Grey’s almost redeemed itself tonight!

Spoilers after the jump.

There was humor, there was snark, there were, I don’t know, actual medical procedures. Bailey was awesome, as usual. Callie wasn’t around enough to force me to decide whether she annoys me or if I feel sorry for her. Christina was Christina, which is good. Meredith and Derek didn’t have too much in the way of sickening interpersonal contact.

And Meredith, with Bailey’s prodding (thank you, Miranda Bailey!), FINALLY talked with Lexie. I’m so glad–I’m not Meredith’s hugest fan, but I like her to have something redeeming going on if she’s going to keep up the Derek stupidity. I’m not sure what I think about Alex being a total douche about George’s second-year-intern status at the end. I was sort of liking the character movement Alex was making (i.e., from being a total jerk to a guy who I mostly like), but that was uncool, and he didn’t even seem to realize it was uncool–and he doesn’t really have an underlying emotional instability concerning George that explains it. It was just douchey. (BTW, douche is my current favorite word, so you’ll have to excuse me when I overuse it.)

Izzie seemed out of character at the beginning–I mean, she’s usually the one you can count on to be generally nice to humanity, and her treatment of her interns (all year, actually) has just been horrid, and talking about “really old guy” like he doesn’t matter; just didn’t seem like her. I know she has sort of a short temper when she’s frustrated, and maybe it just shows how much the whole George thing is affecting her, but still. Usually she snaps at people in frustration, but then immediately apologizes. (Unless it’s Callie, of course…) I miss the Izzie that I used to love to death. But she showed herself again when talking with Charlie, and at his “memorial,” and that made me happy.

And I was so hopeful that maybe Charlie would be right, and that the writers had finally realized that Izzie/George is not a good idea and were trying to work their way out of it, but it appears I was wrong. *sigh* And next week, Izzie and Callie are going to have a high noon showdown? Geez. Still, this episode was tonally a lot more like the Grey’s I love. Which leaves me hopeful that if we can just somehow get past the Izzie/George thing–and at this point, I’m willing for it to happen, as long as it happens quickly so we can focus on something else–I’ll mostly have my show back. Because my other point of contention, Meredith/Derek, has been around since the beginning and I can deal with it.