ABC’s hit medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy” returned Jan. 26 with a lackluster spring mid-season premiere.
STARS: 3/5
After shocking revelations last fall, I expected “Grey’s” to return with a bang. Will Dr. Karev (Justin Chambers) take the plea deal? Will Jackson (Jesse Williams) and April (Sarah Drew) ever reconcile? Will Richard (James Pickens Jr.) forgive Dr. Bailey (Chandra Wilson) for replacing him with Eliza (Marika Dominczyk)? These are all questions viewers were demanding answers for.
Instead, the entire episode was spent outside Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital and only featured three of the show’s central characters.
Rather than spending time answering important questions from last fall, “You Can Look (But You’d Better Not Touch)” found Bailey, Dr. Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) and Dr. Jo Wilson (Camilla Luddington) visiting a patient in a maximum security prison.
The fall mid-season finale of “Grey’s” was packed with exposition to set up for the spring, but creator and showrunner Shonda Rhimes seems to be dragging out the 13th season of her successful series.
The only mention of the other characters in the show comes in the very last scene, when Bailey tells Wilson about Karev’s plea deal. Rhimes never fails to make viewers’ hearts ache every Thursday night, and this scene is no exception.
This season, Wilson has evolved to become a more well-rounded feminine character. When Jo Wilson was first introduced, she was edgy, and with “You Can Look,” Luddington has brought back some of the fire that made Jo such an interesting character.
Though it’s lacking in series plot, this episode offers an emotional look into the difficult operation of hospital prisons, which, in this fictional case, can’t afford to give sanitary napkins to all the female prisoners who need them or provide proper nutrition to pregnant inmates.
The beauty of Rhimes’s writing is that she is never afraid to bring current events and political issues into the plots of her shows. She both educates and satisfies the viewers with well-rounded debates between characters.
In this episode, it manifested in Bailey’s fear of being in the prison versus Arizona’s comfort with their dangerous patient. However, in this episode Rhimes has Bailey learn things aren’t always as they seem. I think part of this episode was a setup for Bailey to help the female head of the maximum security prison hospital, Dr. Eldredge (Klea Scott) in future episodes.
If that was even an ounce of Rhimes’s intent, I’m game. Scott’s character is fierce and unapologetically in-charge, a kind of woman viewers need to see much more often.
