Grey’s Anatomy Review: In My Life (Season 17 Episode 9)

All of the traumas in Teddy Altman’s life have finally caught up to her, leaving her completely shut down on Grey’s Anatomy Season 17 Episode 9, “In My Life.”

This Teddy-centric episode is beautiful and heartbreaking, and extremely surreal. It also gives Kim Raver a chance to shine, and boy does she. Her performance is stellar.

Teddy has been brought home by Owen, and she has completely shut down following DeLuca’s death and a failed attempt to get Meredith Grey off of the ventilator.

She has a look that Owen says he’s only seen in soldiers. Even with Amelia’s help, they can’t get her to speak, eat, or drink. They go so far as to hook up an IV for hydration, fretting over her and discussing some of their own issues in the process.

What’s clear here is that Owen still cares for Teddy, despite everything. He’s also still angry.

Amelia is actually the one to stand up for Teddy, calling Owen out on the awful thing he once did because of his PTSD — everyone’s responses are different. And let’s not forget, Amelia can relate to a point. Remember that tumor she had that explained away so much of her past behavior?

But we don’t just see Teddy lying in her bed for the entire episode. Much like we’re getting a look into Meredith’s mind while she’s in a coma, we get a look into Teddy’s here. 

Is it perhaps a bit much to use that same tactic with two characters congruently? I’m saying yes. More on that in a second.

But left to its own merits, this is a good episode and what we see of Teddy’s thoughts is incredibly complex.

We see flashbacks of things we’ve seen before, but we also get new information. More scenes with Allison, more on Teddy’s past with her parents. Then she has those dreamlike flashes.

We’ve all had dreams like this, where things change suddenly. For Teddy, she’s jolted into surgeries and visions of DeLuca and Meredith. She’s seeing an alternate reality where she does marry Owen, and one where she tells him everything right from the start.

Insecurities about Cristina and Amelia circle around all of it, as does the blame she feels for so many tragic events — so many losses. She’s been shouldering an awful lot of blame over the years. 

All of these flashes work together to tell a story of a woman who is scarred and traumatized. And I think, maybe the most significant thing this episode does is to make her seem redeemable. 

Cheating on Owen felt so unforgivable, and the drama between those two has gone so far that it’s hard to imagine how they could move past it. We as the audience have that same feeling, at least on some level.

But an episode like this gives us reason to empathize with her again, particularly when she’s able to pull herself out on her own and get up to tend to her child. There is a sense that, by the end, she’s worked through a heck of a lot of stuff and is ready to keep doing that work moving forward. She knows something needs to change.

She gets good advice in her dreamlike state, both from DeLuca and Meredith. What’s odd about this is that the only reason it makes much sense for those two to be so present is that they are the ones she’s most recently tried to save.

And with Meredith, I get the feeling she’s offering so much advice because Ellen Pompeo needed to be in some scenes, not because she’d be her best voice of reason. 

The timing of this also feels a bit jarring somehow. With the loss of DeLuca and Meredith still in a coma, it feels odd to switch gears to an episode that is entirely focused on Teddy.

And as I mentioned above, it’s a bit over the top to have so much of the show existing inside the minds of our characters right now. Sure, Grey’s Anatomy has always been a show that was willing to do this — we’ve seen ghosts of the past come up in all kinds of ways.

This is nothing new, and I’d argue it’s something that allows Grey’s Anatomy to stand out among other shows. But with Meredith’s beach taking such a central role in the season, it’s surprising that something similar would occur with another character right now. 

Of course, it looks as though we’ll be back at Meredith’s beach soon enough, and with another character from the past. 

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Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC.

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