Your Official ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Recap: Season 22, Episode 11
Grey’s Anatomy is back after a quick little hiatus — did you miss the Grey Sloan gang? Don’t worry; they’re all still attempting to be excellent in their fields while steeped in emotional turmoil. You know, just how we like it. In the latest episode, we have some new faces to meet, a DIY vasectomy to scar us, and the answer to one of Grey’s Anatomy’s most enduring mysteries: Will Teddy and Owen ever get divorced? For their sanity and ours, please say yes. Let’s talk about “(If You Want It) Do It Yourself.”
grey’s anatomy
grey’s anatomy

Dr. Toni Wright (Jen Landon)
Disney/Anne Marie Fox
Hey, I know her
The newest plastics attending at Grey Sloan makes an appearance. Meet Dr. Toni Wright, a renowned surgeon Ben Warren absolutely cannot wait to impress. Bailey, who has put him on Wright’s service, begs her husband to be cool. He cannot. Ben cannot ever be cool. Wright, Ben, and Kwan are working on Teresa Daniels after a serious car accident; she’s five days post-op and still on a ventilator. She’s had a brain bleed that they’re still worried about, but Wright is there to deal with Teresa’s Le Fort fractures. But she can only proceed with fixing the patient’s face once neuro has cleared her for surgery.
Fresh from her three-month sabbatical, Amelia is back at work. She feels refreshed, revived, and ready to heal brains or whatever. Her good mood comes to a screeching halt when she is introduced to Dr. Wright. Their first interaction is perfectly pleasant, and that’s exactly what pisses Amelia off. They know each other. They went to med school together. They were in the same study group! Wright hated Amelia, apparently, and now she’s acting like they’ve never met. Nobody puts Amelia in a corner, okay? Unable to stand it any longer, Amelia approaches Dr. Wright at lunch to clear the air. It turns out that Wright does remember Amelia. Of course, she does. And she doesn’t hate her; she never did. No, Wright started avoiding Amelia in med school because she had a huge crush on her and didn’t know what to do about it. But it’s fine now. The crush is old news. Amelia isn’t even her type anyway.
Amelia may have repaired her working relationship with Dr. Wright, but Ben is still floundering as he tries to get her to warm up to him. During Teresa’s CT, he is overtly sucking up to her, which she attempts to ignore. Later, she is less than enthused when he brings up his experience as an anesthesiologist (who knows how she’d take it if he mentioned he also took time off to be a firefighter?), and during the surgery, she gets annoyed by his inability to pick the correct tools for the procedure. He simply cannot win with her. But there are bigger issues to deal with in that OR: When they go to, ahem, peel this woman’s face off so they can fix her facial fractures, she starts leaking cerebrospinal fluid, and they need to call Amelia in.
Amelia works quickly, and she and Wright are a great team in the OR. Teresa has a long road ahead of her, but this surgery went about as well as it could. Ben’s first day with Wright? It’s quite the opposite. Eventually, he comes out and directly asks Wright what he can do to be excellent. Whatever she says to do, he’ll do it. And that right there is the problem Wright has with him. For her, becoming an excellent surgeon only happens when you know who you are, when you have confidence in yourself and your skills. He should be anticipating the medicine instead of her needs. She did not see a confident, excellent doctor in him today.
The end of the day goes much better for Amelia. She bumps into Wright in the attendings lounge, and while the day was successful, Amelia can’t help but make things awkward. It is her superpower. Wright fears she made things weird by admitting to the old crush, but Amelia swears that’s not it. In fact, Amelia admits she too had a crush on Wright back in the day; she just didn’t fully understand what those feelings meant at the time. Wright suggests they get some coffee to catch up. Apparently, though, they skip the coffee and move right along to sex. And that’s how you return from sabbatical, folks.

