Grey’s Anatomy Season Finale Recap: “Sanctuary/Death and All His Friends”

Grey’s Anatomy season finale recap, hour one, Sanctuary: Seattle Grace turns into a war zone

Source: entertainment.gather.com

Meredith Grey loves the hospital. “Correction: loved it here,” she says. The halls of Seattle Grace are no longer safe, Meredith tells everyone in her voice-over in the Season 6 finale of Grey’s Anatomy on May 20, 2010. Within the first 10 minutes of the show, the shooter–Mr. Gary Clark–has taken control of the hospital, shooting down surgeons and anyone who gets in his way.

[WARNING: RECAP below. SPOILERS! Don’t read if you haven’t watched and don’t want to know what happened! ]

Mr. Clark has appeared a few times on Grey’s, most recently when he brought a lawsuit against the hospital and Chief Derek Shepherd for “killing” his wife by pulling the plug.

“I’m the man,” Mr. Clark says. “I let you decide that she should die… but I’m a man now.” He also thinks he’s God, taking the life of everyone in the hospital into his hands, even as he says surgeons are like God, handing out judgement over who should live and who should die.

But not everyone knows that there’s a shooter in the hospital. Arizona and Callie fight, letting out all their grievances against one another; Arizona doesn’t trust her, Callie doesn’t want to change for her when Arizona isn’t willing to change either. Bailey takes care of patient Mary, played by Mandy Moore, who is receiving a blood transfusion. Hunt and Teddy Altman try to save Pete, a man shot after he got into a car accident; and Cristina is through with Hunt, or so she says. Then there’s Meredith, who has just learned she’s pregnant, and she’s actually happy.

But before she can tell Shepard, the hospital goes on lock-down–meaning no one is supposed to leave the area they are currently in.

Mr. Clark goes through the hospital, constantly getting turned around. No one seems willing to help him, and he’s clearly not thinking clearly. When Mercy-Wester pixie Reed won’t help Clark find the Chief, he shoots her right in the forehead. Karev hears the shot, and he’s shot in his side, left for dead.

As the hour one season finale Sanctuary progresses, everyone is at risk and everyone is trying to save lives.

Lexie and Mark find Karev in the elevator and try to save him on the conference room table. Bailey tries to save Percy, while Mary lends a hand. And then Clark finds Shepherd on the catwalk. The episode has been tense and dramatic all the way through, but this time Clark doesn’t just shoot mindlessly. He talks to Derek, giving Meredith and Cristina the chance to find him–but the friends can’t do anything to help.

Shepherd tries to talk Clark down, talking about why he became a doctor–to save lives after he saw his own father shot down in cold blood. But Clark’s sympathy is forgotten as soon as Shepherd’s assistant April rushes forward. Shepherd is shot, and Clark runs away, like the coward he really is.

But that’s just the first hour. Clark was going after Shepherd, but he wasn’t the only one Clark holds responsible for his wife’s death…. Who else is he after?

Grey’s Anatomy Season Finale Recap, Hour Two, Death and All His Friends: Live or die, choices

The second hour of the Grey’s Anatomy Season 6 season finale, Death and All His Friends, is even more intense than the first. Derek is dying, but in the voice-over he says life is all about choices.

Prior to the season finale, Shonda Rhimes had teased that Cristina and Meredith would be performing the most important surgeries of their lives, and she wasn’t kidding.

But wait, there’s more. (And yes, I know you want to know about Shepherd, but the show made us wait, so I’ll make you wait, too). Bailey does all she can to save Percy, but the elevators are shut off and there’s nothing more she can do but wait with him.

Karev’s life depends on Mark and Lexie. In gasping breaths, he tells Mark that he should live life more fully, meaning: eat more bacon and have more sex. But that’s one of the few light moments of the show. Lexie goes to get more supplies; when she leaves the room, she encounters Mr. Clark.

Mr. Clark knows who she is, because Lexie was one of the three people he had planned to kill. Why? She physically pulled the plug on his wife. He also came to get the chief, as well as the attending doctor, Dr. Weber. But before he can shoot Lexie, SWAT shoots Clark. In the most unbelievable part of the hour, Clark manages to disappear back into Seattle Grace without SWAT running after him, and his path of destruction continues.

