Can It Be? A Successful Grey’s Anatomy Wedding Full Of Cuddles?

The curse is broken! A Grey’s wedding featuring Callie and Meredith managed to go ahead exactly as planned. I mean, yes there was a five hour delay and the bridesmaids all missed the wedding so they could cuddle with their respective boos but Bailey had drama, overcame her drama and then got hitched.

And what a relief. For a show that’s often about how petulant and childlike badass surgeons can be this episode was full of surgeons being healthy and communicative adults (communication was the theme!). Bailey and her husband to be actually talked. Not at each other, but too each other. She revealed the massive insecurities she’d been clinging to ever since he proposed last season and he, wanting to be boyfriend/fiance/husband of the year said he loved her and already knew.

He was genetically engineered to be perfect for all woman who want love and work and happiness but don’t need a dude crowding them. MARRY ME BEN.

Then they got married and if you didn’t swoon just a little you have no soul.

Back at the ranch (okay the hospital, and okay a big chunk of Bailey and Ben’s story took place there too, but whatever) Owen and Cristina spent a little time dancing around one another. In the last episode, waaaaay back in December, he revealed his complicity in her crash and his desire to help her as best he could and then she revealed her desire for his penis…and heart. For the first time in a long time, as in for the first time in perhaps more than a year, Cristina and Owen were on the same page and damned if it didn’t rekindle a romance I though went up in flames a while ago. Only they still got a divorce!

The most romantic divorce ever.

You may now kiss your ex.

It’s the optimist in me. Back in 1917 my great grandparents divorced while my grandmother was a toddler. He went off to war and she stayed home and raised a daughter all by herself. Then after the war they realized they couldn’t live without one another, remarried, had my great uncle, and spent another forty years together, dying only two weeks apart. All they needed was a little time to clear their heads. To, as Owen so eloquently put it, get out of the box they’d put themselves in.

And perhaps that’s all Cristina and Owen need too. To just get out of the box that tells them who and how to be–though it won’t solve the fundamental problems in their relationship. In a society geared towards structured happy endings where people are married, with a house and gorgeous kids and perfect jobs how can Cristina and Owen find their happy ending? What can it even be?

Especially on Grey’s which is fond of reinforcing that idea of happiness. Look at Meredith and Derek, Bailey and Ben, even Callie and Arizona. They’re very stereotypical in their happy endings. Granted that last couple isn’t completely happy. Not quite yet. There’s still the matter of Arizona’s amputation and the metric ton of baggage it has brought with it. Baggage that was finally–finally dealt with last night.

Arizona has been at Callie’s throat for half the season, bottling up all her rage and directing it with laser-like accuracy at her wife. And Callie has holed up and gone into survival mode. Living day to day with her wife at arm’s length. Even as Arizona slowly found her way back to herself Callie couldn’t. Her smile has been always just a little wary, her physical effection just a touch too polite. They haven’t communicated so much as talked at one another–an issue that wrecked Cristina and Owen’s marriage and very nearly ruined Bailey’s wedding. So of course in the episode all about communication they finally connect. Heartbreakingly, awkwardly and honestly.

Everything’s dealt with in just a little bit of dialogue, from Callie’s “it’s just a leg” tirade last episode that was equal parts cheer worthy and grossly presumptuous to her suggestion of running to Bailey to Arizona’s frigidness, cruelty and deeply seated and natural insecurities. All of it was put on the table. First delicately addressed as they try to have sex for the first time in five months.

She’s all like, “You’re sexy, allow me to touch your hair why no music whatsoever plays so we can feel even more uncomfortable.”

They didn’t need to say what they felt, and honestly if Arizona had just been flat out honest in that moment it might not have made it into Callie’s brain. It was seeing her wife’s terror over something as natural as sex that finally reached Callie–though the speech about not being ready later in the episode certainly helped. As did their cuddling on the bed and Arizona’s plea to Callie to never leave.

Things are looking bright for them, and for the divorcees, the recently married, and even the old hat couple that is Meredith and Derek.

There were so many people cuddling their eternal boo bears this episode.

And with all that catharsis and joy naturally SOMETHING had to go wrong. This is Grey’s Anatomy after all. So poor Adele was sacrficed to the drama gods so that all the other couples might endure.

She danced away to “My Funny Valentine” and I cried even though I knew I was being manipulated to those tears.

Notes

• Tuck had to fill in as a bridesmaid because Bailey has the worst bridesmaids.
• James Picken Jr absolutely NAILED it when Webber realized his wife’s surgery was a success. Such bittersweet joy and sadness in that moment.
• So Alex and Jo are now friends and they had a full on SAD OFF and it was brilliant. This was exactly what I needed for me to like them as a potential couple. Where before they were smooshed together unappealingly now there’s an actual foundation to build on. Especially as Jo stopped taking his shit. That was a big deal. I kind of hate when a dude dumps on a lady and she likes it. Jo weeping to make him uncomfortable? Awesome.

FEELS LIKE A POLAR BEAR.

• Grumpy and Jackson got it on in the back of a car and Grumpy was revealed to be the rest of the universe. Like she says what we all think when looking at Jackson. 100% approve.
• Happy and April are the same person. They can’t hook up because it would create some sort of quantum paradox. Also their awkwardness.

Sarah Drew has an incredibly elastic face. Honestly the stuff she does with it is amazing. April can never find love because then we won’t get these faces.

• Patrick Dempsey probably only worked half a day for this episode but it was all worth it for Callie calling him to brag about sex because Mark is gone. These two have been flirting with a friendship all season and they need to just make it official.

This is the face of unadulterated terror.

• Ellen Pompeo just picked up a People’s Choice Award for best actress. While I might have quibbles with that (she’s hardly that dramatic powerhouse on the show) episodes like this one are a great reminder of her talent. She can work off of anyone on this show and find something interesting to do. Whether it’s talking the Chief down from punching that AWFUL memory care facility guy (he was the worst).
• Or being there for Bailey
• Or standing by Webber after realizing his wife has passed away.
• Or just being eternally perplexed by Callie’s clear desire to be the maid of honor.

• I did enjoy how Callie was playing the “I’ve known her longest” card with Bailey and the other bridesmaids. It’s those little things that can be a delight.
• Other little delights include Mousey and Cristina’s fear faces when facing off with the bikers, Leah being incredibly compassionate with Webber and the Sons of Anarchy fanfiction that somehow rode into this episode.
• Next Week: The plane crash victims go out for drinks after becoming millionaires. This is setting us up for them buying a yacht by season’s end and then crashing it on an island so season 10 can take place on a sandy beach where McDreamy will do craniotomies on coconuts and Callie will build limbs for people out of bamboo.