Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 Episode 15 Review: Take Me to the River

Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 Episode 15, “Take Me to the River,” begins setting up an exit for two longtime Grey-Sloan surgeons. 

At the last minute, Teddy joins Owen, Simone, and Dani for a trip to a rural hospital that needs some additional help. (Originally, Richard was supposed to be on the trip.)

Teddy is surprised to see that the doctor who welcomes them knows Owen well, and she realizes he has been offered a job at this hospital.

Owen has been feeling unsettled in his career this season, realizing that he wanted to be able to help patients in different ways. What’s interesting about what we see from him in this episode is that it’s a way for him to return to practicing medicine more closely to how he once did in the army.

More than that, with Teddy there, it’s a chance for them to operate as a team the way they used to.

Just after finalizing their divorce, Owen and Teddy have rekindled their romance, though it’s still complicated. 

Seeing them work as a team in this way feels like them finding their way back to one another — returning to their roots in a full-circle moment.

At the same time, Teddy worries about Owen taking the job, and admits she doesn’t want him to leave her. She walks that back a bit to say she doesn’t want him to leave the hospital because she doesn’t want to have to find a new chief of trauma, but really, she means more than that.

Ultimately, Owen tells her he isn’t going to take this job, but he does want to go help out there on a regular basis.

It’s been confirmed that both Kevin McKidd and Kim Raver, who play Owen and Teddy, respectively, will be exiting Grey’s Anatomy at the end of this season. Owen considering this new job, but then turning it down, makes it feel like the show is setting up an exit where they leave together instead.

After all, working side by side again highlights their understanding of each other and the foundation of how they fell in love in the first place.

Elsewhere on this episode, Blue works with Bailey to treat a patient, Quinn, with cancer, who could benefit from an unapproved treatment. Unfortunately, they aren’t able to get FDA approval for the patient and must resort to less promising options. 

Blue laments how unfair it is, since it seems this treatment really could save Quinn. Quinn is a single dad with a teenage son, which makes his situation that much more emotional — and it’s something Blue connects with. 

Typically, Blue is the one with the level head. He’s not someone who bends the rules or risks getting himself into trouble the way some of the others in his class (and let’s be real, the OG interns from the early seasons) have been willing to do.

So, giving the patient this treatment secretly — without Bailey or the patient knowing — feels a bit out of character for him. It’s also a bit of a ridiculous risk, though he must think he could have gotten away with it and that it wouldn’t have shown up in scans had they not been done so soon after surgery.

Blue isn’t worried until he learns the patient is getting those scans earlier than usual — and that’s when Bailey sees something that isn’t supposed to be there. 

He also seems surprised to learn how problematic this could really be. Bailey even points out that the treatment could be harmful. As much as she’s been disappointed with the system lately — Katie’s trial being the main example — she’s the voice of reason here in understanding why certain protocols are in place to begin with.

With any luck, the treatment will work, and the patient will be grateful– but this could go another way and cause a real problem for Blue’s career.

Other notes:

• I really enjoy seeing Richard continue to spread the word about prostate cancer, especially with the return to the barbershop on this episode. Discovering the importance of telling his own story here is very meta, too, since that’s essentially what James Pickens Jr. is doing through his character after going through this in real life himself.
• It’s not surprising that Lucas is struggling on this episode, but his anger at Simone is taking things a bit too far. What is more surprising, though, is the hookup between Lucas and Dani at the end of the episode.
• The romance between Winston and Jules is continuing to grow, but before things can go further, Winston has to break up with Iris. Naturally, he decides to do so, only to find out it’s her birthday. This is a bit of a cliche, but in a great way, especially since he decides to break things off with her anyway instead of waiting.

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

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