Meanwhile, with Hunt and Altman already escorted outside, Cristina is the only cardio surgeon there to save the Chief and her best friend’s husband. She forces Meredith to sit outside the surgery room and not to look. In Ellen Pompeo’s best acting ever, she tells April, “It took me a long time to find him… My best friend’s hands are inside his chest. You don’t get to cry about that.”

Owen Hunt chooses Cristina, and he foolishly rushes back into the hospital to find her. Instead, he finds Clark in the surgery room, holding a gun to Cristina’s head as she operates. Clark demands she stop, but he doesn’t shoot Shepherd again, even though he could end it right there. Rather, he wants to control everyone in the room as he has for the entire show.

In the most heart-wrenching moment of the entire two-hour season finale, Meredith bursts into the room, asking Clark to kill her. Eye for an eye, she says. She’s Lexie’s sister. She’s like a daughter to Dr. Weber. She’s the Chief’s wife. Clark hesitates, giving Hunt the chance to jump at him… but he’s not quick enough. Clark shoots him, too.

Avery, assisting Cristina, tells Cristina to stop, to raise her hands before Clark shoots again… he proves that Shepherd is dead when the heart monitor line goes flat, and Clark walks out of the room, satisfied and ready to find Dr. Weber. Meredith cries out, falls to the floor–and then Avery reconnects Shepherd to the machine. As Cristina finishes working on Shepherd, Meredith helps Hunt, and then after all that stress, it’s no surprise when she miscarries.

But it still isn’t over. Dr. Weber thinks he’s still in charge, and he manages to get into the hospital. He gives Clark a choice, since he has one bullet left: “Life in prison or an afterlife with your wife.” The Chief isn’t afraid to die: “Death is not justice but end of a beautiful journey.”

A single shot rings out and then SWAT finally shows for real.

Shepherd’s voice-over repeats the theme of the hour. “Human life is made up of choices. And it’s not always in her hands.”

This was an amazing season finale, one of the best in the six seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. There’s no cliffhanger like last year–will Izzie and/or George live?–but I don’t care about that. This season finale brought people together, just as it tore them apart by death.

Recap – Grey’s Anatomy Season 6 Finale

Wow. Now that is what I call a powerful season ender we have with Grey’s Anatomy 6.23 and 6.24. From the opening ten minutes before the first commercial break to the very end we are taken on an emotional roller coaster, and we see no one was safe from the shooter tonight. We learn quickly that the shooter is a grieving man we have seen before a couple of times this season – Gary Clark. This is the husband of the woman that died after an operation by Webber and Lexie. She was DNR, so Derek didn’t allow heroic measures to save. This made the man sue the hospital. A lawsuit he lost, and this is his revenge. He comes to the hospital with the intentions of shooting Lexie, Derek and Webber. However, he doesn’t find them, and in his search for these three he shoots many others. He shoots surgeons, nurses and hospital security as he makes his way from floor to floor. The first to die is Reed. He also shoots Alex and Charles, and by the time he is through he finds Derek and shoots him.

Alex lives and Charles lives for some time, but Bailey sees he will die when they can’t get him to an operating room. She sits with him and her patient Mary, played by guest star Mandy Moore, and stays with him until he dies. His last request is he wants Reed to know he loved her. He doesn’t know she has died. Alex also has a moment where he thinks Lexie is Izzie, and he practically begs her not to leave him ever again. This is after Lexie told him she loved him in front of Sloan. We all know Sloan was trying to win her back, but he puts his focus into saving Alex. The shooter does have some kind of heart though.

He doesn’t shoot some. He lets April go. He doesn’t shoot Yang, but he does threaten to do it when he finds her in the operating room trying to repair the damage he did to Derek. Meredith even tries to divert the shooter’s attention to her. She gives up herself, but Cristina says to the shooter that he shouldn’t shoot a pregnant woman. This moment is chaos, and Owen is shot. It is a small round though. Straight through the shoulder. Meredith goes to work on him, and while she is doing this – she has a miscarriage. Webber goes into the hospital. He was out when the shooter came in, and he is the one that finds Gary Clark. Gary’s plan was to shoot Webber, and then himself. There is a problem though. He only has one bullet left. Webber taunts him into making a decision. We aren’t shown that decision, but we see Webber walking and that tells us what happened. The man shot himself. Alex makes it, and once Yang performs surgery and completes it – Derek is also saved. A powerful episode full of emotion. What will happen next season? Will the hospital ever be the same?

