It's solo surgery time on Grey's Anatomy this week, and that feeling of being all alone — often with someone else's life in your hands — runs all through this episode. Life as a surgical resident is lonely, it seems, unless you have the ghost of your dead boyfriend to keep you company. To talk about it, just read more.

Cristina starts the episode with the ultimate reward and the ultimate punishment. She wins the solo surgery, but because she's banned thanks to the whole intern surgery cabal thing, she has to pick which of the residents will perform it in her place. The writers make a brief show of pointing out that there are other doctors at Seattle Grace (who was that blonde girl?), but it's pretty obvious that it's going to be Mere, George, Izzie, or Alex. Watching them plead their cases is hysterical: Mere claims not to want it just cause they're friends; George talks about how much he's grown; Izzie says she doesn't care because she's having great sex (about which more later); Alex hits Cristina where it counts by describing how to do the procedure. That — plus Dr. Dixon's advice that Cristina use a simple system to decide, which seems more Cristina-esque than going with her gut — makes Alex the easy winner.

What happens in the aftermath is even more dramatic: Alex tells Izzie he ("frickin'") loves her! Which would probably mean a lot more had Izzie not been sleeping with Denny at that very moment. Apparently, the new status quo is that Denny hangs around Izzie at the hospital and makes wisecracks, and sometimes she talks to him, and nobody really notices except for George. So anyway, Denny's especially fond of making gagging noises or weird faces when Alex is around, and he definitely does not like Alex telling Izzie he loves her, but Izzie eventually pulls herself together and goes to assist on the surgery. Because, you know, Denny's not real. Cristina, meanwhile, yells at everyone for not taking any responsibility for the intern-surgery disaster and Meredith specifically for making it personal, and then she gets whisked away by Owen Hunt to . . . a vent. That spews air and apparently makes you happy again.

Meanwhile, so much other stuff happens:

  • Lexie and Mark work on a patient who hasn't spoken in years, and when she finally gets the courage to say "hi," Lexie gets the courage to go to Mark's and take all her clothes off. His restraint lasts until she's at the tank top phase.
  • The second Meredith's patient yells that she wishes her sister would die, it's pretty obvious where that's going. Don't text and drive, kids.
  • Sadie and Callie are maybe flirting, but Callie can't really tell, because she doesn't know how flirting with girls works. Also, is ABC really going to let Grey's start up another lesbian relationship right now? Doubtful.
  • Bailey won the solo surgery of her class — no big shock there — but now that she's bored with her work, she gets all cute and gushy in Mark's surgery.
  • I liked the throwback to the very first episode with all the residents taking bets on how long Alex would go without making a mistake.
  • Speaking of which, at one point George points out that he did heart surgery in an elevator, and Alex says that was more than a year ago, and he's 007. Except . . . 007 was longer ago. Bad logic, Alex.

So: Lexie and Mark get sexy, George thinks there's something up with Izzie, Cristina and Hunt are all kissy on the vent, and McDreamy is almost nowhere to be seen. (Now I kind of think he's the one in those blind items.) What did you all make of this one?

Photos copyright 2008 ABC, Inc.

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