I assume you have seen this episode or do not mind spoilers…

Season four has been a change. Out with the old, and in with the new. Or has it? Everything is the same, but it is very, very different. Without calling the previous weeks less than satisfying, because they were great – Grey’s is as satisfying as anything – but this week has literally made me believe again. In life. Moving out of the usual formula that season four fell prisoner to {happy, upbeat song playing over images of Seattle, while everyone prepares for work, and ending with drama and a beautiful song that is enough to make tears fall, with a whole lot of seemingly always-resolved shenanigans crammed in between}, my head literally exploded with the restoration of the “Grey’s Awesomeness” that we have all come to know and love. It made me believe that Yang has not moved on. It made me believe that Meredith has not moved on. Neither has Derek. Nor Mark. Nor anyone else for that matter, but they are trying. They are making the attempt to move forward and make the kind of change – “becoming” – that they know they have to make, but have been hindered by a number of old scars and succulent lips. In this weekly series, I will share my deepest, darkest thoughts on the latest episode – because I am not Izzie, as she was in this episode anyway, and I cannot keep my mouth shut. Izzie is growing, and wants it to stop. For me, it never even began.

The theme of the episode is about how difficult it is to move on when there are parts of who you were that seem to pop up unexpectedly when you are on the right track to becoming who you need to be. Not even, “want” to be, but need to be. But these are only ideas, mental fantasies that somehow always end up being pushed to the side when the past comes racing back into focus. Meredith wants to be a better surgeon, one who is not preoccupied with Derek’s lips. Izzie wants to be a good doctor, but at the same time, she really wants to tell Alex the truth about Ava’s “pregnancy” – Alex is only trying to become the father he never had, and sees Izzie’s lack of enthusiasm as selfish. Cristina wants to be a good surgeon, but then Burke comes back into the picture, even if it is only news about his Harper Avery award posted on the Bulletin board, and she resorts to singing “Like a Virgin” in the morgue while dissecting corpses. George wants to pretend as if he is okay with the fact that he is repeating his intern year. Mark wants to pretend that he is not such a man-whore. Callie wants everyone to know she is not a lesbian, and turns Mark right back into a man-whore. Erica Hahn wants to be acknowledged the way Burke was and she just wants more friends, which explains her weirdness towards Callie. Miranda wants to prove that she is just fine without her husband and that she too can move on. Richard wants to prove to his ex-wife, who is now a nurse-representative, that he has changed. I want Addison to come back forever. You can’t always get what you want, sometimes you have to work for it.

Meredith is a mess right now. We all know she has been since the very day she become “just a Girl in a bar.” So she is in therapy, which she seems to be doing as consolation for the fact that her perception has become so blurred. More like she feels obligated to do it, even though she thinks she knows her problem anyway. Derek is with Rose. Sexually even. Meredith tells herself that she is over him, and she wishes good things for the couple. “It was a good day,” Meredith tells the therapist. RIGHT. How could it be? Derek is WITH Rose. Dr. Wyatt, the therapist, thinks she is being a total coward. And perhaps she is, Meredith is a fighter. Always has been. However, how long can someone fight for a cause that huge? The love of her life.

When reality rears its ugly head, her fantasies are supposed to vanish. But they don’t. A battle she seems incapable of winning – so she takes the high road, at least on the outside. She has all the power but it is going to take one hell of a battle to restore her courage and get McDreamy back. But then, did he ever really leave? He is making advances towards Meredith, and there is no such thing as “just friends” between them. It is freaking hot romance. I hope he is not just stringing poor Rose along as a “medal” of how he and Meredith are “over.” If he is, I say toss the medal and get the girl you really want. Be a man, and stop pretending like you cannot be with Meredith, because where there is love, there is a way. Does she want to die alone? She has a choice to make, just as Derek did when he chose wrong. Will she pick to fight for the Love team? Or will she pick to fight for the Career team? I am not placing any bets, the outcome of that fight is anyone’s guess. I cannot take my mind off that bottle of champagne though.

Cristina, by far the doctor with the most skill, is not a people person. She has her one and only person, Meredith. But Burke was the one man she connected with like no other, but she couldn’t marry him. She left him at the alter. But she helped him with his surgeries after he was shot. She helped him, she nursed him, she pushed him back into what he was before the accident, but with a little more strength and conviction than ever before. Neither of them are right, but neither of them are really wrong.