Ben (Jason George) and Amelia (Caterina Scorsone)
Disney/Anne Marie Fox
The difference between you and me
While Ben’s getting some tough love from his attending, his better half is doling out some of that tough love to her own resident. The hit Bailey and Lucas took having to tell Katie Rogers that her clinical trial had been cut is taking a toll on them — but they are handling it in very different ways. Lucas is obsessed with finding another option for Katie. He’s constantly researching other trials and avenues to try. He isn’t sleeping or eating much. He certainly doesn’t seem to care about his other work responsibilities. Bailey, on the other hand, is focused on helping who she can help at the moment. And she needs Lucas to do the same. She appreciates his dedication, but he needs to focus on their current patients.
First up, Bailey tasks Lucas and intern Spencer with placing an NG tube in her patient Wendy. Spencer’s never done one, so Lucas is supposed to guide her through it. He’s there in physical form, sure, but his mind is clearly on Katie. He’s taking phone calls during the procedure, and after the tube seems placed, he word-vomits a few things for Spencer to do and then is out of the room to get back to his research — and he wants Spencer to join him as soon as she’s done. Intern Spencer is left all on her own.
When she does eventually join him for the research, she is clearly trying to ask him questions to get to know him better, and when he tells her why Katie is so important to him, her little speech about meeting someone who feels like they’re supposed to be in your life feels quite pointed. Spencer is crushing on her resident, and while I am always in favor of crushing, Spencer needs to run away — and fast. This man is in deep brooding mode at the moment; he should not be allowed near impressionable young interns. Steer clear, girl!
It’s not long before, nor is it surprising, that they get an emergency page about Wendy. They discover the tube was placed in her lung. This is unusual because typically after placing an NG tube, the doctor would do an X-ray to make sure it’s properly placed and not, like, dumping food into her lung. In his rush to get back to his research, Lucas didn’t do an X-ray, nor did he inform Spencer about the protocol. Bailey is mad. She told Lucas to focus on their actual patients, and he clearly did not follow orders. When Lucas goes off on her about how she’s given up on Katie and he hasn’t, oh, friends, she rips into that guy. How dare he? After Bailey had to stand there while Katie sobbed in her arms. Of course, she is up at night worried about Katie, but she’s also worried about all of her other patients because she is a professional. “And that is where you and I are different,” she tells him. Will he ever recover from getting read for filth like that? Only time will tell.

Owen (Kevin McKidd) and Jules (Adelaide Kane)
Disney/Anne Marie Fox
Face your fears
Teddy Altman is having some fear-based performance issues, both personally and professionally. Owen reminds her that she hasn’t yet signed the divorce papers, and if they wait any longer, they’ll owe more money to their lawyers. This was her idea; he’d really like to get this all sorted out. Teddy is aware and doesn’t exactly appreciate being reminded.
It certainly doesn’t help her mood that her biggest case of the day devolves into a real mess. She has been treating Corban for a while now, and in the past year, he’s had two aorta graft replacements that have gotten infected and need to be removed. He has spent more time in the hospital than out of it this year, and even with his very pregnant sister Leticia by his side, he is growing more frustrated by this situation. He likes Dr. Altman, but he’s wondering if he should get a second opinion. In an effort to stick up for Teddy, Simone tells Corban just how incredible his heart surgeon is — she mentions the groundbreaking surgery she performed on Nora and encourages Corban to listen to some of her interviews. She wants Corban to know he has a great surgeon in his corner; instead, she leads Corban to the realization that there is a permanent fix for his issues, but Teddy has only been putting a Band-Aid on it. She hasn’t once mentioned this surgery as an option, and he is angry.
Corban confronts Teddy about this the next time she comes by, but she is adamant — that surgery is a last resort, and he’s still a good candidate for the TEVAR. He lashes out: She has no idea about the hell he’s been through this past year, and now he’s simply not sick enough for Teddy? She stands her ground. If Teddy won’t consider the experimental surgery, he tells Simone that he wants to see Winston now. Simone obliges, but she doesn’t tell Winston that Teddy already said no, and she doesn’t tell Teddy that Corban wants Winston to look at his case. When Teddy comes upon Winston explaining the procedure and, while not guaranteeing it, not ruling it out, she pulls both Winston and Simone out into the hall. She’s especially frustrated by Simone for icing her out of her own patient’s care.
