I'm amazed at how little talk there is about this episode - both here and the other more friendly places I visit online to talk about GA. Maybe hiatus did us in.
It seems we're being set up to see how the remaining three original residents have grown but are still flawed. So moreso what we're seeing is them working backwards from the SF to prepare for the S.8 jumping off point.
Many pieces of this episode felt predictable and to mostly be about stage setting:
- Callie and Sofia heal miraculously with a few tidy hurdles
- Meredith falls victim to guilt over Adele's condition and does something stupid with all kinds of good intentions
- More of the push me/pull you Cristina storyline in which she's both a concerned friend to Callie and emerging godmother while also remaining stoic alongside Owen's softy response to Callie and Sofia healing
- Alex being a half-as*sed gentleman and surgeon who, like Mer, has the best of intentions but gets himself out on a ledge he's not sure how to handle with both the patient and the African children he brings to Seattle for surgery
And though there were minimal Cristina and Owen scenes - and just one of the two of them together - the anvils were falling fast and furious.
The small bits we got were at work but showed us how professional and personal are going to be running parallel for these two.
Cristina is snarky godmother to Sofia and clearly Cristina is taking her duties to her friend Callie seriously - both as a friend and as a doctor. Her soothing way with Callie and then plotting to take her to the NICU window was beautiful in its obvious caring and concern for her friend and her baby. (First bit of anvilicious foreshadowing, IMO.)
And then we see more snarky Cristina as physical therapist for Callie and also working closely and with great care and concern with Bailey to help Callie heal.
On a parallel path we see Owen asking Alex what he's doing to prepare for chief resident. (Interesting that Owen points out what others are doing, except for Cristina.) And Alex pulls an idea out of his butt that he somehow pulls off. One amusing contrast was Alex haplessly extorting his patient and then acting like Cristina couldn't be trusted with kids while Lexie giggled. (More foreshadowing.)
And then the foreshadowing overtakes us as we finally see Owen and Cristina in the same room together. Owen is in complete 'awww' mode at baby Sofia, thrilled at how she and Callie are finally healed, while Cristina is feeling the dearth of cardio in her life with Callie's hospital discharge. I like how Owen's not at all bothered by Cristina's lamenting of Callie being her last cardio patient. He just nudges Cristina to see how cute the baby is, a not so subtle writerly redirect.
But, predictably, Cristina continues on with the scientific reason that babies cause hormone surges in order to keep them safe until they can fend for themselves. (A too obvious response in my book.) Owen's pondering look afterward was the final bit of Cristina and Owen foreshadowing until next week, so that puts us up to at least four anvils raining down.
I still say we're being lead toward an SF in which we see Cristina and Owen having navigated a bumpy, up and down, kind of road through these remaining S.7 episodes - in which we see them bicker and love each other both - to get to the positive test stick. Cristina doesn't need to prove she's a kick-butt surgeon to show she's a grown up in this GA writers' room created world, but she does need to prove she's an empathetic, compassionate person while also mirroring something from her Before which still drags at her heels - her pregnancy, miscarriage, and residual abandonment fears. But I'll end there rather than further risk being reminded I should go to the speculation thread.