Grey's Anatomy Season 15 Premiere Recap: Heart Attacks — Plus, Grade It
Maybe there was a way that Thursday’s two-hour Season 15 premiere of Grey’s Anatomy could’ve been better, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. I laughed a lot and cried more than I’m eager to admit. And not only did the episodes reveal the truth about Meredith and DeLuca’s buzzed-about tryst, they sent Alex and Jo on a life-changing honeymoon, introduced Grey Sloan’s new docs (Chris Carmack’s Link and Alex Landi’s Nico), installed a new interim chief (and it wasn’t Teddy!), turned Owen and Amelia into the insanely romantic couple that they were always meant to be, and included an “accidental proposal.” So, who took over for Bailey, who kinda popped the question, and why the hell were Jackson and Koracick in Mer’s bedroom?!? Read on and find out…
‘IT’S JUST A DREAM, SO IT DOESN’T COUNT’
| The first hour, “With a Wonder and a Wild Desire” — written by showrunner Krista Vernoff and directed by Debbie Allen (Catherine) — opened with Mer waking up from a dream in which she was getting it on with DeLuca… only for Jackson to walk into her bedroom and start stripping down! Then Koracick! Across town, Teddy showed up at Owen’s and, upon learning from Betty that he and Amelia had been up all night with the baby, ran straight to Bailey to turn down the interim chief position. “I’m not coming back to town,” the secretly-expectant doc said. “I’m going far… far away!” (“Not so fast,” fate would soon reply.) At Jackson’s, Maggie and a couch-surfing DeLuca woke up beyond hungover after the Jo/Alex/April/Matthew weddings. Jackson, on the other hand, was so upbeat that he insisted they walk to work. Dangerous move, it turned out. A car driven by matchmaker Cece would’ve plowed into Jackson and Maggie, had DeLuca not pulled them out of harm’s way. Alas, bicyclist Nisha wasn’t so lucky and was turned into what Levi would ultimately describe as “a human bike rack.”
‘YOU THINK THEY CAN SENSE OUR SEXUAL TENSION?’
| At Grey Sloan, Mer couldn’t help but be weird around Koracick, who, in turn, couldn’t help but smirk. Or so she thought. “I don’t smirk, I smile,” he told Grey. “If you interpret my smile as a smirk, well, that’s just because you find me mischievious and, dare I say, charming.” Just as they were getting off the elevator with Owen, Amelia and Leo, the lot of them ran into Teddy, who explained that she’d rejected the interim chief job, then beat a retreat that was so hasty, it gave her what appeared to be a leg cramp. (More on that in a second.) Off that awkward run-in with Owen’s secret babymama, Amelia approached Bailey to apply for the chief position in such a way that she mostly discussed her situation with her ex. She then did the same thing with Koracick, including among her “job” qualifications “I’m hot.” Rather than let her blame her failed marriage on her tumor, Tom reminded her that she’d been an ass with Owen, not a victim. If she wanted him back, she’d have to fight for him, Tom added, the way he wished he had fought for his wife when she left him. (Anyone else wager he’s endgame for Mer? Just me? Fine.)
‘THIS IS STRAIGHT-MEN STUPIDITY’
| Elsewhere in the hospital, DeLuca, his hangover cured by his heroics, worked with Richard, Carina and Vik on the case of a married man who had something stuck in his rectum. “It’s a growth!” the guy insisted. But Carina knew better. Richard was going to let Bailey consult, too, just for fun — if she’d make him the interim chief. Forget it, she said. “It’s not fun anymore.” She’d no sooner turned him down than Mer asked to be made interim chief so as to keep her mind too busy for inappropriate dreams. So yeah, it was gonna be that kinda day for Miranda. Eventually, Mr. It’s a Growth admitted that he’d put his wife’s hair stuff up his butt. Only he didn’t specify that it was hairspray. So, when in the O.R., Vik ignored Richard’s order to stop what he was doing, the patient, as the intern put it, “exploded” and set Roy aflame. Though DeLuca again saved the day, keeping Vik from being French-fried, the patient wasn’t so lucky: He expired. (Wonder if this, after the pot incident, will be the end of Vik. I hope not — he’s obnoxious, yes, but also kinda funny. And if Koracick can reveal heretofore-unknown layers, why not Vik?)
