Grey’s Anatomy Season 16, Episode 6 Recap: A Very Serious Halloween

ABC's shows have a rich tradition of going all out for Halloween, though usually, it's the sitcoms that have the best costumes and hilarious plots. This year, however, Grey's Anatomy gets in on the fun with "Whistlin' Past the Graveyard," an episode that feels like a real Halloween treat.

To start, Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) is serving her tiny prison sentence, which mostly serves to remind her that her life is pretty great even if she does lose her medical license. See, her cellmate is a woman who has two kids and works two jobs and one night when her childcare fell through, she tucked the kids into bed and went to her night shift down the block at a mini-mart. But her 8-year-old woke up and called 911 because he didn’t know where she was, so she got thrown in jail. She can't afford bail, which means her kids are in foster care. It's an all-too-common occurrence in the actual criminal justice system, which is heavily skewed in favor of people who have money. But it puts Meredith's problems in stark relief; they're not the end of the world. With that in mind, Meredith posts the woman's bail anonymously after she gets out.

It's a nice moment, but not even the most tear-jerking one of the episode. That comes courtesy of Koracick (Greg Germann) and Bailey (Chandra Wilson). He's being quite the "Halloween grinch," as she finally blurts out at him, to which he replies he hates this holiday because his son died two weeks before Halloween. The boy never got to wear his Luke Skywalker costume they were working so hard on and it took Koracick months to even be able to take the costume down off the hook on the back of the door. It's a lovely moment, punctuated by some humor because Bailey is trying so hard not to cry and can't help but burst into tears. She's super hormonal because of her pregnancy and her biggest fear is crying in front of Koracick. It's a small scene, but what a great reminder of how good Grey's Anatomy can be. Both the actors absolutely nailed it.

Meanwhile, across town at Pacific Northwest, Alex (Justin Chambers) and Webber (James Pickens Jr.) are courting investors to build them a research facility, but their big pitch day is interrupted because the construction team working on a new wing of the hospital finds a mass grave, plus a whole ER full of people starts crashing because they were transfused with blood that had gone bad. It turns out the mass grave is from 100 years ago when the site was a mental hospital. When patients died and went unclaimed, they were unceremoniously dumped in the ground, which is incredibly sad. But Karev contacts the authorities and they're exhuming the bodies to at least do what they can to make things right.

The investors actually like how he handles himself amidst all this chaos, so they agree to give him their money for the research facility. Alex is so happy, standing there, staring at Jo (Camilla Luddington) in her corpse bride costume (which is her actual wedding dress) that he proposes. The two of them run down to the courthouse and get officially married. There are a lot of things about this particular plot point that are a bit far fetched, but hey, it's super adorable, so good for them. 

Speaking of adorable, Link (Chris Carmack) and Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) have lunch with his parents to celebrate his "cancer-versary" and plan to tell them about their impending grandbaby... until his parents totally hijack everything by telling him they're getting remarried to each other. Link freaks out; first off, their divorce was hell on him and he can't believe they want him to be happy about their new (old) relationship, and secondly, this day is supposed to be about him and the baby and meeting Amelia and they made it all about them.

Amelia talks him into giving his parents another chance to make the day about him and he agrees — and luckily they are willing to change the date of their second wedding because it happens to be right around when Amelia is due. So, mark your calendars for April, everybody. Baby Lamelia is a-comin'.

There's some other great stuff involving parents and children this week, it's a whole big theme. Teddy (Kim Raver) feels kind of inadequate as a mom compared to Owen's (Kevin McKidd) super mom, but he's awesome about how he loves her just the way she is. And then everyone is horrified that she dressed the kids as zombies for Halloween, but honestly? That was amazing. Though it was also perfectly fine for Teddy to tell Bailey that Allison is going as "a baby" for Halloween. 

DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) has to deal with Zola's (Aniela Gumbs) feelings of him replacing her dad, which is really just her covering for the fact that she's worried she'll forget her dad. He assures her that she won't and that no one at the hospital will ever forget him, regaling her with a story about Derek (Patrick Dempsey) that he's heard so many times, he can actually tell it like he was there.

Speaking of Zola, Maggie (Kelly McCreary) has apparently told her and the other kids that their mom is at "sleepover community service." *snort*

Angela Chase's mom (aka Bess Armstrong) is the perfect choice to play Link's mom.

Schmitt is a total peach when he finds out a sick boy wants to be a sunflower for Halloween, so he makes them matching sunflower costumes.