Grey’s Anatomy Season 20 Episode 6 Review: The Marathon Continues

Subtlety seems to be the goal on Grey’s Anatomy Season 20 Episode 6, “The Marathon Continues,” and that’s not exactly a good thing. It has all the makings of a really great episode, and yet, it falls flat on most counts by not going far enough with its storylines.

Grey’s Anatomy almost always fills each episode with several storylines, and usually, that works well given the energy of the show and the way things are connected. In this case, though, doing too much means not delving far enough into what’s happening with each character.

Bailey’s Wellness Bags

Bailey with her wellness bags is just one example. She has great intentions with these, but as much as she says she spent a lot of time putting them together, they seem a bit haphazard.

Perhaps it wouldn’t seem that way if we had more of an idea of what was in them beyond raw carrots and a fidget spinner, but more than that, her reaction when they all take off to work instead of giving her the reaction she hoped for doesn’t feel realistic.

Bailey’s balancing her old teaching methods with new ideas for a new generation, thinking more about their mental health and well-being. In doing so, she’s struggling to figure out how exactly to lead this group. That all makes sense, but her frustration when they want to just do their jobs… doesn’t.

She then starts handing out the bags to other people instead of allowing the interns the chance to come back for them, which does lead to a pretty funny interaction with Owen.

Simone and Blue have a chance to bond

This all leads to a larger discussion of how the doctors could balance their work with self-care. Blue tells Simone he only ever eats chips for lunch because he’s too busy to go to the cafeteria, which means the real issue is the workload. And yet, that workload is part of what will shape the doctors in the first place. 

So, is it the corporate joke of businesses handing out stress balls instead of cutting workload, or is it that actually, the interns should be working as hard as they’ve always been expected to?

That’s really been the conflict with the new interns all along, but Bailey seems disconnected from it in a way. Yet, we know she’s experienced similar types of burnout herself, and for Owen to have to convince her to take time for her own self either shows a pattern for her character or forgets that she’s been through all of this before in her own way.

In the midst of all of it, she also sends Blue and Simone home when she hears them complaining, yet their complaints line up with that overall conflict. Still, she’s had it, and sending them home means they have a chance to bond, which is really fun to watch.

Blue cooking in her kitchen and the way they share stories of their pasts is exactly the sort of thing we need to see happening with the interns. Yet when they start to get into their backstories, including the struggles Blue’s had in the past, it’s all glossed over just a little too much. 

We do get a nice/bittersweet moment at the end when Lucas discovers that Blue is moving into his old room. That’s certainly going to bring up some new conflict.

Mika and Teddy Treat a Prisoner

Meanwhile, Mika works with Teddy to treat a patient who has arrived from prison and is suspected to have tuberculosis.  He bonds with Mika right away, and he’s not the type of prison patient we’ve seen in the past.

He’s gentle, sad, and maybe even was incarcerated with a harsher sentence than he should have been given. 

We don’t know what he’s in prison for, and as Teddy tells Mika, it doesn’t matter. 

X-rays and a CT confirm that the prisoner doesn’t have tuberculosis. Instead, he has cancer. And it’s progressed so far that treatment is hardly an option. He could do chemo, likely while in prison, or he could just let it take it course and allow them to help him manage the pain. 

He chooses the latter. He’s been in prison for his entire adult life, scared the entire time, and when he got sick, they didn’t listen and wouldn’t test him. 

Mika doesn’t understand and even tries to push for a clinical trial, but his choice is the one that’s likely to cause him less suffering in the long run. 

It’s here that the episode doesn’t go quite as far as it could in making its point. There’s commentary here about the prison system, first and foremost, and then also about dignity and control.

Just a little extra time working through all of that could have gone a long way, and it would even make Mika’s kind act of bringing him that school cafeteria lemon-berry cake more emotional. 

That moment is still one of the best parts of the episode, and Mika’s reaction as he’s driven away afterward is profound. But, given more time to work through it would have made it even more so.

Link and Monica’s VIP patient

Link and Monica also have a patient with a tragic situation, and pressure from Catherine forces them to do something more experimental than they might otherwise be comfortable with.

Link’s reaction to Catherine Fox is odd somehow. He’s less happy-go-lucky than he used to be and he just goes along with it. Even his comment about the Catherine Fox effect to Monica feels like it comes out of nowhere and needs more context. 

As a new doctor, I’d like to see more reaction from Monica here as well. We learn that she’s had an emotional day, which explains her lack of energy, but it still seems she’d push back a bit more than she does.

The surgery, which Jules and Schmitt also help with, is successful, even though it hits an obstacle while Link is in the midst of it, and the girl’s reaction to her new prosthetic and the fact that she’ll be able to return to cycling is heartwarming. However, there’s a look on her face after Catherine hugs her parents and the doctors exit that suggests something more is going on, but that’s never explained.

Jules’ comment that it “really does pay to be rich” goes under the radar, though it encapsulates the entire situation. Catherine’s involvement in this surgery is not only because she’s friends with the girls’ parents but also because they’re major benefactors to the hospital.

In other words, they get special treatment. And perhaps Link would have landed on doing that surgery for any patient — it’s the sort of thing he likes to push for anyway — but here, the reasoning is more because of Catherine than anything else. 

Other thoughts:

• Speaking of storylines that deserved more attention, Richard steps in to perform surgery when he’s needed, pushing away his fear and proving that he’s still excellent at his job. We see his joy from that as well, and it’s a shame the whole thing doesn’t get more attention.
• Schmitt should know that his first response to “Why peds?” shouldn’t be “Dr. Webber suggested it.” Monica’s reasons for not helping him are really clear.
• What’s less clear is the conflict with Taryn and Mika. Taryn says she can’t show special treatment and has a job to do, but it sounded like she made a call to pull Mika from something good that Levi had already tried to assign her. Maybe I’m missing something, but it feels like they’re having two different conversations. 

What did you think of this episode of Grey’s Anatomy? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 9/8c on ABC. 

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