Winston wasn’t fully aware of the situation here, but he could’ve asked more questions before taking a look. He doesn’t love being reamed out by someone who technically works under him, but he gets how Teddy is feeling. What he doesn’t understand is why Teddy is so hesitant to do this procedure. She says Corban isn’t a good candidate, but how does she know? They’ve only done it once. She wants to treat this surgery like a true last resort, but Winston thinks that is a disservice to patients — this could help so many patients. Why is she afraid of it?
Meanwhile, when she has a much calmer discussion with Corban, she explains that she still thinks the TEVAR is the best course of action; the other surgery is unpredictable and irreversible — she wants him to survive this, to truly get his life back. It’s a good speech, and it gets Corban to agree to her treatment plan.
In true Grey’s Anatomy fashion, it all goes well until it very much doesn’t. At the end of the episode, Corban, just back from the surgery, starts crashing. The leak in his aorta is expanding — the TEVAR didn’t work. Just wait until Teddy finds out. At the moment, however, she’s outside, still avoiding signing those papers. She tells Owen that it’s not that she’s changed her mind; it’s just that she’s scared of what happens after. Of the unknown. Everything could explode and fall apart. “Hasn’t that happened already?” Owen astutely points out. He’s right. She signs the papers. If you’re keeping track, that is one fear faced, and a second seems imminent.

Simone (Alexis Floyd)
Disney/Anne Marie Fox
An interesting form of birth control!
It seems there will be a line drawn in the timeline of my life: before and after I had to think about men giving themselves vasectomies. Sure, the guy who comes in with severe scrotal swelling — Jules says it’s the size of a coconut, ouch — is a urologist, and that’s why he had the gall to go DIY for this surgery, but clearly it’s not meant to be DIY. Owen and Jules call Catherine in for a consult, and she is more than happy to get a reprieve from tending to Richard (he’s happy about it too). Not only does Catherine roll her eyes at Randall for being an absolute ding-dong and not just calling her to do the surgery, but there is the added level of ridiculousness from the fact that Randall’s new and much younger wife thought they were trying to have a baby — she had no idea about the vasectomy.
This whole case is going down while Jules and Simone are discussing their own fertility options. Simone wants to freeze her eggs, but Jules is not interested in kids and therefore not interested in going through a procedure that is not only costly but can also be painful. And then, there are also the hormones of it all. The thought of becoming a mother naturally gets Simone thinking about her own mother. She runs into Corban’s sister Leticia, who is in tears after an argument with her own mom, and Leticia admits she knows this is silly because she is an adult having her own baby, but all she wants is her mom to come and take care of her. Simone knows exactly how that feels, but unlike Leticia, she can’t simply call her mom, apologize, and tell her she needs her.
After a good cry in the stairwell, Simone decides all this talk of freezing her eggs has brought up too many unresolved feelings about her mom, and they’re too overwhelming to deal with now. She is going to focus on her work.
Jules’ day, however, takes the opposite turn: While operating on Randall with Catherine, they talk about how hard it is to raise kids, and if you really don’t want them, like Randall here, you shouldn’t have them. Catherine talks about how she never really had the desire for kids — she was focused on her career — but life is surprising. Jules still doesn’t think she wants kids, but she sees the value in having the option. When she hears Simone say that she isn’t going to do it, that is the deciding factor. Jules will freeze her eggs, partially to have the option in the future but also to make sure Simone doesn’t give up on what she wants. She’ll do it with her, and she’ll be there any time Simone wants to talk about her mom. They can be “fertility friends,” Simone says, excited by her friend’s kindness. “Don’t call it that,” Jules responds. Honestly, Simone’s lucky Jules doesn’t call the whole thing off right there.