Grey’s Anatomy Season 21 Episode 17 Review: Love You Like a Love Song

Jo and Link’s wedding day provides an opportunity to revisit some of Jo’s complicated backstory. On Grey’s Anatomy Season 21 Episode 17, “Love You Like a Love Song.” Link’s mother arrives to help Jo get ready for the big day, subtly complaining about the four-day notice but generally meaning well. 

Jo, meanwhile, has been sure that Link’s mother, Maureen, hated her. More significantly, she doesn’t understand her mothering nature, because she didn’t have a mom to care for her in the ways a mom like that would. Maureen wants Jo to wear the veil she wore (which is… something) and does her make-up in a way that doesn’t fit Jo’s personality at all. 

Those bits are comical, but it’s heartbreaking when Jo responds a bit too honestly, pushing away a woman who’s desperately trying to find a way to be involved and to bond with her future daughter-in-law. 

It’s Schmitt who points this out — he’s arrived to help Jo get ready too, and he’ll also be the one to officiate the ceremony, which is a sweet detail. He points out that Maureen is just showing her love and acting exactly as moms often do, which Jo doesn’t have experience with, and doesn’t know how to deal with. 

More than that, she’s never planned on having a father walk her down the aisle, or any of the traditional parental parts of a wedding ceremony.

These things didn’t come up on her wedding day with Alex, where Meredith wound up officiating, and they were surrounded more by friends than by any family. This one feels different — and it’s good storytelling to use that to delve into Jo’s past in that way. 

More buildup there would have been nice, including allowing us to see more interactions with Link’s mother beforehand, for example. Still, it’s thoughtful, and it has the right balance of comedy and drama for a wedding storyline. 

Link, meanwhile, has every intention of winging his wedding vows until Bailey gets into his head, then he realizes he has terrible writer’s block. What he decides to do at the wedding capitalizes on Chris Carmack’s talents instead: he busts out his guitar and sings to her.

It’s incredibly sweet, and it caps off a beautiful wedding that, thankfully, has no major crisis and ultimately runs smoothly, despite being put on so quickly. (The cake suffers, but that’s a minor detail.) Oh, and Link walks Jo down the aisle in addition to officiating the wedding. 

The episode also continues the storyline of Amelia’s pediatric patient, Dylan, who is now suffering from locked-in syndrome after a risky brain surgery. It weighs on Amelia, and the situation is made more difficult by a too-optimistic Lucas, who makes promises to the parents when he shouldn’t. 

It’s a lesson interns often have to learn, but Lucas is a bit too sure of himself with this particular situation. He’s invested in the patient and wants to be optimistic, so that’s part of it, but the overconfidence is there too. 

This is where he and Simone don’t see eye-to-eye, and what starts as an argument about the patient turns into one about their futures, and Lucas walks away from the relationship. 

Another relationship is on rocky ground as well. You guessed it: Teddy and Owen. The two arrive back from a vacation looking happy and as though they’ve overcome some of their issues. Unfortunately, Nora is back at the hospital, and her condition has worsened. 

It’s awkward enough that Teddy is the one who has to treat her, and she does promise to give her the same care she’d give any other patient. It might even be less awkward if Owen was directly cheating when he spent the night with Nora, as opposed to that happening under the brief new rules Teddy and Owen had made for their marriage. 

Owen’s feelings for Nora are still there, though, and when he learns there’s nothing more that can be done for her — his reaction is obviously complicated. It’s made worse when Nora goes ahead and tells him she’s falling in love with him, which she justifies now as a deathbed confession. 

This is classic messy romance that Grey’s Anatomy does all too well, and as frustrating as it has been to see Teddy and Owen have relationship issues this season, this particular complexity is really intriguing.

And it will only get messier, because at the end of the episode, Teddy arrives back at the hospital with the hope that she’s found a way to save Nora. But when she gets there, she sees Owen holding Nora in her hospital bed.

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

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