In the lead-up to Grey’s Anatomy’s season finale (and four-hundredth episode), the L-word is dropped, another relationship is on the rocks, and someone may or may not get conned.
The episode starts off with Maggie and Winston preparing for a big dinner with Nick. Amelia is off enjoying herself with Kai, and Nick and Meredith run into each other at the hospital. They mention how much they enjoy being in the same city, and Meredith double-checks that Nick is still coming to the dinner. Meanwhile, Richard tells Catherine that he’s going to chemo with her to keep her company.
Back at Meredith’s house, Kai and Amelia arrive to help Maggie. Not soon after, Nick walks in perfectly on time, which he credits to being a transplant surgeon. Then, Owen and Teddy show up. Everyone is asking Nick a lot of questions, trying to place whether or not he is good enough for Meredith. Link and Bailey arrived later than everyone else so far. Link brought Scout with him, and he even greeted Kai, which was a little bit surprising. Wendell even showed up uninvited, and Winston wanted him to leave. Maggie insisted it wasn’t necessary. Outside at the grill, Link and Nick had an awkward conversation which only got worse when it turned to Kai and Amelia.
Right as Meredith was going home, a woman, Alice, who was a victim of a hate crime, got rolled in. Meredith’s plans changed, and she went back into the hospital to help take care of Alice. When they’re all in the OR, the crime is very obviously hitting close for the Asian-American staff. Nico and Michelle have a conversation about it, wondering if they will ever not feel different. BokHee even jumps in at a point. Later, it’s obvious that Nico is struggling when Levi sees him in the bunk room with red and probably bruised knuckles. Levi gets him ice and sits with him. Later on, Alice has a scare, but she manages to pull through. Thankfully, they get to report to the family that Alice will be fine.
Catherine is undergoing therapy at the same place as the patients from earlier this season, Simon and Kristen. Richard is very obviously trying to be Catherine’s doctor, which bothers Catherine a bit. She doesn’t make it completely obvious at first, but the longing looks and curious questions she sends over to Simon and Kristen feel like sirens. They have small conversations until Kristen thinks she might be going into labor, which was actually just Braxton Hicks. She talks to Richard about how she always saw Simon as someone who could beat the odds, and she had this idea in her head that if she got pregnant, he wouldn’t die. She realized now that by not believing he was going to die, she let him deal with that part all on his own instead of them going through it together. This conversation leads to Richard telling Catherine that if she doesn’t want to go through chemo, she doesn’t have to. She says that she does want to go through it, but she also just wants to live.
No matter how frustrated Winston is with Wendell, it’s still very obvious that he’s worried. He tries to ask Wendell how bad it is, but Nick comes in and interrupts for more awkward small talk, I assume. The first person that it didn’t seem entirely awkward with was surprisingly Bailey. Teddy had wanted to play games all night, so the conversation turned to Scrabble, which Nick and Bailey agreed on. The way they were talking about games and where they were sitting in the living room reminded me a lot of the game night from a few seasons back that turned into a total disaster. From the hallway, which is right beside the living room, Wendell tells Winston that the people he owes money to are not good people, which prompts Winston to get even more upset. Wendell is really trying to hide from these people, and he decides to come to Meredith’s house where there are children and Winston’s family. Winston tells Wendell to leave Seattle, and then he storms out of the house.
In another room in the house, Owen and Kai are sharing a conversation together while Amelia is putting Scout to bed. The conversation topic turns to kids, and Kai explains that she doesn’t want any. Owen mentions how much they sound like Amelia before she had Scout. Kai and Amelia meet back on the swingset outside, where Kai tells Amelia that they don’t want kids and that that’s not going to change. This storyline feels all too familiar on this show, but it’s sad to watch.
Link and Teddy also have a conversation about Jo, and it eventually even leads to a mention of Amelia. But we do learn that Link sometimes maybe has feelings for Jo. Teddy tells him not to tell Jo this, but we do have to wonder if he will take her advice or not. Later while Teddy and Owen are leaving, they decide to try and spice things up in their car but are quickly interrupted by Bailey. Finally, Winston returns, and it turns out that Wendell somehow got the money he needed out of both of them.
To finish the episode off, Amelia and Nick share an in-depth conversation. Amelia talks about how she thinks that Nick makes Meredith happy, and she deserves that after all that she’s been through. When Meredith finally gets home, Nick and she both drop the L-word to each other, with Meredith saying it first. Even though Meredith has missed the big dinner, Nick has set up a smaller one just for them.
