Now here’s a novel approach: why not consolidate your Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s specials into one episode? Episode 10 does just that by consolidating all the end of the year holidays into a singular storyline. There’s a good chance I’ll mess up what happened on what holiday but I can at least assure you that everything in this recap totally happened. Here goes…….

Thanksgiving

Dr. Christina Yang (Sandra Oh) and Dr. Teddy Altman (Kim Raver) are continuing to bond in cardio. Both are having a blast learning from each other especially Christina who has finally found an oasis in her career drought. Dr. Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd), however, is finding it a bit of distraction to work alongside two women he has deep feelings for.

Christina and Teddy are given a transplant recipient (Danielle Panabaker) with a rupturing ticker. Teddy makes the shocking call to take the bad heart out of the patient and put her on a machine that will keep her alive until a new heart can be found. The patient’s date (Nathan West) stands by during and after the procedure. How’s that for a date ender?

We also discover that Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) has kept her divorce a secret from her own parents. When Daddy Bailey (Frankie Faison) comes to visit Miranda is unable to keep up the charade and tells her dad the truth about her marriage. That prompts Mr. Bailey to stay a little longer in the hopes of helping his daughter to get her marriage back on track. His first word of advice is for Miranda to lay off the career goals believing Miranda’s long hours at the hospital contributed to the disintegration of the relationship. Like, ouch, man.

Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) has a heart to heart with Mr. Bailey about why Miranda kept the divorce a secret and that Miranda really is doing a great job raising her son while working at Seattle Grace. The talk doesn’t do much to calm Mr. Bailey’s concerns. Double ouch.

Dr. Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) and Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) get a young boy that has some kind of thingee in his brain that is causing the boy to have massive nosebleeds. The problem is that Derek can’t operate through the cranium for this. He would have to go through the nose to fix the problem. Obstacle #2 is that there are no surgical tools available for such a procedure. As soon as everyone starts to despair Derek has a “lightbulb moment” and approaches Dr. Mark Sloan (Eric Dane) about creating the device from scratch. Mark agrees and the two begin working on the tool.

Speaking of Dr. Sloan, a young blonde comes looking for “McSteamy” at the hospital. She claims to be Mark’s daughter. Callie gives Mark and “Sloan” (Leven Rambin) a paternity test and the claim is confirmed. Mark is a daddy. Therefore, Mark does the honorable thing by inviting Sloan to stay with him and his girlfriend, Dr. Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh) for awhile. Mark probably shouldn’t have given this news to Lexie while she was chopping veggies because in her moment of shock Lexie clips off a little bit of her pinkie.

Chief Richard Webber (James Pickens, Jr.) has decided to give Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) some private lessons to keep her skills fresh. The Chief explains that he is not alcoholic but has had periods in his life where he drank a little too much to get over terrible ordeals such as the affair with Meredith’s mother and the subsequent break-up. “Dark & Twisted Meredith” might have been a little more skeptical and called the drunk a “drunk”. “Happy & Married Meredith” is in the driver’s seat now and she totally buys The Chief’s story.

Christmas

Meredith and Derek plan a Christmas feast at their house. We’d expect most of the old gang to show up but Miranda unexpectedly asks for an invite. See, her dad has been on her case since Thanksgiving and Miranda hopes that going to the party and getting festive will prove to her father that she is on the mend. Hopefully, that will be sufficient proof to convince the man to pack up and return home.

Teddy and Christina are still waiting for that patient’s heart. So far, the donor list is coming up blank and Teddy is worried that the girl will die before a heart can be found. Christina encourages the patient in the only way Christina could by promising the girl that if she could just hold on until New Years then there’s a good chance some drunk driver fatalities will provide plenty of spare organ options.

In the meantime, the patient asks Teddy if she can go outside while the snow comes down. The girl loves snow and she wants to play in it just in case she croaks before New Years. Christina isn’t so sure about taking the girl out of the hospital but Teddy approves the little venture and the doctors, along with the girl’s date (yep, he’s still by the girl’s side), escort her outside where she stands in the flakes and catches some on her tongue. And then of course she collapses from bowel failure.

They rush her inside to an operating room and Miranda works to buy the girl more time on the mortal coil. I’m a little sketchy on this part but I think they were unable to anesthetize the girl because they feared she might not wake up from it. So, Miranda and her team perform the surgery on the girl while she’s awake. I’m not sure if they used a localized anesthesia or not but it’s clear the girl was feeling major discomfort. To help take her mind off the pain Miranda commands the other doctors to sing Christmas carols while they operate. Even Dr. Alex Karev (Justin Chambers) joins the chorus. Alex’s singing comforting? Maybe to comatose patients, perhaps….

Sloan has made herself very at home with Mark and Lexie. The proud new parents put on a polite face for Sloan as they bicker behind the scenes about how to ask the girl how long she’s planning to crash at “Casa Sloan y Grey”. Mark is also on the clock with Derek to finish that surgical tool while Arizona tries to comfort the little boy and his parents. During the construction Mark confesses to Derek that he knew about Sloan or more specifically he knew he got his lady-friend pregnant. Sloan gave her $100 bucks and vanished. He thought she would get an abortion. He obviously thought wrong. Instead of bashing his friend Derek encourages him by admitting that Mark has grown up since those wild and wacky days. Derek believes Mark can make this work. Mark thinks he’ll have better luck with the new tool than his new daughter.