Exclusive: ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ boss answers your burning season finale questions

Meredith-greys-anatomyImage Credit: Scott Garfield/ABCSPOILER ALERT: If you have yet to watch last night’s Grey’s Anatomy finale, stop reading now. I repeat, if you have yet to watch last night’s Grey’s Anatomy finale, stop reading now. For the last time, if you have yet to watch last night’s Grey’s Anatomy, stop reading now. Everyone else, onward and downward…

Say what you will about Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes (Baby killer! McDreamy shooter! Nightmare inflictor!), but the woman knows how to write a finale. Last night’s season 6 climax — in which a crazed gunman terrorized Seattle Grace for the better part of two hours — had 15 million viewers (yours truly among them) biting their nails down to nubs while convulsing on the edge of their seats. When the dust settled, there were two significant deaths, one tragic miscarriage, and roughly 100 nagging questions. In this exclusive interview, Rhimes tackles the 20 most popular.

So what have the last 18 hours been like for you? I know you were nervous about this episode.
SHONDA RHIMES:
I was. I was very nervous because I felt like what was coming wasn’t territory that we’d ever covered before, and I didn’t know how the audience was going to take it. I feel like I got a lot of really good responses from it, and I feel like it was an emotional ride for everybody. I wanted it to feel a little bit like a stand-alone movie, and I think it did.

One of the most controversial aspects of the finale was Meredith’s miscarriage. Did you ever consider a different outcome?
RHIMES:
If she didn’t have the miscarriage, she wouldn’t have been pregnant at the beginning of the episode.

So the pregnancy was all about the miscarriage?
RHIMES:
It wasn’t necessarily all about the [miscarriage], but it was about Meredith Grey being truly happy. And for me, when you’re watching that storyline, when Meredith is having a miscarriage and she basically says, “I’m having a miscarriage. I need Lidocaine. Are you going to help me or not?,” you realize how incredibly strong she is and how badass she’s being in that moment. To me, that’s the hero moment. If you don’t have that moment you don’t really have the story of Meredith Grey.

At the end of the episode, she throws her positive pregnancy test in the trash. What did that symbolize?
RHIMES:
The death of the exciting dream that she had been holding on to all day… I feel like you don’t ever know how much you want something until its been taken away from you. Meredith figured out in this episode how much she wanted to be with Derek, how much she wanted to be his wife, and how much she wanted to have his children.

You once said Mer and Der would never have children. Have you changed your mind about that?
RHIMES:
[Long pause] Yes. I’ve written my way out of that I think.

So there may still be a baby in their future?
RHIMES:
Definitely. For me, this is the beginning of the baby story.

I’m curious about the decision to end the episode with just Meredith, as opposed to Meredith at Derek’s bedside.
RHIMES:
The [episode] was not about aftermath. And to me, to see Meredith and Derek happy with everything and fine was a scene of aftermath.

Will the season premiere be about the immediate aftermath?
RHIMES:
I don’t know.

So you haven’t decided whether there will be a time jump?
RHIMES:
We’ve talked about it. We’ve talked about it endlessly. We’ve come up with 40 thousand different scenarios. The truth is, I’m exhausted. We just finished season 6. I don’t even want to think about season 7.

How does Meredith not revert back to dark and twisty Meredith after all of this?
RHIMES:
I don’t know how she doesn’t, but she doesn’t. I think in a lot of ways Meredith has become the mother of the group. I don’t think there’s a lot of room for dark and twisty when everybody’s been affected. We joke a lot in the writers’ room that because Meredith’s childhood was so damaging, in a way, she’s better equipped to handle this stuff than anybody else.

