Grey’s Anatomy 14×05: “Danger Zone” Review

This episode goes between present day and Iraq 2007, focusing on our military docs, Owen, Teddy, Megan and Riggs. Owen is on the phone with his girlfriend, who he promises he will make something up to. We learn that Megan is up for a promotion and is super nervous about it. Instead of focusing on her nerves, she laughs at her brother for being so uptight.

Present day, Amelia brings Owen out of a daze. Megan is packing her jeep, and Amelia tells Owen that Los Angeles is only a two hour flight, so he can see his sister anytime. She is smiley and trying to make her marriage work. She offers to make the two of them dinner tonight. Megan’s phone rings and Farouk is on the line. He asks his mom how long until she’s here. It’s a long drive ahead of her, and she tells Farouk to help Riggs get everything settled at the new house. She asks to speak to her fiancé, and Farouk hands the phone over to Riggs, who is trying, and failing, to fix the door. Megan reminds him that they need to set up the fan for Farouk because he cannot sleep without it.

Megan, back in the day, abruptly wakes a sleeping Riggs, causing him to fall out of bed. She asks if they’re done fighting now, and then the couple makes out. Before things progress, Megan pushes him away, saying she cannot be late this morning because of the stratification. If she isn’t ranked #1, she won’t be able to become flight surgeon, which is her goal. Getting ready to go, Megan finds a necklace on the floor. She picks it up and looks at Riggs, who says she wasn’t supposed to find that. Since she lost her class ring in a surgical dink, he decided that a necklace was a more fitting choice for engagement jewelry. She says “don’t you dare do the thing unless you are doing the thing.” Riggs gets down on one knee but only gets halfway through Megan’s name before she is jumping on him, saying yes.

Megan and Riggs run to the chopper that is waiting to take off. Teddy and Owen are inside, asking why they’re late. Megan shouts over the loud chopper that they got engaged. Everyone is thrilled, until Megan shows her necklace and Teddy’s face drops a bit. She congratulates the couple, even though something is clearly off.

Back in Seattle, Owen is trying to convince his sister to stay.

All of Owen’s unit lines up, waiting to hear about the stratification ranking. They talk amongst themselves, and someone comments on how lucky Megan is that her brother is their commanding officer, and how she’s bound to be number one because of that. The announcement is made, and Lieutenant John Matthews gets it instead. Teddy gets a call about two active shooters and all of the surgeons head out.

Before Megan takes off for Malibu, Owen hops into her Jeep. He decides to road trip with her. She points out that he hated road trips growing up, and the two of them would fight so much that their parents would threaten to leave them at a gas station. Owen isn’t budging and the two continue onwards.

In Iraq, Megan complains to her brother about Matthews making top strat. She asks if Owen told them that she was top CGO of the year. They look at a man who can’t feel his arm. He had been pushing people out of the way when two Iraqi allies went rogue. They’re prepping him for the OR when a woman starts shouting. Megan looks over and tells the man that this woman doesn’t want to be touched by men. She picks up the chart and says she needs a chest tube. Someone brings in a man with injuries to the torso, and Teddy checks him out. He’s believed to be the second shooter, and the soldier who brought him in tells Teddy to make sure the woman Megan is working on is treated well. She risked her life to wrestle the gun away from this man. Teddy asks Riggs to scrub in with her for the surgery.

In Malibu, Riggs says that he’s going to get Farouk a racecar bed. Farouk asks where mama is going to sleep, and when he’s told that she’ll be in Riggs’s room, he says that back home, they slept in the same room and that that was safer. Riggs goes on to say that once Farouk is in school, he’ll feel more settled. Farouk has always been homeschooled, and the thought of going to an actual school building is a little overwhelming. When Riggs starts to name off some extracurricular activities Farouk could get involved in, Farouk drops the light bulb he is holding. He’s expecting Riggs to yell at him, but Riggs just picks him up, so he won’t cut his feet, and then sweeps up the mess.

Teddy tells Riggs that the necklace he gave Megan is beautiful and asks where he found emeralds in Baghdad. She says that it reminds her so much of the necklace Sgt Felicia Phillips got from her boyfriend back home, but that Felicia’s is engraved on with her initials. Riggs panics a little when he finds out that it’s engraved, showing that there is something sketchy happening.

In the car, Megan and Owen jam to Push It. Owen takes a wrong turn, according to the GPS, and says it’s a shortcut. He brings her to an abandoned carnival they used to go when they were little. He says that he thought she’d want a ring toss rematch.

Megan’s patient, Sana, doesn’t want to undress in a room filled with strangers, but Megan tries to make her more comfortable. She asks another woman to place the chest tube. She walks off, by her brother, and he says that she was great with that patient. She retorts ‘it’s almost as if I know how to do my job.’ He asks her to scrub in with him on his surgery. Megan doesn’t want his pity over her losing the job opportunity she’d been aiming for.

As Riggs tries to fix the sink at the new house, he tries to find a job at hospitals in LA. Farouk keeps asking about a screwdriver to put the fan together, and Riggs asks him to be quiet while he’s on the phone.

During their ring toss match, Owen and Megan make bets to each other. ‘If I make this, ___,’ and Owen says ‘you stay in Seattle. Megan’s face drops and Owen’s ring goes around the bottle. She storms off, saying how Owen always thinks he knows what is best for her. She lists off some things he prevented her from doing, including flight surgeon. Owen says that that happened ten years ago, but Megan points out that she was kidnapped before they got the chance to fight about it.

Riggs hangs up the phone with Megan and calls out to Farouk that Megan is going to arrive later than anticipated. He walks through the house, unable to find Farouk. He runs out the house and down the street, asking people if they’ve seen a little boy. He finally finds him on the beach. Farouk says he wanted to help by getting food, but there are too many choices.

