After last week's diversion with Amelia's (Caterina Scorsone) family, who definitely put the "fun" in dysfunctional, this week returned to regular Grey's Anatomy storylines. The big arc is that Jo (Camilla Luddington) is back at work after the trip to meet her birth mom, but she is far from okay — it’s actually so bad that she comes to work drunk.
Alex (Justin Chambers) knows something is really wrong, but she won't talk to him about it. She does end up talking to Avery (Jesse Williams) a little, confessing that she's angry at herself that she had all this happiness in her life and she went looking for misery by tracking down her birth mom, so she ruined everything. He tells her to talk to the people she cares about. He also warns her that he knows she's drunk at work, and if she does it again, she's going to be in huge trouble.
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Avery's not stupid, so he tells Alex about Jo's drinking. Alex finally confronts her, yelling that if she doesn't talk to him, he'll just go to Pittsburgh to find out what happened to her. Oh, Alex. That is a big threat to make, and it has the effect on Jo that you would expect. She tells him that she'll talk to him when she's good and ready, and if he so much as threatens to go to Pittsburgh again, she will leave him. He counters by saying if she drinks at work again, he'll tell Bailey, and Jo coldly says they have a deal. Ugh, these two are heartbreaking right now. Please do not let the Karevs implode, Grey's writers. They both deserve happiness and it would be awful if this ruins them.
The other recurring storyline is that Owen (Kevin McKidd) is getting the help he needs after his sister finally beat some sense into him two weeks ago. He goes to see a therapist and does some digging into when he was 10 years old and his dad died. The therapist helps him realize that he runs away from joy because he's scared his joy will turn sour when something bad happens. It stems from the guilt he felt being so happy about winning the school science bee when his mom was so devastated over his dad's death.
While Owen is having this breakthrough, Amelia is warning Tom (Greg Germann) that he can love Teddy (Kim Raver) all he wants, but Teddy and Owen are meant to be together. Now that there's a baby coming, it's even more inevitable. Tom isn't going down without a fight, however. It should be really interesting to watch how this plays out when the baby comes.
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Other than those two arcs, the rest of the episode is populated with several great cases of the week. The most interesting is definitely Jasmine Guy guest-starring as a woman named Gemma whom Chief Webber (James Pickens Jr.) knows from his time in AA. Her sponsor died, and she fell off the wagon. In fact, she was walking up some stairs drunk and ended up with a high heel lodged in her chest. Webber jokes that she found a new "bottom" by puncturing her heart with a shoe. He's not wrong, so hopefully this will be her wake-up call.
There is also a young man whose spinal injection causes a blood clot that kills him, and it's because of a mistake on Nico's (Alex Landi) part. He doesn't handle losing a patient very well and lashes out at Schmitt, basically calling him a loser whose life is built on failure. It's super crappy, and Schmitt runs off with his heart broken.
Finally, there's a woman who gives birth after coming to the hospital for what she thinks is a bowel obstruction. She’s actually pregnant with triplets. So...surprise!
Odds & Ends
There's a tiny scene where we get to check in with the young boy with the uber-rare blood type. They're still trying to find a match for him; it's nice to see the show didn't forget about that thread. But it also feels like they're setting us up for a three-hankie cry with this patient before the season is over.
Hey, we see Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) with her kids for once! Kidding, kidding. But seriously, Zola (Aniela Gumbs) catches DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) leaving their house in the middle of the night, and Mer has to come clean to the kiddos about him. It's nice to see her being a mom every once in a while.
Tom: "You miss your boyfriend. Ortho Barbie. Shepherd, I can't believe you have a thing with a jock. Is it weird having sex with a cartoon character? Does he drip ink on you when he sweats?"