 to save her. Meredith's mad at herself for saving her mom.
Derek's planning to sell his perfect plot of land overlooking the city because he's ready for a change. Derek and Meredith's new patient is a sassy young girl with a plucky attitude. Wait, there are two current patients, and they're dating each other! The girl's parents disapprove of the boyfriend because they're afraid he'll die and their daughter will lose the will to live.
Rose informs Meredith about Derek selling his land. She's also totally intimidated by Meredith.
The oversight board that watches over clinical trials wants to shut down Meredith and Derek's trial because of how many deaths they've had. The Chief informs Meredith that the team gets one more surgery. Meredith decides to break the rules by slipping in both of the kids' surgeries.
The girl patient wants to have sex with her boyfriend before she dies (both kids are virgins) and wants Meredith and Derek to help her make that happen. While the girl's parents are occupied, Drs. Matchmaker and Yenta help the kids hook up. Meredith looks on as the kids say their heartfelt, teary-eyed goodbyes. Considering how this trial's going, it doesn't look good for these kids. When the boy dies, Derek throws away the bottle of champagne he's been saving for when they finally have a success.
The girl patient begs for the surgery. Derek doesn't want to do it, but Meredith does. Derek's having a crisis of self-worth. He thinks he's failing Meredith over and over and that he's never good enough for her. The girl's insistent, though, so Derek performs the procedure.
When the Chief confronts Meredith about going ahead with the second procedure without permission, she busts out her mom's suicide on him. She blames him for her mother's mental state (he had ended their affair). Meredith tries to learn from her mother's mistakes and realizes that life isn't all about surgery.
Derek and Meredith finally save someone! The girl's awake and responsive. Derek and Meredith run around looking for each other everywhere. Derek finds Meredith on his still-not-sold property where she's set out lights on the floor plan of the house Derek never built. Derek shuts up her babbling by kissing her. He eventually leaves Meredith there in the candle-lit blueprint as he goes off to end things with Rose so he and Meredith can get it on. How can this go wrong?
Elsewhere, Alex nannies Rebecca, who is nearly catatonic. Izzie tries to get help from Bailey and Meredith regarding this Alex issue, but they're too busy. Rebecca's a total basket case, though. She wets her pants just sitting on the couch watching TV ... er, what? Alex is a champion coping with Rebecca's crazypants. While he's on the phone with Izzie, Rebecca slits her wrists with a kitchen knife. Alex sutures Rebecca in the ER, but he doesn't want her admitted and calls Izzie a stupid b*tch for trying to get her a psych consult.
Izzie pulls Bailey out of surgery to ask her what to do about Alex and Rebecca. Bailey tells her to stand up for herself. Izzie gets the psych consult for Rebecca and threatens to have Alex arrested if he attempts to take her out of the hospital. Turns out, Alex has done this sort of care-giving before, as a child with his mother. Meredith comes home to find Rebecca's blood all over the kitchen, and she just drops to her knees and start scrubbing. Rebecca has Borderline Personality Disorder; her husband left her months ago. Alex comes to terms with not being able to help her on his own. She's being put in a psychiatric hospital for her own good. Rebecca's sorry she couldn't be there for Alex.
Bailey passes off the Clinic to Izzie because she can't do everything, and the Clinic is the piece she can let go because Izzie is dedicated to it. Alex and Izzie almost hook up for comfort sex, but he breaks down crying instead.
Bailey, Hahn, Cristina, Callie, and McSteamy all answer pages to cover a huge trauma: a guy encased in cement. The guy was dared by a group of kids he wanted to befriend to lay in a pool of concrete at a construction site. Callie's shocked by the kids' flippant attitude. The no-good kids let him lay in the cement watching him scream for a long time before they called the cops to help him.
Bailey tries to reassure the boy by promising to save him. Uh-oh. That's never a good sign. All of the surgeons involved in the cement boy's treatment fight for priority according to their specialty. The Chief finds them all fighting it out in an exam room, so he tells everyone off, and they all scurry to work as a team to save Andrew, (a.k.a. Cement Boy).
Andrew says he jumped into the cement to impress the girl who dared him. Bailey surprises the rest of the medical team by knowing all about "Star Wars." She compares Andrew to Han Solo, encased in carbonite by Jabba the Hut. Bailey realizes suddenly that they haven't put a catheter into Andrew's bladder, and his bladder could explode and kill him. The team scrambles to cath him.
It turns out that the girl that Andrew was trying to impress (Lola) actually cares about him but is embarrassed to admit it in front of her other friends. Callie tries to convince Lola to do the right thing and comfort Andrew, but when Callie returns and says she couldn't find Lola, Andrew knows she's lying. He crashes when they remove the last piece of cement, and the team rushes him into surgery.
In surgery, he crashes again, but Cristina's experience doing Burke's surgeries enables her to perform a procedure they don't have time to wait for Erica for. When Hahn shows up, she's livid and critical. Cristina tells her to shut the hell up. The Chief reprimands Erica for being a bad teacher.
Andrew's recovering in the burn unit. George stays up all night with him and hasn't been home yet. Lola comes by to visit Andrew and gives him a smooch while Callie and Bailey look on. He's going to be all right.
Sloan has given up on changing. He's obsessed with a threeway with Callie and Hahn, making inappropriate comments whenever the two get near each other. Callie spends the entire cement procedure turned on thinking about sex with Erica. Lola, Andrew's not-girlfriend, makes Callie rethink her reluctance to confront her attraction to Erica. Even Sloan tells Callie to dump him and get with Erica. Callie, apparently, thinks this is a great plan. After work, Callie lays a big one on a stunned Erica. They make out right on the sidewalk in front of the hospital.
The Chief is too preoccupied with the cement case to deal with George, so he sends him off to be Meredith's intern for the day. George is power-mad over being the Chief's intern, and annoyed about being shut out of the Cement Boy's procedures.
Lexie breaks into the Chief's personnel files and discovers that George failed the intern exams by one point. Lexie has a photographic memory and now knows all kinds of secrets about the interns. She knows Alex lied about having testicular cancer and losing...um, a boy to the cancer since she's seen him naked and knows he's intact. She knows that Cristina's dyslexic and still got an MD and a PhD. She's really P.O.ed about George failing his exams by one point. George blames himself for always being willing to settle. He also blames Lexie for telling him because he didn't want to know. Lexie tries to reassure George by telling him how awesome his fourteen letters of recommendation were. She informs him that he's not an also-ran, he's the best among them.
George has an episode on the Chief after staying up overnight with Andrew. He says he shouldn't be doing crap work and deserves another chance. The Chief agrees and informs him he can retake the intern test. When they get home to their crapartment, George kisses Lexie off-handedly in excitement about his test. She takes it a lot more seriously than he does. Uh-oh.
All this, AND the Chief decides to go macho man and demands Adele let him back in the house and take him back. Adele's turned on by all the machismo and they start making out.
Our Take: Derek's going to be in a car accident or something on the way to Rose's.
Your Take: Will George fail his test all over again?
0 Ratings
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