How did you arrive at the decision to kill off Reed and Charles?
RHIMES:
It was both really easy and really hard. We’ve been layering in these people all season, and I wanted you to feel comfortable with them and their personalities. I also really wanted [to lose] people who we barely knew. It’s sort of like what Charles says to Bailey: “I know you really didn’t like me.” And Bailey says, “Oh, I liked you.” And then he’s gone. By the time we fell in love with him, he was gone.

Did you ever think, In order to do this story justice, I need to kill off a major character?
RHIMES:
No, because — and I said this before the episode ever aired — this was not about who lived and who died. To me, it was about what was gained and what was lost. The real death of the episode is the miscarriage.

Had Katherine Heigl not left the show, what role would Izzie have played in the finale? Would she have been killed?
RHIMES:
I have no idea.

Really?
RHIMES:
Really.

Talk to me about the decision to have Alex call out for Izzie after he was shot.
RHIMES:
I really wanted to find a way to deal with how much Alex is missing Izzie. And it felt really poignant to me that if he was lying on a table dying he’d be calling for her.

Lexie confessed her love for Alex, but some fans aren’t buying it. She didn’t really make a decision between Alex and Mark in that moment, did she?
RHIMES:
I don’t think she could have possibly made a decision in that moment. The thing I think is interesting is that Alex definitely made his decision. So I don’t necessarily know that there’s a triangle there. When Alex called for Izzie — when in your hour of need you’re calling for another woman — I think he made his decision. So I don’t think there’s a triangle.

In other words, hope is very much alive for Mark and Lexie?
RHIMES:
Yes, there’s definitely hope.

Let’s shift gears to the actual crisis itself. I get that there’s a certain suspension of disbelief that comes with stories like this. But I don’t get why the SWAT team didn’t take the gunman out after they shot him the first time. It looked like they easily could have gotten a second shot in there.
RHIMES:
They didn’t have a clear shot of him again.

But he was just laying there on the floor.
RHIMES:
But Lexie was in between them. And then she got up and was still in between them. And she’s running away and he’s running away at the same time. So I don’t see that they could have gotten a clear shot.

Fans are joking that Seattle has the worst SWAT team in the country.
RHIMES:
That’s a shame because we have these super awesome SWAT guys who talked us through everything. And we had a meeting in which I said, “Seriously, it would be five guys in a group searching [the entire] hospital? That sounds crazy to me.” And they said that’s how it works. And for me, it made it so much more horrible because that hospital is enormous. And the idea that just five guys are going to save them is ridiculous on so many levels, and yet, that’s how it works. When you’re looking for a shooter, you don’t have a bunch of people all spread out apparently.

Jessica Capshaw is pregnant in real life. Arizona decides at the end of the episode that she wants to have kids with Callie. Is there a connection there?
RHIMES:
No — although I love that Jessica is pregnant. I feel like every year we have to have somebody on the show who’s pregnant and we have to hide the pregnancy. It’s what we do now.

So the pregnancy won’t be written into the storyline?
RHIMES:
Nope.

Where was Bailey’s beau Ben in this episode?
RHIMES:
Ben was not working that day. There was a great debate in the writers’ room that we should have Bailey say something about Ben not working. And I felt like, no, we only see Ben sporadically as it is. He’s not at work that day. And I didn’t want to spend time — because we have so little of it and I had to leave 18 minutes on the cutting room floor —  chatting about where Ben was. I felt like you knew Ben wasn’t there because you didn’t see him there. [But] I think there’s going to [fallout] about that later.

So we’ll see some resolution there — even though Jason George (Ben) is on your new show, Off the Map?
RHIMES:
I hope so.

You mentioned in your blog post about the finale that April and Jackson are “part of the tribe now.” What did you mean exactly?
RHIMES:
For the purpose of story — because I don’t write things thinking, What are the business decisions going on in the background — April and Jackson have really been folded into the group.

I understand no official decision has been made about Sarah Drew and Jesse Williams becoming series regulars next season, but, at this point, can any argument be made against it happening?
RHIMES:
I don’t have one. Do you?

I don’t.
RHIMES:
I don’t have one either.

Creatively, do you want them to stick around?
RHIMES:
I do. It’ll depend on what the studio and the network decide to do with those actors, but I fully advocate to have them.