In the OR, Megan and Owen start to fight, mainly due to Megan’s belief that her brother sabotaged her opportunity with the strat. Their patient had wanted to save his arm, which Owen deems too risky. Megan defiantly slices open the patient’s arm, knowing it’s what he wants.

Owen, awkwardly and tensely in the car with Megan, answers his phone. It’s his wife, Amelia, and he apologizes for not telling her that he’s going on this road trip with Megan. He tells her that it’s going great so far, and when he gets off the phone, Megan asks if there are any women in his life to whom he doesn’t lie.

Operating, Teddy and Riggs talk in code about how the shooter they are operating on didn’t care about their loved ones that they are hurting. The undertones are about Riggs cheating on Megan. Riggs says that the shooter probably regrets what he did and would do anything to make it right again. Teddy doesn’t think that’s an excuse and that he should have thought about that before pulling the trigger. After the surgery, he tells Teddy that he and Megan were fighting and he didn’t want to fight anymore. Teddy asks if he even meant the proposal, to which Riggs says ‘of course.’ Teddy convinces Riggs that he has to come clean. ‘People mess up, and people forgive. Tell her the truth, and there’s a chance.’

Owen tells Megan to cut her losses on this surgery, but she continues on until the color restores to his hand. Owen admits that that was impressive. Megan wishes that that wasn’t a surprise to him.

Back in the car, Owen says that what held her back from the job she had wanted was the truth — she was a child who made rash decisions and would have been dead within a month. Ten years later, he sees her decision to move to the beach, away from her support system, as chasing another whim. He finally admits that he did tank her strat.

Megan asks if Owen remembers his nickname back in Baghdad. It was ‘Major Diamond.’ He had believed it to be because he was ‘sharp, clear and focused,’ but Megan tells him the truth — ‘anal-retentive, high-strung, so uptight that if you put coal in his ass, a diamond would pop out.’

Riggs buys a assortment of food so that Farouk can try a little of many things and discover what it is that he likes. Riggs admits to Farouk that he’s scared of this new move. He wants everything to be perfect for Megan, but he can’t even fix a door. However, he trusts that they’ll figure it out. Farouk asks if Riggs can teach him to play baseball, and Riggs says that he’ll learn how to play baseball just so he can teach Farouk.

Owen apologizes for getting in the way of Megan’s career. Megan appreciates this, but it’s short-lived as Owen starts listing reasons to stay in Seattle. She swerves to the side of the road and tells her brother to get out of her car. If he can’t support her, she doesn’t want him coming with her. He says he doesn’t know why she’s marrying a guy who cheated on her, and she reminds him that he cheated on his first wife and has had vibes going with Teddy while married to Amelia. She’s been kidnapped for a decade, and just wants to seize any happiness now that she can. Once she’s done with her rant, she admits that she cheated on Riggs first.

Flashback Teddy tells Flashback Owen that Megan isn’t joining him because she believes he is the reason she didn’t get the promotion. Teddy seems to think there’s some sort of truth behind the accusation. Owen says that since Megan is engaged, she should want to be living a safer life.

Flashback Riggs walks in on sad Flashback Megan. She notices that something is wrong with him, too, and asks what’s up. He says he needs the necklace back, and Megan starts to explain that it was a drunken mistake. He realizes quickly that Megan had slept with somebody. Once Megan realizes that this is not why Riggs was unproposing, she starts piecing things together too. He says that the necklace wasn’t his to give. Megan throws it at him, pissed off that he’d propose to her with ‘some other chick’s necklace.’ Their fight is interrupted by Megan’s patient’s need for her doctor.

Sana is wailing in pain when Megan rushes in. Her chest tube started to come out and they need to reposition it, but she’s in too much pain. Megan tells her to focus on something else. When Sana can’t calm down at all, Megan starts talking about her own family. She says that the tall redhead man who walks around yelling at everyone is her brother. Sana says that that sounds like her own brother, which distracts her enough for Megan to fix her chest tube. Megan calls out, saying Sana needs to go out on the next chopper. Megan then calls to Owen and says she’ll be on the next chopper with her patient. He replies that that’s against protocol, and Megan uses that as an opportunity to tell her brother than Riggs cheated on her and that she doesn’t want to have to ride back with him. Under the circumstance, Owen agrees to Megan going back on the chopper.

Teddy asks one of the heroes how he’s feeling. “Like a truck hit me. But lucky to be alive, ma’am.” He overhears some soldiers wondering aloud if the man in the bed next to him will be electrocuted for being the second shooter. The man talking to Teddy tells her that the second shooter was an Iraqi woman — not this man. We then see Megan on the chopper with Sana (if that’s even her real name). Teddy runs out, trying to stop them from taking off. She radios ‘Eagle 2, return to base immediately’ but it goes unheard.

Present day, Owen and Megan sit by the beach and Megan reminisces about a time when their entire family was fighting so much on a road trip, and they just stopped at a random beach and had a fun day instead of stressing anymore on their journey. She says that that memory helped her through her worst days over the past decade. She’d pretend the sand there was the sand on that beach. She promised herself that if she ever got out, she’d live by the beach in California. Megan says that the idea of living in California makes her happy, and she wants that for Owen. He’s so loyal to his ideals, and Megan says he may have to break up with some of those ideals in order to find happiness.

Megan comes home to her family in Malibu, and Owen returns home to Amelia in Seattle to end things.

Owen says it’s as if they don’t know each other anymore. He wants them to both be happy, but neither of them are. Amelia understands and they both take off their wedding rings.

In the morning, Megan stands with her feet in the ocean, just as she promised herself she would do every day, and Riggs and Farouk run out to join her. The family laughs and enjoys life, running and splashing around. Owen sits out on the dock, looking around, looking forward to life.