‘BONES BREAK UNDER STRESS… SO DO SOULS’
| In the E.R., Nisha, high as a kite on pain medication, revealed to an apologetic Cece that she’d never been in love — or at least she hadn’t been till she saw the doctors at Grey Sloan. “You are both so pretty,” she told Jackson and Owen before getting a gander at ortho gods Link and Nico, and deciding that, God yeah, she had died and gone to heaven. While the new hotties worked to get Nisha untangled from her bike, Mer explained to Cece that the anti-rejection medication she’d been on since receiving her last heart transplant was causing her kidneys to fail. So the patient would be going on the UNOS list. Fine, said Cece, who was eager to convince Grey to use her as a matchmaker. Her pitch: “I’m the UNOS of love.” Good pitch. Scrubbing in to operate on Nisha with her new ortho gods, Jackson and Owen, Bailey was reminded by Hunt that he, too, had once been chief. At least Link had no interest in the stressful job. Simplicity, he said. That was the key to life.
‘CAN I CALL YOU TEDDY NOW THAT I’M CARRYING YOUR LIFE-ALTERING SECRET?’
| While operating on Nisha, Jackson struggled to find meaning in the fact that the lovelorn girl had been hit by a matchmaker, and Levi struggled to maintain his composure around Nico, who, upon noticing the intern staring, winked. Meanwhile, Teddy had Casey bring her Grey Sloan’s head of cardio — and was chagrinned to find out that Maggie was Mer’s sister. Reminding Pierce of HIPAA, Teddy explained that she was 11 weeks pregnant and pretty sure that she had a blood clot in her pulmonary vein. As such, she wanted a prescription, stat, so that she could get out of there, also stat. When Maggie decided that Teddy should be monitored for a few days, the mother-to-be had a hormonal meltdown that allowed her doctor to deduce that — oh, crap — Owen is the father of her baby. Why did that matter to Maggie? “He’s kinda living with my sister, Amelia Shepherd,” Pierce said. That being the case, Teddy was going to leave in her compression socks and recover somewhere else until she could fly.
‘IF I THROW UP IN THE SAND, WILL YOU JUDGE ME?’ | While all this was going on, Alex was advising Boston-bound Jo on their beachy honeymoon to “enjoy your sandcastles, ’cause they’re gonna be snowcastles soon.” She protested that snowcastles weren’t a thing, prompting him to say that, well, they should be. This, in turn, gave her an idea that she had to write down at once. “I want to design killer cancer cells by introducing suicide genes in the cancer cell DNA,” she explained later, “like guided-missile immune therapy!” Back at Grey Sloan, Cece and Nisha were both doing fine. When Mer bumped into Link, he tried to introduce himself, but… “No,” she said simply. At Jackson’s, he told Maggie that he wanted what April and Matthew had. Thinking that he meant a marriage, Maggie decided that they needed milk. Immediately. Finally, Amelia confessed to Owen in a swoon-worthy scene, “I have feelings… for you — pulse-racing, chest-pounding feelings.” And it was fine if he was in love with Teddy, she just… she had to be clear. Message received, he gave her a kiss that looked like it was about to turn into more.
‘STOP JUDGING ME’
| The second episode, “Broken Together” — written by Meg Marinis and directed by Kevin McKidd (Owen) — also began with Mer dreaming of having sex with DeLuca. This time, Link came in next. “Do I know you?” she asked. No, replied Link, disrobing. “Is that a deal-breaker?” Before she woke up, a second Mer, this one prim and shrink-like, quipped from the sidelines, “This is kind of a lot, don’t you think?” At Owen’s, he and Amelia were about to have sex on the couch when they realized, “Nope, kids live here now.” And, since those kids were awake and waking up (in that order), their romp would have to wait. Stymied, Amelia went to Mer’s and revealed to her sister-in-law and Maggie that she’d almost slept with Owen. Wait, why was Maggie there? She and Jackson hadn’t even said “I love you” yet, and he’d kind of proposed, she explained. So she’d left to get milk. So. Much. Milk. And, before she could accidentally spill Teddy’s secret, she decided, “We need toilet paper” and fled.
‘I WANNA SAVE THE WORLD’
| At Grey Sloan, Owen and Amelia were canoodling when a couple of kids drove up with their parents and a cute dog. Seemed Dad had gotten a motorcycle and taken Mom on a joyride, swerved to miss the dog and hit his helmet-less head in the ensuing crash. While he was rushed into brain surgery, the dog, a stray, got loose, sending Dahlia on a wild-goose chase. Or a wild-pooch chase. When Jackson suggested that Mer was married to her work, she balked, loudly insisting, “I’m not married” — accidentally right in Link’s face. “That’s cool,” he replied. “Me neither.” Shortly, Jo and Alex returned early from their honeymoon so that she could wow Mer with her idea for guided-missile immune therapy. Once that was done, the newlywed asked Grey to create a fellowship for her in Seattle. Alas, Bailey insisted that the hospital couldn’t afford to do so. The only way it could would be if Grey Sloan had the salary that it was going to be saving when Karev left for Boston with his wife.