Burke repays Cristina by not even mentioning her name in the article that went alongside news of his “Harper Avery” award. She deserves the award as much as he does, if you think about it, and she deserved some credit, but she did break his heart. This is all too much for the “internal” Cristina to handle, so she opts to go to the morgue and do some work with those friendly corpses – to block out the pain. She sings. She, who made Meredith and the gang dance their pain away, sings to stop the stinging.

But she cannot conceal her pain forever, and when she pours her soul out to the Chief, it is one of the most powerful moments in Grey’s history, at least in Yang’s history. Sandra Oh is amazing in that scene, some Emmy love would be fully deserved. This time, it is going to take more than simply dancing to make the pain subside. She was Burke’s “unseen hand” - now she sees herself as a ghost. Which is unbearable for someone as ambitious as her. And for the viewers as well, I mean Cristina, falling apart. It is too much to handle.

Great characters and patients come and go in Grey’s, but this week’s tribulation with the gay soldiers was pretty heartbreaking stuff. What began as begging of some more GLAAD recognition, or so I assumed, turned into one of the most memorable moments too. At the very least, chills developed all the way down my spine.

Meredith and Derek are still busy trying to find some success in their clinical trial {as well as a personal trial for each of them} and the next patient on the list is a gay soldier with a brain tumour, which we do not know about at first. The gay part I mean. How could he be openly gay? He is in the army. His father and Sergeant are at his bedside and when his lover, also a soldier, arrives, you could feel the tension. You could cut it with a knife - but you do not because that would disturb a delicately constructed scene.

When the homo-phobic father leaves the room for a bit, and the two soldiers are left alone, except for Meredith’s presence, they engage in some rather passionate kissing – the kind that spawns from an enormous amount of holding back and concealing. Then the father walks in. Secrets are out in the open, flying everywhere, but then the soldier dies. Predictable? Yes. But it was effective and harrowing. Life is messy and life is tragic, not sometimes but most of the time. Every single moment is more than precious and our decisions can influence lives. Meredith’s patient chose wrong when he told his boyfriend to leave him alone. He chose wrong, but he didn’t know it, and he will never get a chance to say goodbye. When the father allows his son’s boyfriend to see him one last time, even though he is dead, to say goodbye – the boyfriend kisses his dead lover with such genuine affection and misery. It is just about the most heart wrenching scene in Grey’s this season. Yeah, I totally admit that I was almost in tears; I am not made of stone.

Then there is that similarity between that incident with the clinical trial patient and the situation Meredith is in. While she dies all alone, the one person she loves and needs is right in the next room…Only he is becoming a self-proclaimed whore by sleeping with Rose but thinking about Meredith.

So things are changing, and with change comes new beginnings and new “becomings.” Pain is guaranteed. Failure is probable, but not a certainty. Neither is success. Moving forward is the goal. Not moving forward would make no sense at all, and is not beneficial to a single soul. I woner if taking a step back would not be a good direction for a few of the characters, especially Alex. I also think that Meredith is not the only character in need of therapy. I have been to therapy, and if I needed it, so does every Grey’s character as well. Maybe that’s why I love them so much, they are dark and twisty, scary and damaged, but at the end of the day, they have each other, they have their hopes and fears, they are real.

So “The Becoming” was amazing, and I expect the following episodes of season four to be nothing less. The final episodes of the season are always the most dramatic and engrossing; I look forward to them every time.

Season 4. Episode 14, “The Becoming.”
Written by Tony Phelan, Joan Rater. Directed by Julie Anne Robinson.

The Becoming” is a song by NIN, off the album The Downward Spiral.”

Songs Featured in this episode:

• Beth Orton - “Carmella”
• Cast - “Like a Virgin”
• Vampire Weekend - “Mansard Roof”
• Jay Clifford - “Know When To Walk Away”
• The Submarines - “Brightest Hour”
• Taken By Trees - “Only Yesterday”
• Frightened Rabbit - “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms”

Originally Aired in the United States on the 8th of May 2008.
Aired in South Africa on the 12th of May 2008.

For those of you who missed the episode and live in the US – you can watch it online free. For those of you living in SA who missed the episode, it is repeated today, on MNET at 17:00.

If you have any thoughts on the episode, feel free to vent in the comment section below. If you do not even watch Grey’s, you suck.