Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 Episode 15 Captures Heart with Webber’s Arc

Critic’s Rating: 3.7 / 5.0

3.7

After a powerful hour the previous week, Grey’s Anatomy was always going to have a lot to live up to this week.

In some aspects, it managed it, continuing Lucas’ grief while Webber also pushed for his prostate screening program.

In other ways, the characters continued to be their annoying, toxic selves, reminding us of what isn’t working on the show.

The Problem With a Large Ensemble Cast

After finally committing to a relationship, Jules and Winston had to have an honest conversation about their current situation.

As we rooted for the two to get together, it was easy to overlook the fact that Winston was starting a relationship with Jo’s OB nurse, Iris.

Grey’s Anatomy didn’t do the best job in explaining how far along this relationship was or how serious either of them thought it was, as it was a bit of a shock to find out that they were still together.

Iris hasn’t been seen since the night Jules saw Winston and her in the bar, and yet, they’re serious enough for Winston to need to break up with her.

Of course, he gets the surprising news that it’s her birthday. He simply can’t break up with her on her birthday, and if Winston had told me that, I would have totally understood.

This is where Jules becomes an annoying, jealous mistress, and she’s better than this.

Rather than understanding that Winston had to do the kind and humane thing, she lays into him about waiting until the next day.

Annoyingly, it only makes sense when she asks Blue for advice about the situation and then starts crying. Once she tells him that about her personality change side effect, it makes so much more sense.

I’d completely forgotten that she was on hormones so that she could freeze her eggs.

With so much going on throughout the series, it’s sometimes hard to keep up.

There are just too many characters at this point, and it’s something Grey’s Anatomy Season 23 can hopefully fix as long as more characters aren’t added after Teddy and Owen leave.

Blue was infuriating at the same time. He’s always so selfish until it comes to handling patients. How did Jules and Blue use to hook up? It’s hard to remember those days!

Simone Needs to Get Off Her High Horse

Blue isn’t the only insufferable character on Grey’s Anatomy Season 22.

I’ve had problems with Simone from the beginning of her introduction to the series.

It’s always her way or the highway, and if something doesn’t go the way she expected or people are angry with her, she reacts instead of accepting that maybe she’s the problem.

Throughout the episode, she shows how angry she is at Lucas for blaming her for Katie’s death.

What she’s not accepting is that, had she not hidden the necessary equipment, Lucas would at least have been with Katie at the time of her death; he would have had a chance to say goodbye.

Sure, he didn’t want Katie to die, but the least he needed was the chance to gain closure and feel like he’d done everything, and Simone took that from him despite seeing the writing on the wall for her.

Now, she has the audacity to be angry at him for taking his own anger out on her? She can’t even give him grace when it comes to his grief?

This isn’t the first time that she’s been like this, either, and it’s time for someone to call her out on it all.

Part of me feels like the show is trying to create another Cristina with Simone, but even Cristina knew when it was time to take a step back and let people be angry at her.

Poor Spencer ended up bearing the brunt of it, and she didn’t deserve any of that. All that does is keep making me feel like the show lost the wrong intern when it wrote Mika out.

Even the apology at the end, as she handed Lucas Katie’s things, felt false, as if she didn’t understand the weight of what she’d done or that Lucas genuinely needed someone to be angry with.

Webber Finds Peace in His Story

For most of the hour, Lucas spent time with Webber, as they conducted community outreach for prostate screenings.

I love that James Pickens Jr.is using his very real, life-threatening issues to raise awareness about the world through this story.

What’s even more impressive is that the story feels organic to Pickens Jr.’s story, as he took his time to open up about his own prostate cancer.

Webber spends the installment trying not to talk about his own health issues, but it’s when he tells Lucas that he had prostate cancer that things change.

This is what changes everything in the barbershop.

A doctor can tell us the same thing time and time again. Even a doctor who is a friend can tell us something, and it doesn’t mean we’ll take it seriously.

It comes across as a professional doing their due diligence, and maybe in the United States, it would come across as a doctor seeking more money from insurance companies.

By Webber telling one man that he takes this seriously because he had prostate cancer, the conversation becomes more personal and poignant.

There’s a weight to it that proves this is a real concern. It’s not just stats on a computer screen or a piece of paper, and it’s affecting real people that this barbershop owner knows.

No, a person shouldn’t need to tell their own story if they’re not comfortable, but it can help. At the same time, a person needs to be comfortable with that.

By the end of the hour, Webber even acknowledges this with Bailey, noting that Lucas helped, even though Lucas wasn’t ready for community outreach.

Of all the ongoing storylines on Grey’s Anatomy right now, this is the one I’m most interested in, as it’s an important topic that is rarely covered.

I worried that losing Katie would lead to Grey’s Anatomy going back to the annoying relationship storylines, and while there were some of them, Webber’s continued storyline offers hope that the show can continue to capture what used to make it great.

The series’ heart is at the center of these medical storylines and health messages.

Chit-Chat From the OR

There was a lot more going on throughout Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 Episode 15, but the storylines only brought a couple of passing thoughts:

• I keep bringing up Bailey’s time giving the bubble boy HIV. Why was she with Blue, acting as if she’d never done anything crazy for patients, even without them knowing?!
• Teddy and Owen continue to work together well as they always have, and it’s clear how their joint exit storyline will play out.
• Winston really should have just waited until the next day to break up with Iris!
• It’s refreshing not to have either the Amelia/Toni or Link/Jo relationship drama.
• What are the odds that Spencer will be a little too clingy after that hookup?

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