Kim Raver has already been upgraded to a series regular, but some are questioning Teddy’s future now that Owen has chosen Cristina.
RHIMES:
This whole idea that Teddy only exists [as part of a triangle is ludicrous]. Teddy is Cristina’s teacher. Derek would be dead if Cristina had not had Teddy around. That’s how I look at it. I will say it again, the studio and network have to renew everyone’s options, and they have not done so yet. But it is my intention that we will see Teddy next year.

When Owen chose Cristina, he really chose her, right?
RHIMES:
Yes. He definitely chose her.

So that triangle is, for all intents and purposes, over.
RHIMES:
That triangle is done.

But Cristina broke up with Owen in that episode.
RHIMES:
That is true.

So they’re not technically together.
RHIMES:
I tried really hard to get in an Owen-Cristina scene where he holds her after Derek survived. But all my [medical advisers] kept saying, “If Owen holds Cristina, she can no longer operate on Derek. She’s become unsterile.” There was a big fight about it and finally I had to go with “the look.” And I felt like Sandra [Oh] and Kevin [McKidd] adequately and brilliantly portrayed in “the look” that there was still something there.

You previously teased this episode as a game-changer. How has the game been changed?
RHIMES:
Here’s why I said that: When you face a situation like this — when the entire hospital has turned into a crime scene — everyone you know has faced life or death. It’s an incredibly traumatic event. Everything you knew, believed, felt, and required of the characters in terms of what their stories have been or what you believed about them no longer exists. Part of what’s interesting about next season is that we can start anywhere — in any emotional state — and almost anything can happen because we just came out of this. It’s not like tomorrow they come back being the exact same characters. They’re all sort of fundamentally changed.

Related: May Sweeps Scorecard has latest deaths, pregnancies, proposals, and more!

Grey’s Anatomy Episode Recap: “Sanctuary/Death and All His Friends”

Grey’s Anatomy

In the two-hour season finale of Grey’s Anatomy, a gunman terrorizes Seattle Grace, killing surgeons and anyone else standing in his way of finding his one target: Derek Shepherd. Meanwhile, Meredith has some big news for Derek that may alter their future.

“For most people, the hospital is a scary place,” Meredith kicks off the episode by saying in voice-over.” A hostile place. A place where bad things happen,” she continues as we see montages of Alex and Lexie catching some sleep in the on-call room, a woman mourning over the death of a loved one, and Richard explaining to a waitress that he’s now been sober for six months.

“Most people would prefer church or school or home,” she says as we see Callie and Cristina both crying into their cereal over their failed relationships.

“But I grew up here,” she adds as she takes a pregnancy test. “While my mom was on rounds, I learned to read in the O.R. gallery, I played in the morgue, I colored with crayons on old E.R. charts. The hospital was my church, my school, my home. The hospital was my safe place, my sanctuary.”

And as she learns that she is pregnant, she says, “I love it here. Correction, I loved it here.” And we get our first glimpse of the shooter: Gary Clark, the man whose wife died in the hospital after Derek made the decision to pull the plug.

Meredith reveals the news of her pregnancy to Cristina. Not wanting to ruin the moment, Cristina says she’s fine about the Teddy-Owen situation and urges Mer to go reveal the big news to Derek. However, Der’s a bit flummoxed at the time with paperwork, so she wants to wait until that night. “There’s going to be a lot of dirty sex for you tonight,” she says.

In the shooter’s first failed attempt to find Derek, Alex shoots him down, telling him to find a nurse. We then zoom in on Arizona’s storyline, as one of her patients has appendicitis. She has plans to go into surgery later that day. Arizona then has her first run-in with Callie, who scorns her with the silent treatment. Speaking of problems, Owen is now practically shunned by both Cristina and Teddy. More on that later.

Elsewhere, we meet Bailey’s new patient, Mary (played by Mandy Moore), who will be unable to go into surgery yet. So unfortunately, she has to have a colostomy bag for another day. Since she’s not going to have surgery, her husband (played by Ryan Devlin) runs out to get her some real food.

