Grey’s Anatomy Season 21 Episode 10 Review: Jump (for My Love)

Meredith Grey is back again on Grey’s Anatomy Season 21 Episode 10, “Jump (for My Love),” for better or worse.

Meredith’s appearances since leaving Seattle often feel disjointed and unnecessary, pulling focus from other characters and their stories. In this case, her return works a bit better.

Catherine flies Meredith and Nick to Seattle to assist with a liver transplant on a special patient. It’s the wife of one of her former students, Evynn Moore, played by Lena Waithe. 

Evynn’s wife, Tasha, has been turned away from other hospitals for the liver transplant, supposedly because it was just too complicated. So, Catherine pulls together the best of the best in a promise to get her what she needs.

That means forcing Meredith and Richard to work together, even though Richard is still angry with Meredith because she kept the secret of Catherine’s cancer returning. 

It’s childish, and it’s difficult to watch Richard act this way toward Meredith. At the same time, their history makes it all so much more personal, and his point that Meredith has broken the rules plenty of times in the past is a valid one.

The good news is that he finally seems to set his anger aside by the end of the episode, when he and Meredith both arrive at the same conclusion — there’s a different reason why Tasha has been turned away from other hospitals for a liver transplant.

She has Alzheimer’s. 

Richard made the connection and tracked down Tasha’s complete medical records because the things he’d learned about Tasha reminded him of Meredith’s mother. 

Just like that, Richard and Meredith have common ground once again, and both accuse Catherine of knowing Evynn’s secret. Catherine, however, is just as surprised at the dishonesty.

It’s a little unbelievable in some ways, given how many red flags surround Evynn Moore from the start. She arrives with her medical records already in hand instead of having them transferred from other hospitals and seems unusually desperate to rush the transplant.

Even when Nick says this liver isn’t the best match because of its size and that it would be reasonable to wait, Evynn insists. Yet, no one clocks those details until the surgery is about to begin. 

That said, it’s a unique storyline that offers a lot of possibilities. The first question, I assume, is what happens to the donor liver. Ben and Winston’s side quest of saving a life on the way back from picking up organs meant it didn’t arrive at the hospital as quickly as it should have, so there’s less time to waste on it now.

If, perhaps, there’s no time to give the liver to another patient, should it go to Tasha regardless so it isn’t wasted?

I also wouldn’t be surprised if Catherine has some willingness to protect Evynn here, but it seems like an incredible betrayal, even though it also shows how far Evynn would go for the person she loves. After all, she tells Richard she’d do anything for Tasha.

Putting Catherine, Meredith, and Richard together on the same team is a good way to allow them all move past the conflicts they’ve had over the past two years, from Catherine’s attitude toward Meredith to Richard’s response to her helping Catherine — it would be nice to see them all get along and work together for a change.

It would also be nice to actually see Meredith in an OR, which she even notes that she misses at the top of the episode. If she’s going to be making these returns, that’s something we should get to see.

We should also see her interacting with other characters on the show instead of staying in this sort of separate bubble that she’s been in each time, and surgery could do that too.

Meanwhile, Bailey hosts a “retreat” for the interns at her house, which has a mix of fun moments and extremely awkward ones. It’s an effort to resolve some tension amongst the interns, and the poor retreat leader has no idea what he’s in for. He practically runs away when he realizes how much trauma these interns have faced, knowing that they need more than he can offer.

(Can you imagine if he’d been a leader for the original intern group? Yikes.)

Putting the interns together in this way is helpful, and even though things don’t go as planned, it does wind up having the positive effect Bailey was hoping for. That’s mostly because of a talk Bailey has with Jules, but also because there is a real willingness from all of them to be a team and look out for one another.

While we don’t see quite as much from Jo and Link on this episode, they have one of the best moments — and the most pivotal. Link proposes.

This comes after Link, Amelia, and Helm help save a patient who had dived into shallow water to save her wedding ring — not because of the sentimental value, but because of its worth.

The patient had been celebrating her divorce, which naturally brought up conversations about marriage and commitment amongst the doctors. It allows for some friendly understanding between Link and Amelia, and ultimately, the realization that Link should ask Jo to marry him. 

The proposal is genuine and well-played by both actors, and hopefully, it signals the end of some of the forced conflict they’ve had in previous episodes.

It’s good timing for the two of them, and the focus on their friendship and their history is much more fun to watch. And the empty box so Jo can pick out her own ring is a nice touch.

 

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Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 10/9c on ABC.

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