Grey’s Anatomy

Out of Nowhere Season 14 Episode 8 Editor’s Rating 3 stars ***

Grey’s Anatomy

Out of Nowhere Season 14 Episode 8 Editor’s Rating 3 stars ***

Still smiling from the wonderful hospital stay down memory lane last week? You are not alone. No “Cosy in the Rocket” over the opening titles made me nostalgic for episode 300. Alas, we’re moving on to 301. And what better way than putting our doctors into the middle of a disaster they never saw coming: a cyberattack.

The entire hospital is in chaos thanks to, as Bailey puts it, some “Cheeto-stained pirate nerd” hacking the network, taking all patient records hostage, shutting down CT machines, locking people out of the blood bank, and generally wreaking havoc on the very tech-forward hospital. Until Grey Sloan Memorial can pay the ransom — 5,000 bitcoins, or $20 million dollars — it has been effectively thrown back into the Stone Age. No offense, Webber.

Any episode following such a big to-do was going to have to work hard, and aside from the truly shocking final few seconds — I gasped, people — “Out of Nowhere” fell short. That’s saying a lot, since Grey’s is headed into two months of winter hiatus and several patients’ lives hang in the balance. I just wasn’t entirely invested in most of them. There were some highlights, though, let’s start there.

How great was it to see Alex Karev tending to tiny children again? It’s been a while since we’ve seen Alex really dig into a case. Seven-year-old Frankie has thick blood disease and he is a king among kindergarteners. He does things like tell Alex that his mom called him “stupid hot,” and other precocious kid stuff. Because of his disease, he can throw clots easily and he’s on anticoagulants, but since he’ll be going into surgery, they need to reverse that so he doesn’t bleed out. It’s this whole thing. Here’s the problem: Frankie starts getting a headache, and Alex and Amelia are worried it could be the sign of a clot in the brain. Since all the computers are down, they can’t get into his records to see if they’ve already started reversing his blood thinners or not. If they have, Alex is in the clear to give the kid heparin, which would thin his blood and stop the clot. If they haven’t started the reversal, and Frankie is not suffering from a clot but a brain bleed, more blood thinners on top of his usual meds would be catastrophic. Doctoring is so hard!

The only way Alex, Jo, and Amelia can find out what drugs have previously been administered is by tracking down whoever was on Frankie’s case the shift before. While Frankie is getting worse and asking Alex to promise to marry his mom and keep her safe if he dies (I KNOW), Jo is running all over the hospital trying to get an answer. She definitely gets her cardio in for the day.

Jo hits roadblock after roadblock and time is running out. Alex and Amelia have to rely on their gut instincts. The probable thing is to assume the anticoagulants have been reversed and Frankie is throwing a clot. He needs heparin. Only, while Alex and Amelia are having this debate, Jo learns the exact opposite is true. Giving Frankie heparin would kill him. Jo races through the hospital to tell Alex, she frantically texts “NO HEPARIN,” etc., etc., but she’s in the elevator and there’s no service. We watch in horror as Alex adds medicine to Frankie’s IV. (But are we sure it’s heparin?)

Unfortunately, Jo won’t be able to check in with Alex for some time: She bolts off the elevator and walks right into … HER HUSBAND. Matthew Morrison is back. And he calls her Brooke and also Jo. And he has oddly great/horrific timing. Holy hell, you guys. Talk about a disaster you didn’t see coming.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are also great things you don’t always see coming. When Arizona and Carina DeLuca were first hooking up, I admittedly brushed it aside. Just another hot lady showing up at Grey Sloan and instantly falling for Arizona. AZ is top-notch, I get it, but also my eyes are still sore from all the Minnick-induced rolling. Then they fizzled out and Carina hooked up with Owen, and though still unenthused, they were very hot with their naked breakfast cooking and all. Case closed, right? Wrong. Arizona and Carina team up to deliver a baby, sparks reignite between them, and now my ship has big, billowing sails, or whatever the kids are saying now. (Definitely not that.)

Due to an understaffed OB department — because Grey Sloan can never have just one emergency — Bailey gives Carina temporary privileges. Carina is giddy to get back to delivering babies and not just watching women masturbate in an MRI machine. You know, that old hat.

Carina’s patient isn’t an easy first case back. She’s scared and she’s taking it out on her doctors. She isn’t ready! She isn’t going to be a good mother! It’s too late, lady! That baby is literally coming out of you. Carina calls Arizona to help calm the situation and the woman starts crowning in the middle of the hallway.

You guys, can you imagine if you walked into Grey Sloan that day for some routine screening and all of a sudden there are cyberhackers in control of all the monitors and the power goes off and BABIES ARE FALLING OUT OF WOMEN IN THE HALLWAY?

Arizona, of course, is great with the mom-to-be, and she calms her down as Carina guides the kid out. It is a pretty cute baby, so I’m glad the woman comes around on motherhood in the end. Arizona and Carina make eyes at each other and realize they’re a good team. They both miss each other, and it looks like they want to say more but they can’t. The chemistry is just oozing off the screen.

The same cannot be said for Jackson and Maggie, who take a giant leap forward in their inevitable romance story line. They’re working on a patient who just happens to be a man who very recently met his adult daughter. After the hackers start messing with the power in the hospital, they decide their patient needs to be transferred elsewhere. While traveling with their patient, Jackson and Maggie realize they have SO MUCH in common. Maggie just met her father, and so did Jackson! Jackson belonged to a country club in Boston, and Maggie worked there! They make awkward flirty eyes, and when the helicopter they’re transporting their patient in hits major turbulence, Jackson grabs Maggie’s trembling hand. They have a quick moment, but the turbulence shakes one of the patient’s tubes loose and blood sprays everywhere. It’s incredible that after 300 episodes there are still things that have never been done on Grey’s Anatomy before, but here we are. Bloodbath on a helicopter. It is most definitely a mood killer.

More than that, because he’s dealing with THE BLOOD, Jackson misses an urgent call from Bailey, giving him the go-ahead to transfer the $20 million dollar ransom (from Jackson’s “I’m buying a boat money”) in order to stop the hacker madness and save, well, pretty much everyone in the hospital.

Laughter Is the Best Medicine, Except for Real Medicine

• What of our Harper Avery Award winner? Meredith is suffering through lame news interviews and splenectomies-gone-wrong with Glasses the Intern. Glasses is the perfect kind of intern for Meredith to yell at, and he’s grown on me. Currently, Meredith has him hooked up to their patient because she’s bleeding out on the table, the blood banks are locked, and Glasses is a match. Grey’s, you are insane and I love you.

• When all the doctors have to go computerless for their diagnoses and treatments, Dr. Webber is living his best life. He gets to teach everyone how they did it in the old days. The young doctors learn “the flip and dip,” how to use a newspaper to tell if there is blood in the belly, that newspapers are physical objects printed on actual paper and don’t only exist on phones, etc. So much learning!

• Amelia Shepherd, how dare you say Doc McStuffins is not a real doctor! I know a tiny little lamb who would disagree. And something tells me that when you get your hands on a patient it doesn’t only tickle a little. It probably tickles a whole damn lot.

• I’m all for Beefcake Ben, but why the gratuitous shot of him working out and then having him disappear for the rest of the episode?

• Arizona on why she didn’t become an OB/GYN: “I did not go into ladies’ vaginas because I do not like to mix business with pleasure.”

Sob Scale: 0/10

Not a single tear. I’m telling you, something terrible is going down soon. Bring it on, 2018!

Grey’s Anatomy Recap: Hacked