Owen glances over at Teddy a little too long and a little too longingly when Christina catches the gaze and thinks it’s for her. Then she realizes the goo-goo eyes were meant for Teddy and she storms out of the room. This prompts Owen to take Teddy to another room and finally confront the touchy feelings they’ve both been struggling with since she arrived. Teddy confesses that she’s loved Owen since the army days but didn’t want to interfere with his engagement. Owen says he’s loved Teddy back all this time and if she had made it clear back then he would’ve joined her. But Owen is in love with Christina and he ain’t leaving her. No hard feelings, right Teddy?

It’s dinnertime! The guests sing carols, decorate the tree and chat amongst themselves as the meal is prepared. Thatcher Grey (Jeff Perry) notices that The Chief is drinking egg nog and brings it to Meredith’s attention. Meredith dismisses Thatcher’s claims about Richard falling off the wagon and shoos him away. Dinner starts off pretty well until Miranda talks about her successful surgery on the heart patient’s bowels. Mr. Bailey basically tells his daughter that it’s rude to talk about bowels and stuff at the dinner table and she should be ashamed.

Now, it would probably seem normal to talk about medical procedures at a dinner table full of doctors. But to Mr. Bailey, that is just plain nasty. That gets Miranda and Mr. Bailey into a war of words where daddy admonishes his daughter for being a failure as a wife and mother. Daughter comes back with the fact that her baby is healthy and her career allows her to help people the way mommy and daddy helped her. Miranda tells her dad that she is happy and blessed with the life she has and if he can’t accept that he can tell it to the Marines.

After a really long awkward silence Arizona passes the peas and the other guests follow her lead. Nothing like a hot meal after a hot exchange of words.

New Year's Eve / New Year's Day

All the loose ends get tied up. Christina’s prediction comes true and a drunk driving victim makes a heart available for her patient. The surgery is a success but the girl receives two hearts instead of one: the heart from the donor and the heart of the man that has stood by her since Thanksgiving. He proposes. She accepts. Happy ending.

Christina confronts Owen about the look he gave Teddy and she gives him the go ahead to follow through on his unrequited passion. Owen responds by giving Christina a big wet smooch. Owen and Christina are still together. Happy ending.

Lexie finally convinces Mark to talk to his daughter about her moving date. Before Mark can begin Sloan descends into this tear filled rant about how she’s knocked up, how her mother kicked her out after that confession and how she has nowhere else to go. Mark holds his grown, broke and impregnated daughter in his arms and assures her it will be okay. Sort of a happy ending.

Joe (Steven W. Bailey) pages Meredith to the bar where Chief Webber is officially hammered. If none of the other warning signs didn’t register then seeing Richard dance by the jukebox with a tall glass of “club soda” (secret code for “vodka”, in this case) in his clutches makes it crystal clear to Meredith that The Chief is back to his drunken ways. Not a happy ending whatsoever.

There you have it. The Grey’s Anatomy version of “Happy Holidays” where relatives come and give their loved ones hell and relationships are nearly torn asunder by unpleasant surprises. Just makes me wanna deck some halls.

Both Owen and Christina have been tempted by potential love interests this season and both have refused the invitations and stayed a couple. I think that’s a good sign that the Teddy triangle is kaputz for now. There is always the possibility that Shonda Rhimes (series creator and writer) will trap Owen and Teddy in an elevator forcing them to give in to their urges. I think Christina might’ve had a fling with Jackson back in the day but not now. He’s so not on her level.

Richard is falling deeper down the alcoholic well and it appears Meredith might be the basket that prevents him from plummeting to the bottom. The trick will be to keep this from the hospital board. There are no secrets at Seattle Grace and even the walls of Joe’s Bar have ears. This could be the thing that ends the honeymoon because Derek is probably going to want to give Richard tough love while Meredith will strive to shelter her father-figure from all harm.

It was crazy to see Mr. Bailey belittle Miranda and in front of her co-workers. It was like Donald Rumsfeld putting Colin Powell over his knee and spanking him. Mr. Bailey was a trip. You really need to see how he puts Miranda in her place at Christmas dinner telling her that good girls don’t talk about bowels at the dinner table. All we needed was Miranda picking up the carving knife and thrusting it at her dad’s throat telling him “Until you do right by me, everything you even think about is gonna crumble”. I’m glad it worked out in the end, though, and the situation added another interesting dimension to Dr. Bailey’s rarely seen personal character.

No Izzie (Katherine Heigl) sighting this episode. Just as well since Alex wasn’t a major player this time.

It would appear that this is the last new episode of Season 6 until after the holidays. There was no preview for next week’s episode so if you missed some episodes you’ll have the chance to catch up during this brief rerun period, I think.