Monday, April 4, 2011

"Grey's Anatomy" 7x18 "The Hot Mess Beneath the Song"

Oh Greys Anatomy musical, I wanted to love you so much. Unfortunately I can’t honestly say that I did. I am going to recap this episode song by song like my Gleecaps. So let’s dive right into the hot mess that was Greys.

“Chasing Cars” The episode starts off with a jolt. Arizona awakes from her post crash daze only to find half of Callie’s body in the car, and the other half through the windshield. Why, might you ask, was Callie flung from her seat while Arizona was only attacked by an airbag? The answer is because she was not wearing a seatbelt (for which I blame Mark). Cue Callie’s out of body experience singing a line from the opening song as real life Callie freaks out. The extra playing the truck driver runs up to a frantic Arizona and only says “Oh, Oh no mumble mumble” in what sounds like a Canadian accent. Forty-six seconds in and the future of this episode is already looking pretty bleak and supposedly “mysterious.”

When the ambulance pulls up every important surgeon at Seattle Grace (aka the whole cast of the show) is waiting. Out of Body Callie, starts singing “Chasing Cars” and the vocals are overpowered by the instrumentals which make it sound weak and timid. As Owen is telling Callie to “stay with him” he breaks into song and I break into my first laughing fit of the hour. Callie reacts in a similar fashion and has a freak out behind her oxygen mask. Kevin McKidd moves his head too much and makes too many facial expressions when singing. Actually he does that when he acts too. Probably why I hate him so much. Bailey’s singing while acting was much better. Her singing did not change her actions which made it easier to watch and accept that a surgeon can sing and cut into a person at the same time.

For the second time in the scene a teary eyed Arizona stares at the closing elevator door and says “I asked her to marry me and a truck came out of nowhere.” My tears of laughter started to tearn into tears of pain.





“Breathe (2AM)” Well, just as I was about to get emotional Lexie follows her line “just breathe” by singing the song “Breathe”. Cue the next round of laughing fits. Very subtle writers, very subtle. Lil’ Grey continues belting out her mediocre version of the song while comforting Sloan. Karev goes to check up on Arizona which is really touching. These two work together so well and yet we rarely see them interact on a personal level.

We also find out the Gyno is not up to par with other genius Seattle Grace surgeons (actually is she even a surgeon?). She doesn’t know how to deal with this week’s medical emergency. Gyno bitches to Karev about looking like a dumbass in front her colleagues just as Royalty (aka Addison) disembarks her helicopter. I was under the impression the episode could only go up from here, now that Addison had graced my screen. The Gyno’s not so happy though since Addison calls her out for being the worst doc in the world. The Gyno then gets banished from Addison’s regal presence.

“How We Operate” After listening to the surgeons argue about what to do with Callie and her holey heart, Owen gets frustrated and sings at them to “calm down, get straight.” It is painful to watch. The door closes and luckily it becomes background music as Meredith notices a big ole’ hickey on Karev’s neck, courtesy of The Gyno. After being pestered by the twisted sisters whether he is in love, he retorts with the best dialogue of the episode:
Karev: Big deal, she works here at Seattle Grace Mercy Death, so I’m pretty sure she’s pretty much going to go crazy or get cancer or shot by a gunman or hit by a truck. Don’t get your hopes up for Karev’s big happily ever after.

“Wait” Bailey escapes the bickering Arizona and Mark to what starts as a nice soothing song. That is until April and Lexie (who are in a completely different rooms) starts singing chorus with her and I start cracking up again. The soothing song in the background does not quench the fiery argument between 2/3 of the new aged parenting trio. Arizona is trying to keep a rational head among the chaos that is now her life and calls Mark “just a sperm donor.” Mark cuts her off and tells her “you’re not anything! You’re nothing!” What is that you guys hear? It might millions of lesbians around the world getting their pitchforks ready.

I would go on more about this scene but I just got distracted by another horribly cheesy line. After the song “Wait” concludes Cristina exclaims “wait!” as she discovers how to save Callie. Out of all the things she could have said they made her say “wait”? She could have said “eureka”, “oh golly”, or the always favorite but underused “zoinks”. So many options!

“Running on Sunshine” Suffice to say this was the most confusing number of the episode. The scene rewinds to moments before the car crash, but now the car is amongst the clouds. Is this supposed to be heaven?

As Arizona yells at Callie to put her seatbelt on, Callie starts singing a sexy song to her. Cut to Eli singing and dancing with Bailey in the hospital then to Owen singing to Cristina in the most awkwardly acted sex scene I’ve ever seen on the show. Next we see Altman being serenaded by the love struck Scott Foley as she takes a pillow from behind his head and FLINGS IT INTO THE CORNER OF THE ROOM!!

What is going on here? This episode is getting more and more insane! Wait I figured out why they used this song! It is so I could remember The Gyno’s name which happens to be Lucy. Okay, good to know. The song can be over now. Sadly it did not immediatly end. Thank you Grey’s; it was at this point that I decided I needed to watch “Once More With Feeling” on repeat for a full day to recover from this atrocity.

“Universe & U” Somehow they did it again. Arizona’s speech was starting to get me emotional and then the singing began. Enough said.

“Grace” Everyone rushes to the OR as Callie sings and I get dizzy from the camera work.

“How to Save a Life” Shocker of the night: Callie ends up on the OR table while Arizona and Mark watch from the gallery. Dr. Altman gets taken off the case so Cristina can perform her Burke perfected heart surgery. Owen tells Cristina to take the surgery one step at a time before he belts out “Step one you say we need to talk.” The writing in this episode is killing me. So is Owen'a singing, at least this time he has a facemask on so I don’t have to see his facial expressions. The song gets very “Grey’s” like as each character sings a line of the song pertaining only to their personal problems and not the fact they are trying to save one of their fellow surgeons and friends. Meredith sings a line about how she feels her and Derek may be drifting apart while Altman sings about she lost a friend because Owen took Cristina’s side instead of hers, and now she doesn’t know how to save a life.

Finally, with about 9 minutes left (not airtime but in footage time), the episode starts to take a turn for the better. Mark and Arizona are given meaningful lyrics to sing and they deliver them pretty well . Speaking of delivery, Addison delivers the 1lb 1oz baby (which I will NOT show a screencap of. I will not force you to see that again) and Mark and Arizona rush down to the OR. After overcoming her fear, Arizona steps in to save her baby’s life. It was the first scene of the episode that emotions were not disrupted from sudden unnecessary singing.

“The Story” I truly loved this song and performance. At first I was a little apprehensive about the camera work of the scene, feeling that the abrupt cuts of Callie were out of place but upon second, third, and maybe a few more viewings, it grew on me. Sara Ramirez’s vocals were stunning. I loved how Callie woke herself up and the first thing out of her mouth was “yes”. She woke up so she could marry Arizona. I am kinda obsessed with this song now. As much as I wish I could say that this song redeemed the episode, the rest of the episode was so wrong that this song just couldn’t make it right.

I really wish they didn’t make this episode a musical because it could have been one of the top ten episodes of the series. This episode could have been a homerun if a) it wasn’t a musical b) it was a musical but there was more comedy than drama in it. The moral of the story is that in order to have a successful musical episode of TV you have to either be Glee or have a demon come and make you sing about bunnies!

What did you guys think? Was I too harsh? Was I too lenient? Let me know

APB

1 comments:

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