Nurse Tyler tries to keep a woman out of her husband’s E.R. room. After getting into a car accident, the patient got out to give his information, but the guy shot him and drove off. (Who else is betting that Gary Clark was the guy?) Owen allows the woman to say goodbye to her husband, much to Teddy’s chagrin, who insists there isn’t enough time. When Cristina gets upset she won’t be joining in the surgery, Owen interjects, with Cristina snapping back.

Another failed attempt for Gary Clark to find the chief leads him into a storage room in the hospital. He asks Reed where Derek is, but she insists that she’s busy, even going so far as to say she’s a doctor, not a tour guide. Lesson of the day: Don’t be rude. Just as she snippily rattles on, Gary shoots her between the eyes.

Alex hears the gun shot and comes to see what’s going on. He takes a bullet in the side of the chest before Gary moves on. Alex crawls down the hall to the elevator, but he’s in no capacity to push a button and be discovered by anyone.

After Cristina gives Teddy an update during surgery, Owen offers for her to scrub in, but she declines. He leaves the surgery to confront her anger, and it escalates into a full-on breakup. “Do you love her or do you love me?” Oops, don’t take that long to answer Owen. “I’m done, we’re done,” Cris says before walking away.

Next lesson of the day: Watch where you’re walking. While April is writing in her notebook, she trips over Reed’s body, breaking her nose when she lands. But she notices there’s way too much blood to be from her nose, and then turns to see Reed’s dead body. She rushes to Derek’s office, spluttering on that she never knew there could be so much blood in a human body. She finally reveals the Reed was shot in the head, leading Derek to call the police and institute a lockdown on the hospital.

Gary’s next attempt to find Derek comes when he’s in the elevator with Cristina. Unknowingly, Cristina describes exactly where Derek’s office is…Oh Cristina, if you only knew. Thankfully, Gary is pleased by this information and doesn’t put a bullet in Cris.

At the coffee shop, Richard notices hordes of police cruisers heading in the hospital’s direction. Just as he runs out, we see Callie making her way to the pediatric wing. Perfect timing, they’re now on lockdown, which means Callie and Arizona will be stuck on the same floor for quite a while.

Derek makes his way to the O.R. and tasks Avery with breaking the news to Teddy and Owen about the lockdown, but Avery must wait until the patient is stable. Avery has a heartbreaking moment as his hand proceeds to shake in surgery, but he can’t reveal to Teddy and Owen why. Once it is revealed later, Owen and Teddy volunteer to take the patient through the dangerous halls, lest the patient die in the O.R.

As Mark tells Lexie he misses her, the gunman finally shoots in a public place, killing a nurse and sending everyone into a frenzy. Mark pulls Lexie over to the elevators to try to get her out of harm’s way, but when they push the button, the door opens to a passed out Alex.

As Richard tries to get past the police to get into the hospital, we zoom over to Mark and Lexie bringing Alex’s body into a conference room. Alex can’t be moved because he’s losing too much blood; there was no exit wound for his injury. “I’m going to kick that guy’s a– when I see him,” Alex says through gritted teeth.

Cristina and Meredith wander through the hospital (come on!) on their way to find Derek to finally tell him the good news. Mer says that Cris will be the godmother to their child, meaning if Mer and Der die, Cris has to take care of the baby. “I have to admit, I kind of hope you and Derek die just a little bit,” says Cris. Seriously? Derek finds them, pushing them into a storage closet before revealing that there’s a shooter loose in the hospital.

Mary can tell something is wrong with Dr. Bailey, though just as she’s questioning her, Dr. Percy comes rushing in. He reveals that there’s a shooter in the hospital and that he’s on their floor. Bailey peeks into the hallway to see Gary kill a security guard. She instructs Percy to hide in the bathroom and Mary to play dead as she jumps under the bed to hide.

Gary comes in their room and loses it further at the sight of Mary’s seemingly dead body. He hears Percy in the bathroom and asks him if he’s a surgeon. Next lesson of the day: Don’t say yes to that question! He shoots him in the stomach, and then pulls Bailey from beneath the bed. Thankfully Bailey learned today’s lesson and says she’s a nurse. Gary reloads his gun and apologizes for the mess before walking out.

