McDreamy turns McUgly on ‘Grey's’

The meanest mope: When last we saw Derek, his pregnant patient had died. He fell into a deep depression, camping on the couch without benefit of razor or shower. Meredith’s friends eyeballed him suspiciously as he morphed into a mountain man, but things got even worse when he learned at a deposition that more of his patients die than live. Choosing to see himself as an accomplished serial killer, McDreamy refused to do any more operating and walked out of the hospital.

After the Chief spilled the beans to Meredith that Derek had been planning to propose, she discovered he’d moved out and went and found him at his trailer. She tried to talk him into going back to work and revealed that she knew about the ring. He responded by hatefully snubbing her, dumping her, and throwing away the ring right in her face. They are totally going to be together forever!

You knew it was coming: Izzie took the interns through the process of diagnosing “Patient X,” not telling them it was actually Izzie herself. When they claimed that Patient X was fine, Izzie got so upset that she described hallucinations about a dead fiancé in such detail that anyone hip to the sensational office gossip could have concluded it was her. Instead, led by a sharp-eyed Lexie, they ultimately discovered that Patient X had melanoma that had spread to her liver and brain. Izzie silently suffered through their uninformed “don’t buy any green bananas” humor about Patient X’s minuscule survival chances, then told only Cristina, who’s too mean to be devastated.

I’m with the band: Alex treated a marching-band nerd who had a seizure during a band performance and was shunned by the rest of the nerds for costing them the trophy. Alex became convinced that she had something cardiac, and not the epilepsy she’d had treated for years. Though Arizona protested, Hunt backed Alex up in testing the girl’s heart, revealing an arrhythmia that could be resolved with a pacemaker. Afterwards, Alex even defended her to the other nerds, concealing the pacemaker and informing them instead that she had a fully repaired “epileptic bone” and they’d better back off. Thrilled by his great day, Alex ran to tell Izzie, who was so happy she almost forgot she was dying.

Tough decisions: Two sisters and a brother planned stomach-removal surgeries after discovering a genetic likelihood of gastric cancer. After they learned about post-op complications and smelly and unpleasant lifestyle changes, only the oldest sister went through with surgery, but after the doctors found a small tumor, her younger sister agreed to the operation too. Their brother, however, didn’t share his sisters’ fears, because their mother’s awful death happened when he was young. He didn’t have surgery, but his sister vowed that she’d never stop nagging, and her nagging would save his life.

Random bits: Lexie and Mark bonded; Owen and Cristina crept toward romance; Callie and Arizona flirted; Bailey and the Chief made up with a handy assist from Adele.

Linda Holmes is a writer in Washington, D.C.

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