Grey’s Anatomy Recap: Baked Goods

Before we get into the meat of this stellar Grey’s episode, can we please have one moment of silence for the glorious gift that is that Doctor Jam Band? Link and DeLuca playing guitars and Richard, er Richie, singing “The Thrill Is Gone”? This development gives me so much joy, I have to question if I’m really watching Grey’s Anatomy.

For a show that has so much suffering in its history, “Everyday Angel” is an extremely uplifting episode. I mean, Doctor Jam Band aside, who wouldn’t want to spend an entire day baking cookies and talking about life with Meredith Grey and Teddy Altman? To walk away with a goody bag of baked goods and motivation to do the right thing? That’s the best outcome for any heart-to-heart.

Meredith of course knows Teddy’s big secret, and yes, she wants to protect Owen and Amelia, but she also wants Teddy to do what’s best for both her and her unborn ginger baby. Just bask in the glow of a Meredith Grey who has it all together. Well, except for the baking part. She just learned that you need to preheat your oven.

She finds Teddy in the park where Teddy used to make Cristina get her coffee every morning, and tells her she really needs to rip off the Band-Aid. They end up back at Meredith’s because she has to bake homemade cookies for Zola’s school and the two ladies get into things. Teddy really was going to tell Owen. Then she got here and saw that the things she reamed him out for in Germany — that he was incapable of not being in a relationship, that he was only in a foreign country declaring his love for her because Amelia rejected him — we’re very, very true. She’s decided to go back to Germany and raise this baby on her own.

Meredith not only speaks from experience as a mother, but as a daughter who grew up without her father simply because her mother hated him. When she finally sought out Thatcher as an adult, she didn’t find a deadbeat dad who abandoned her, she found a decent man who was pushed out of his daughter’s life. (Apparently Thatcher makes his return to Grey Sloan next week, so we’ll get into all of that drama later. I cannot wait.) Meredith warns Teddy: Her child will eventually go looking for his or her father, and that child will find Owen — a good, kind man. Does Teddy want to do that to both her child and to Owen?

The answer is of course no. But Teddy isn’t holding on to this secret because she hates Owen — it’s because she loves Owen. She’s always loved Owen. Because of this she knows that good, kind, loyal Owen will give up everything he has to be with her once he finds out about the baby. Then she’ll never know if he’s with her out of obligation or love. Hasn’t this woman suffered enough? (Seriously, Teddy’s list of People She Loved Who Have Tragically Died rivals Meredith’s.)

Meredith tells Teddy two very wise things: First, she isn’t telling Owen for her, she’s telling Owen for her child. Second, it’ll only get harder the longer she waits. And we know this second thing is very true since we spend this entire episode watching Owen and Amelia acknowledge how much they’ve grown both independently and together.

They’re staking out Betty’s school because Amelia is a woman obsessed, natch, and she wants to make sure Betty doesn’t sneak out to do drugs. She has tracking apps and everything! As Owen watches Amelia stressing over Betty and fawning over Leo in the backseat, he brings up the fact they they ostensibly broke up because she didn’t want kids. She responds first by blaming this on that frickin’ tumor, WHICH IS RIDICULOUS, but then opens up about the baby she lost. She can finally say his name out loud: Christopher. She was worried that having another child would erase her son, but now with Betty and Leo, she sees that isn’t true. This is good. So you know it’s going to be really bad once Teddy pops back into their lives. It’ll be interesting to watch the fall out. Bring it on, Grey’s!

Elsewhere, Jackson has returned from his journey of self-discovery with a pro bono surgery. This is great because, hello, Jackson taking off like that was silly. This is sad because I was really enjoying Maggie complaining about the amount of tree texts Jackson had been bombarding her with. Like, one picture of a tree is enough, sir.

The reason this man searching for meaning has paused his trip is because during his hiking he happened upon a man and his son, Rafi, who suffers from osteochondroma of the scapula. The little boy has benign overgrowths on the bones and cartilage that connect his arm bone to his collarbone (I’m not a doctor). Basically, it looks like he has angel wings jutting out from his back which is all very wink, wink since it was a doctor questioning a higher power who found him. WE GET IT GREY’S. You’re wonderful.

Jackson, Alex, and Link are going to operate and reconstruct his bones to look normal and give him full function of his arms. Alex is pumped to be on such an interesting case, but pissed that he has to share it with Link. Since discovering that Link and Jo knew each other back in the day, Alex has been giving him the stink eye. Link and Jo were friends in undergrad and worked at the crab shack together. They swear that nothing ever happened between them — they were like brother and sister. Not like that’s stopped anyone from pursuing a romantic relationship on this show before, amirite?

But it turns out Alex isn’t jealous of Link; he’s mad that Link knew Jo when she was with Paul and he did nothing to stop that monster. Link looks genuinely hurt when Alex brings this up. He never liked Paul and he told Jo that, but Jo didn’t listen to him. When Paul had problems with Jo and Link being friends, Jo pushed him away and Link tried to be respectful of her wishes. If Link knew what was really going on, he would’ve protected her. When he says this, he looks like he really means it. So, Alex is onboard with Link now. Welcome to the club, Karev. It’s a very handsome, swoony place.

Rafi’s surgery doesn’t go as smoothly as they hoped. They discover that his benign overgrowths are malignant tumors. His options aren’t good, but Jackson didn’t come back from his soul-searching sabbatical for nothing. He comes up with a plan in which they can perform radiation to the scapula once removed from Rafi’s body to kill the cancer without putting Rafi through that kind of treatment, and then put the scapula back in Rafi after. It seems crazy but it gets a wonderful, chill-inducing Grey’s Medical Montage and everything. And it works! They’ve healed Rafi completely. What a day! Because of that success, Jackson is reminded that his purpose is in the OR, not hiking among trees — so he’s back for good. Not like we ever had a doubt.

Laughter Is the Best Medicine, Except for Real Medicine

• Glasses and Nico take baby steps toward maybe becoming Glasses and Nico. Helm spends the day convincing Schmitt that Nico has asked him on a date when he suggested he make good on the beer he owes him at Joe’s Bar later. Schmitt brushes it off, but then shows up expecting a date. It’s not at all, but still: He showed up.

• DeLuca and Richard are buddies and it is so lovely! I mean, it’s not lovely when he sort of yells at DeLuca for not teaching his interns, but then it gets lovely again when he tells DeLuca that he believes he could be a great attending. You guys!

• Are Bailey and Jo kind of a dream team? They take on a patient who traveled a long way, after seeing many doctors, to finally get some type of diagnosis from General Surgery Goddess Meredith Grey. While they do eventually figure out what’s wrong with her (she has MALS), they spend some time proving that they are just as good as Meredith Grey. Bailey molded Meredith Grey from a lump of clay, after all. Anyway, I like this team.

• You know what I don’t like? Threatening the holy grail of Grey’s marriages: Bailey and Ben. Bailey has been trying to remove stress from her life post-heart attack and comes to the conclusion that her stress has nothing to do with work and everything to do with Ben being a firefighter. DO NOT GO THERE, SHOW. Is nothing sacred?

• Hello. I am very worried about Cece, our matchmaker in need of a heart transplant. That is all.

Sob Scale: 2/10

That medical montage, friends. That medical montage really struck a chord. (The song is “Taste” by Sleeping At Last, if you, too, would like to listen to it on repeat.)