As Lexie and Mark work on Alex, he screams out in pain. Mark tells her to shut him up, but her shushing doesn’t work. She finally sticks gauze in his mouth to damper the screams from attracting the gunman’s attention. Lexie later volunteers to get Alex blood for a transfusion, sending her into the dangerous hallways of Seattle Grace.

Back at the peds wing, Arizona calls Callie out for being rude to her. Callie retorts that she tried to be her friend, but she’d rather hate her guts instead. Arizona says she’s not the bad guy and that Callie may just be in love with love, and never actually loved her. They’re interrupted by Arizona’s appendicitis patient, who will need surgery immediately.

Bailey enlists Mary’s help with trying to treat Dr. Percy. Bailey suddenly notices water on the gauze she just put on the wound. “Dr. Bailey, you’re crying,” Mary says. (Chandra Wilson is amazing!) “We’re all going to fine,” Bailey says, but Percy pleads with her to be honest with him. She says he’s not going to die, but even I’m starting to get worried here.

Still being stuck in the storage room is about to be a problem for Cristina and Meredith, who says that she’s been suffering morning sickness around this same time every day. Cris sees the shooter going down the hallway and figures out that he’s hunting for Derek. Cue Mer puking.

The moment we’ve been dreading: Gary has finally found Derek on the cat walk. Derek tries to explain to him that everyone makes mistakes, that Derek knows Gary is actually a good man. All the while, Meredith and Cristina look on from across the hospital, with the latter holding Mer back.

Finally, Gary lowers his gun and we breathe a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, April has the worst timing ever as she runs out of Derek’s office, elated that he’s OK. Gary takes this opportunity to shoot Derek in the chest.

The second hour opens on April rattling off her life story in hopes that Gary will not shoot her as well. Gary tells her to run, leaving Derek to bleed out on the cat walk. The gunman also has to make his exit as he sees the SWAT team enter the hospital.

Meanwhile, Cristina tries to keep Meredith in the storage room, but you can’t keep a wife from her hubby. She forcefully knocks Cris out of the way before running into the dangerous halls.

Speaking of, Teddy notes that it’s ridiculous that she and Owen have survived wars and now they have to worry about a gunman in their hospital. She also says that Owen loves both she and Cristina and he must choose, but he declines, saying he’s choosing neither.

As Richard yells at the police for not having enough information, various 911 calls come in from Miranda, Owen, Mark, and Cristina, who exclaim that Derek has been shot. As Meredith is trying to keep Derek conscious, Cris says that Derek is going to need surgery. Enlisting April’s help, they move Derek down to the O.R.

Lexie comes face-to-face with Gary while getting blood and supplies for Alex. She’s one of the few doctors who actually knows who he is. He reveals that his original plan was to only kill Derek, Richard and Lexie. Before he can shoot her, a SWAT team member shoots him in the chest, beckoning Lexie to run. When she makes it back to the room, she blames herself for Alex being shot and says that she loves him, much to Mark’s dismay.

As Callie and Arizona treat the appendicitis patient, Gary enters the pediatrics wing. To stop Gary from harming anyone, Callie offers him bandages and asks him to leave. (Could anyone tell what Arizona was whispering while using her body as a shield over her patient?) Callie calms the patient by saying Arizona is the best doctor to fix her up, and the ice thaws between the two.

Derek promises Mer he’s not going to die, as Cris and April go on the hunt to find Teddy. After Cris calms April down, they find Jackson, who decides that Cristina will have to operate on Derek. Cris tells Mer she’s not allowed in the surgery, enlisting April’s help to keep Mer in check.

Delusional from his loss of blood, Alex thinks Lexie is actually Izzie and begs her not to leave him again. Thankfully, SWAT shows up and is able to clear them out of the hospital.

Owen and Teddy make it out of the hospital with their patient, just as Richard finds a way of getting back in. After being patted down, Teddy realizes defeat in her relationship with Owen, and urges him to go back into the hospital to get his girl.

Meredith tells April that she’s not allowed to cry over Derek, that it took her forever to find love and concede to opening her heart to someone. “Reed was my best friend. She died today,” April says as Mer takes her hand.

