Grey’s Anatomy Recap: Dream Houses and Relationship Nightmares

Attention! Attention! Important news, Grey’s Anatomy fans: We’ve got a new dream house to explore.

For a show that’s mostly about cutting people open (well, okay, half about cutting people open), I’ve always appreciated Grey’s warm, tight embrace of real-estate porn. From the cozy Ellis Grey frat house to the stunning views in Jackson’s (now Jo’s) penthouse to the disused fire station that Cristina and Owen transformed into the industrial apartment of my dreams way back when the surgeons of Grey Sloan have proven time and time again that they are avid readers of Architectural Digest. Naturally, the place Meredith and Nick just closed on is no exception — and although we’ve only seen the very cool circular breakfast nook so far, I’m excited to drool over more of it in the weeks to come. Who knows — maybe one day she’ll lead us all on a tour and show off her bowl of limes. A girl can dream!

There’s just one problem with this gorgeously decorated purchase. Well, it’s more like a potential problem. Actually, it’s not even really a problem because all of these surgeons are very rich. Still, it might be an inconvenience: Meredith and Amelia got turned down for a grant this week, so for now, at least, if they want to move their Alzheimer’s research forward, they’ll need to fund it themselves. And the reason they lost the grant will either thrill or repulse you. Friends, how are we feeling about Tom Koracick’s return?

Honestly, I’m pretty excited. Of course Koracick is using the Catherine Fox Foundation’s money to leapfrog Meredith and Amelia’s research. He’s a tool and a heel, and hopefully, he’ll get to come back on a semi-regular basis to poke and prod Meredith and Amelia as they race to find a cure. This is, after all, the problem with letting the public use your work. Sometimes, a fantastic team makes a discovery that helps push your own process forward, and sometimes, a former colleague (and, in Amelia’s case, mentor) uses it to tap dance all over your nerves.

Meredith and Amelia will have their work cut out for them. It turns out that Koracick has already used antibiotics to trigger a decrease of Alzheimer’s markers in mice, which puts him several steps ahead. To make matters worse, it’s pretty obvious he’s doing all of this for clout.

Meredith gave the grant board an impassioned speech about how sexist it is that Koracick is only testing male mice despite the fact that women are diagnosed twice as often, which is a very “Meredith” thing to do. Sadly, the grant still went to Koracick. But this is where being astronomically wealthy can come in handy. Just like they can afford real estate worthy of a cover story, she and Nick can also apparently fund a massive research project at the same time. Love that for them! And if there’s any money left over, my wire info is …

While Meredith and Nick embrace teamwork to make the dream work, other couples are looking a little rocky. I’m speaking, of course, about Owen and Teddy, who just walked out of a couples-therapy appointment looking less than soothed. It’s exactly as we predicted: The therapist suggested opening the marriage, and Owen freaked because of course he did. Teddy feels “stifled and stuck,” which feels like a pseudonym someone would use while writing to “Dear Abby,” and deep down, Owen knows he’ll need to compromise. But can they really handle the complexity and deep communication required to make a non-monogamous relationship work? Based on everything we’ve seen so far, I’m gonna go with, “LOL, absolutely not!” But damn, if it won’t be fun to watch them try. Can we get that spa day for Teddy and Cass Beckman on the books now?

And yes, obviously, Blue and Molly are also struggling. How could they not when she just [checks notes] broke off her engagement to date the former love of her life, whom she forgot thanks to car-accident-induced amnesia? Her ex-fiancé, Dave, won’t stop texting, and to make matters worse, she wants to try an experimental memory-recovering procedure, while Blue would rather serve up a feast of milestone meals from their relationship to see if the tastes and smells bring anything back. To be fair, it’s a very romantic gesture, but it’s also hard not to see the meal — specifically, the fact that he immediately had to run to the hospital after plating all of it — as one big, mouthwatering metaphor. We’ve all learned by now that it’s very hard to maintain a relationship in this stage of one’s medical career, and I can only imagine it’s even more impossible when amnesia is involved.

Blue was less than thrilled to find Dav in his living room when he got home, but frankly, this was inevitable. Whether they’re getting back together or having the long, heart-wrenching post-engagement-break-off conversation, Molly and Dave were going to need to face one another eventually. The question now is which one they’re about to do. As a heartless monster who’s already bored of this story line, I’m kind of hoping Molly has decided that, actually, she doesn’t want to spend all her time waiting for Blue to finish scut work at the hospital. But we’ll see!

It’s remarkable that Blue found that much to keep him busy this week, because the patients themselves were mostly pretty boring. We had a couple whose angst over a very overdue new baby got Owen and Link talking about their wives’ nontraditional-relationship aspirations while they installed a car seat as well as a teenage boy with a sunken chest. No offense to them, but … yawn. Although in the latter case, it was fun to watch Millin squirm when she realized that during her one night of fun at Joe’s, she unwittingly slept with the teen’s patient advocate, Adriana. Oop! After some very awkward conversations with Dr. Beltran, who was apparently once married to Adrianna (again, oop!) and accidentally puncturing the patient’s heart (OOPS!), Millin decides to take a break from relationships and ask Dr. Ndugu to be her mentor, which is probably for the best. Anything to avoid a nightmare like this ever again.

The only real interesting case this week was Melissa, whose gallstones turned out to be a one-in-a-million cancer. Because Simone caught the cancer before anyone else, including Bailey, she earned herself the first solo surgery in her class (well, the first sanctioned one, at least). This stirs up some feelings for Lucas, given that this was supposed to be his patient. It doesn’t help that Millin made a comment earlier in the episode that all of them would soon be overseeing a fresh crop of incoming interns — except for him. Ouch. At least Melissa will soon get to go home cancer-free and watch her daughter play a hot hors d’oeuvre in Beauty and the Beast.

This feels like further proof that Simone is set to inherit the Meredith Grey slot from the second coming of Team MAGIC. She’s got the heart, the relative with Alzheimer’s, and, as we saw with that diagnosis and appy, the surgical chops to prove it. Let’s just hope that her growing success doesn’t come back to bite her relationship with Lucas.

The OR Board

• I’m glad Jo and Link are having a formal wedding and not just doing the courthouse thing. We’ve waited long enough for this! Give us the dress, the dancing, and the cake. That said, I agree with Jo that cover bands are cheesy. I look forward to them hiring a DJ who, counter to reality, will probably not play “Cha Cha Slide.”

• As someone who loved her on The Walking Dead and Grace and Frankie, I was stoked to see Briana Venskus-Vazquez pop up on my screen as Adriana! Given her history with Dr. Beltran, there’s always a chance she could come back. Would love to see it!

• What, specifically, do we think is causing Lucas’s angst? Is it being held back, or is it that he turned down moving to Chicago and advancing in his career because he couldn’t leave Simone? He was clearly happy for her when she got the solo surgery, but walking out on Webber’s “and this is why solo surgeries are both important and not important” speech felt like confirmation that these feelings were bigger than he wanted to admit.