‘MOON SPA SOUNDS BETTER’
| Meanwhile, Nisha and Cece’s conditions both worsened. Deducing that the former had necrotizing fasciitis, meaning that she had to be isolated, Jackson wanted to operate in Bailey’s new pride and joy, a hyperbaric chamber. But he couldn’t use any electricity in there! No matter, he could make it work. So Bailey gave the OK. As for Cece, she kept crashing, prompting Maggie to order a biopsy (which revealed that the patient’s heart transplants had affected her kidneys, and her kidneys had then affected her heart!). Not that the matchmaker’s instincts were impacted at all. Having crushed on a lot of straight women herself, she endeavored to steer Taryn away from Mer. While Jackson and Levi operated on Nisha in the “moon spa,” Glasses was left breathless by the sight of Nico in the window. Flustered, he tipped off the attending to the fact that Maggie thought he’d proposed.
‘IF I GET TO LIVE, YOU GET TO LIVE’
| At the bar, Alex suggested to Jo that being in Boston for one year wouldn’t be so bad. But the thing was, she had, um, already turned down the fellowship. So she was now unemployed, and he was “married to a day drinker.” Back in the moon spa, just when it appeared that Nisha was out of the woods, she inexplicably took a nosedive. Though Link was able to help Jackson ascertain the cause from outside the hyperbaric chamber, and Avery tried for more than half an hour to resuscitate the patient, she couldn’t be saved. And, since the chamber had to be depressurized before it could be reopened, Maggie couldn’t let out her stricken boyfriend/maybe-fiancé immediately, as he wanted. If anyone took Nisha’s passing harder than Jackson, it was Cece, who, feeling responsible, cried to Mer, “I don’t want another heart,” much less a new kidney.
‘NO ONE IS GETTING A MINI-VAN’
| As the premiere neared its conclusion, Owen admitted to Amelia that he was worried about attaching strings. And, since motorcycle dad emerged from surgery saying he was selling the bike and no longer had any desire to relive anything from his past, we were led to expect Hunt to ixnay his reunion with his ex. Only later, he confessed, “I want the strings. I have always wanted the strings” — the noisy house, the kids… all of it. But did Amelia want strings? “I’m scared of them,” she couldn’t deny. And as a recovering addict, she had a tendency to be wary. She also wanted to be super careful with the kids’ stability. But, despite all that, she said — and Caterina Scorsone slayed me here — “I’m gonna try to be less wary.” (If you didn’t like Omelia Version 1, you have to be all in on Version 2.0, right?)
‘THE FUTURE IS ME’ | After Bailey again nixed the idea of Richard becoming chief — noting that he hadn’t gotten a new AA sponsor since Olive’s passing — Jo and Alex burst in, fresh from their afternoon of imbibing. Was the bride drunk? “Only mostly,” she replied. Yet she still dazzled Bailey with her proposal — so much so that the following day, Miranda told Mer that she’d given Wilson Grey Sloan’s first-ever Surgical Innovation Fellowship. Where had the hospital gotten the money? From Bailey herself. Wait. “You bought Jo Wilson?!?” exclaimed Mer. Yup, Bailey had stolen Grey’s work wife. She’d wanted some joy and taken it. If Mer had a problem with that, she could bring it to the interim chief: Alex, who advised his person not to act like a jealous girlfriend. “You’ll get to see [Jo] in the hallways.”
‘SORRY ABOUT MY ACCIDENTAL PROPOSAL’ | In the episode’s final moments, Dahlia joined her friends at the bar — with the dog, who was now hers. (Yay!) Nico bought Levi a beer, setting off a major wave of twitterpation. DeLuca, “awake and alive” after his two heroic rescues, pulled up in front of the hospital on the biker dad’s — well, now his own — bike and let Richard take it for a spin. Maggie suggested that maybe Jackson was suffering from some PTSD after what he went through with April’s near death and the demolition of his family’s empire. Maybe, he acknowledged. “I found love, though… I love you, Maggie.” She loved him, too, luckily. (Could they be growing on me? Anyone else?) And lastly, Mer restored Cece’s will to live by telling her, “I need your help.” Bring on the dates!
So, what did you think of the double feature? The new docs? Owen and Amelia’s official reunion? Alex’s new position? Jo’s partnership with Bailey? Grade the premiere below, then hit the comments.
Launch Gallery: <i>Grey's</i> Season 15 Photos
Related stories
Performer of the Week: Caterina Scorsone
Ratings: Murphy Brown Has OK Start, Grey's Steady With Season 15 Opener
Get more from TVLine: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter