Grey's Anatomy Season 14, Episode 3 Recap: "Go Big Or Go Home"

Break out the wine: It’s been a long week in the real world, and Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) has a grapefruit-sized brain tumor. There’s also the matter of Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) still being pissed at Riggs (Martin Henderson) and Harper Avery (Chelcie Ross), Jackson’s (Jesse Williams) grumpy grandpa, is coming for a visit. In good news, Chandra Wilson directs tonight’s episode!

Let’s start with the tumor. Amelia asks her toxic white male teacher, Tom Koracick (Greg Germann) to treat her and after he’s done filling the room with l’air du douche, he drops a harsh truth bomb on her. She can’t operate because this tumor is pushing down on the part of her brain that makes plans. You can almost see the knife going through her heart as he tells her, “You are not of sound mind now, and you haven’t been for years.” FOR YEARS! That’s not going to make this news easier to break to Meredith or Bailey (Chandra Wilson), and it’s going to have her second-guessing everyone who has died in one of her surgeries FOR YEARS. Naturally, she starts ordering DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) to pull old files, while Koracick grills Webber (James Pickens Jr.), asking if they didn’t notice her acting obsessive. Cue guilty looks all around.

My thanks to the writer of this episode, Meg Marinis, for acknowledging that giving a brain surgeon a brain tumor is too on the nose of Grey’s trauma porn history to even be ironic.

Meredith decides to spend the day with her therapist, who has come in after a blood clot, because that’s a thing the chief of surgery can just do when they’re having a bad day. Totally reasonable, not at all bizarre. He is the guy who helped her get over Derek, so she runs all the Riggs stuff by him and a few red flags quickly fly up the flagpole. Interestingly, when Riggs pops in to talk about his treatment plan, he doesn’t disclose his relationship with Meredith and says they’re “old friends.”

A small moment of joy: Karev (Justin Chambers) and Wilson (Camilla Luddington) making out in the elevator, old school Grey’s style. Not as hot as Derek and Meredith, but it’s nice to see someone doing it.

We’ve got two cases to keep track of in this episode. Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) sticks Warren (Jason George) with a woman giving birth who can’t have an epidural, which would make me quit my job too — so is this why he chooses firefighters over Grey Sloane? I get it. Carina DeLuca (Stefania Spampinato) recommends orgasmic stimulation to help her along, and this could make me want to have a kid. Speaking of kids, the other patient is one who did a HoCoPro (Homecoming Proposal, this is not a thing so don’t start) and has a balloon stuck to his skin. When the girl he asked out busts into the emergency room but doesn’t immediately say yes to the date…you know where this is going.

Not sure what the point of that scene between DeLuca and Pierce (Kelly McCreary) was, other than to reinforce that she’s not great with social cues and to clear the field for her becoming a thing with Avery.

Riggs immediately getting that the dude Meredith is obsessing over is her therapist is the chef’s kiss moment of the episode.

Harper Avery is a sexist turd and Wilson, in her director's cap, kept the best shot of herself giving Catherine Avery (Debbie Allen) a “this motherfucker” look. Catherine’s face while Bailey talks him out of defunding the hospital and then fires her is also amazing. She clearly knows how to handle her father, though the show leaves us hanging in the moment. The female gaze is strong. Give us more female directors for moments like these. It’s almost a shame that he pulls a Weekend at Bernie’s, because I would have liked to see Bailey go back in and tell him off.

My congratulations to Kepner for maintaining her status as most unlikable character on Grey’s and still talking a high school girl into not being a jackass.

Given the amount of fighting and misunderstandings that Riggs and Meredith have on a near constant basis, they must have the hottest sex imaginable. Megan Hunt (Abigail Spencer) can’t match that, with or without abs.

This HoCoPro crap (not a thing) pays off when Wilson uses it to ask Karev to move back in. Fave moment.

I wish this show would stop setting Owen (Kevin McKidd) up to be a hothead, like they do with the moment Amelia tells him about her tumor. This redhead stereotyping is offensive to people who find gingers attractive.

I made it through this episode with only one glass of wine, so perhaps Grey's is going to be a bit lighter this season after all.