Back to Percy, who has no chance of living if he doesn’t get to an O.R.  Bailey and Mary drag him to the elevator, but SWAT has already shut it down. Bailey finally loses it, screaming to the heavens in frustration. She admits to Percy that he is going to die, but he won’t be alone. He asks that they tell Reed he was really in love with her and dies in Bailey’s arms soon thereafter.

Owen finally arrives to Cristina’s O.R., but asks Meredith to stay put. Gary is already in there with a gun to Cristina’s head, yelling for her to stop trying to save Derek. “This is the woman that I love,” Owen says. “You shoot her, you touch her, and I will kill you.”

“Shoot me,” yells Meredith, explaining that Lexie is her sister, Richard is the closest thing he has to family and Derek is her husband; if he wants to hurt any of them, he should shoot her. “I’m your eye for an eye,” she says. Before Gary can shoot, Cristina reveals that Meredith is pregnant. With his guard slightly down, Owen tries to jump in, but is shot in the chest.

Jackson and Cristina immediately stop working on Derek, with Jackson telling Gary that he’ll die in moments. Meredith cries out, but the heart monitor goes dead, along with Derek. Once Gary leaves, Jackson reattaches the monitor leads. Yay, Derek is not dead! Thankfully, neither is Owen. Cristina yells to Meredith to take Owen across the hall and save him.

As Meredith tries to save Owen, she suddenly has a miscarriage, but can’t let that stand in the way of her mission. It’s so tragic, but at least now Meredith knows she wants to have a child, so I have a feeling we’ll be seeing much more of that next season.

Richard roams the halls, finally coming face-to-face with Gary Clark. Apparently, in Seattle you can buy a gun really easily, Gary explains. He bought a ton of ammunition in preparation of coming there, but couldn’t fit it all because he wanted to bring his flask, which leaves him with only one bullet left.

Gary’s choice is to either kill himself or kill Richard, who declines to take a drink from Gary’s flask before pouring it out. “What’s it going to be Mr. Clark. Me or You?” Richard ponders, explaining that Gary’s options are really only going to prison or living in the afterlife with his wife. “I’ve lived,” Richard pushes, saying that death would just be “the end of a beautiful journey.” We don’t quite get to see the ending, but Gary is out of the picture.

At the end of the episode, we learn that Alex is fine, with Lexie clearly choosing him over Mark. The same can’t initially be said for Derek, who codes on the table. Mary finally reunites with her husband, as Bailey tries to hunt down Dr. Reed and deliver Percy’s final message. Arizona says to Callie that they’ll have tons of kids; all she wants to do is be with her.

Cristina Yang for the win: She saves Derek’s life, as Mer breathes a sigh of relief. The episode closes on Meredith throwing her pregnancy test in the trash before going to see her husband.

Leave a comment

5 Comments

  1. Dawn

     /  September 23, 2010

    I think this is the most ridiculous show ever created.

  2. marie

     /  January 13, 2011

    Yes this show is ridiculous (my husband is a nurse and snorts every time I watch it). But that is what it is all about – do you really think The West Wing is what politicians do all day, or 6 Feet Under is what undertakers do? This is intelligent, witty television that raises some interesting life scenarios.

  3. Laura Hall

     /  May 3, 2013

    Why was the shooter not fully addressed?! I want to know why the writers gave him the easy way out! And with sympathy! Ok, he was upset because he was too stupid and selfish to understand his wife’s wishes. So not only does he sue the hospital and Derek, he shoots and kills quite a few people. With Webber’s little speech, we’re supposed to feel sorry for him? He should have been captured and taken to jail. Perhaps if the deaths weren’t so dramatic and graphic, the poetry of this piece wouldn’t be so lost. Instead, the writers allows a coward who was fully aware of his actions take the easy way out, especially with the Justice/fairness undertone (“Eye for an eye”). That interview was crap. Ms. Rhimes, you and your staff were lazy and it showed. Yes, three years later it still makes ZERO sense and still pisses a lot of people off!

  1. Grey’s Anatomy Season Finale « S&E Blog
  2. Top Posts — WordPress.com

Leave a comment