Last season’s finale gave us the plane crash leading to the death of Lexie Grey, so in the first thing we see this season is an arguably Lexie-esque girl walking out of an elevator to Meredith’s V.O., “Dying changes everything.” We see her and we are manipulated into caring about her  even though most everyone on the show we actually care about might be dead. Fitting, then, that the first person we see is Meredith, right next to Bailey, and that there is some kind of allegory to the way Bailey is impressed with Meredith’s bitch-ass attitude towards New Lexie and all the interns. That’s what Bailey used to do! Now they are friends, because that’s what a shooting, near death experience, emergency labor, demise of a a shocking number of close friends and colleagues, and plane crash can do for a friendship! All the interns call Meredith “Medusa” which is weird because is her defining feature really her hair? I would have thought it is her ability to look hot while being sad, maybe they should call her Lana Del Rey or something. 

We quickly learn that Christina Yang is in (My home state) Minnesota, land of very good looking people with meh personalities, where everyone stands outside in a blizzardy parking lot and gabs about the past like it’s a goddamn porch in a Tennesee Williams play… where nurses are strong, and surgeons are above average… Also she’s afraid of flying because plane crash. What you may not recall is that just before crashing, the plane flew over a giant lake that was FULL OF SHARKS. 

Derek is flexing his hot broken arm on some couch when Boss Man Webber walks in to tell him solemnly that 5 o’clock is happening today. Yeah, we know, that’s how time works. Are they going drinking? Maybe Seattle Grace Mercy West has instituted a commemorative sad-hour for all the deceased doctors. Dr. Shepard is going to try to operate today, but he’s got this bum arm, see. Jumping ahead to just after the inevitable moment where his hand goes numb in the O.R., we see him take it out on a bunch of stuff on a desk in front of Callie. Hey, D-Man! Maybe stop punching shit if you want your hand to heal. 

At MAYO, Christina is having to deal with all these Minnesotans and their cheery demeanor. You would think that an elite surgical program at a hospital like MAYO would attract a more worldly and ambitious crew like Yang herself, but that’s just not the way we get her done! You see, our main exports are niceness and basketball teams, so when we get a new guy we gotta absorb them and assimilate them into our culture of nice, like the Borg. Resistance-is-futile! You-will-have-pie-and-stay-awhile! Later, Yang is written up for Asian zeal for accomplishment or something and actually told to go to the Mall of America. Maybe she should, because people get shot there on the reg.

At five, as we learn from some ham-handed exposition from Dr. Shepard, Mark Sloane will be taken off life support. Callie and Mark made a wee baby last year, and together with Callie’s lesbian wife, Arizona, they made an overly attractive alternative family fit for the stage at the DNC. We still don’t know what happened to the Arizona! I wonder if we will find out in the last 10 seconds of the show! Nowadays, people keep staring at Callie because they heard about her sad life. Stop staring, nurses! Callie keeps it cool. She’s like “N.B.D. if Mark is gonna die at 5 and maybe also my wife is dead! No B.F.D., bitchez!! I gots to do my job, just because I am awesomely cool lesbian orthopedic surgeon Caliope Torres!” Cut to the broom closet one hour later: “WAAAHHHH! WEAVE ME AWONE!”

Some other salacious C plots about Bailey being ridiculed by interns for getting laid all the time with the solidly-out-of-her-league med student, Ben, plus Alex Karev sexing all the interns before he goes to Johns Hopkins for his fellowship. Yeah, lets never give this guy a real storyline, he’s a hottie! I’m honestly angry. Sometimes when I watch G.A., I believe that there is such a thing as reverse sexism. I guess this is reparations. 

Speaking of the new interns, the ones we are supposed to care about are Mac from Veronica Mars, Smash Williams from Friday Night Lights and then one of them is played by an actress who I know personally. She’s the studious one with the giant glasses and hair and she’s fucking delightful to watch because you can see a real readiness to throw her fellow interns under the bus. We cool, new interns. Except for New Lexie, who I’m not sold on because she genuinely doesn’t seem prepared for this program in any way. Later Owen Hunt tells her to shape up or ship out, and then to drop and give him 50 blowjobs. JK he’s clearly still in love with Christina Yang. But are they divorced? Oh, no one cares? Ok.

Meredith decides to go see Christina at MAYO instead of wait for Mark to die. At the airport she runs into Alex Karev and is like WTF?! You’re just going to leave and not say goodbye?! She’s like a greek chorus for the one million glass-of-chardonnay-clutching ladies watching that are scared they’re never going to see Dr. Karev again. Owen runs up behind him to get on the plane to see Meredith, we presume, but what if he was just going back to Afghanistan? Also where is Teddy? Oh yeah. Anyway, Alex comes back because the new guy in Pediatrics is going to fuck shit up too shittily, and Owen goes to the heartland get April back from the impossibly beaucolic farm she is working on. 

Mark Sloane finally kicks it, and then we learn that Arizona Robbins is hiding out Misery-style in the family home because Callie cut off her leg. She says it like Callie did it for no reason at all, as if a game of strip poker went way too far. Ok, I guess. Is she mad she can’t wear wheelies to work anymore? Seems weird, remember when she told Callie’s dad she was “A Good Man in a Storm?” Perhaps her likability was all stored in that leg.

There has to be a limit to how much fucked up shit can happen to this group of people before they finally walk away from each other. The trouble with Seattle Grace is that you can’t just leave, or quit doing surgery. There are three characters that have actually left in the history of G.A., not counting Teddy (because, I mean): Addison Shepard, Dr. Burke and Izzy. Otherwise, If you want to stop being a surgeon at Seattle Grace you have to DIE. If I were an intern at Seattle Grace Mercy West that’s what I would be afraid of, not Lana Del Rey.