Grey’s Anatomy 12×17, “I Wear the Face,” brought out a rivalry between the residents and more friction between Jackson and April.
It’s a big time for the residents at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, as they have a chance to win a research grant that will have them traveling for a year while working on a special research project. Jo and Stephanie apply at the same time, and while Penny is eligible she doesn’t think she’d win it. After applying, the attendings meet to talk about the applicants and then the Chief of Surgery picks the winner.
Stephanie is a little worried that Amelia won’t have her back since she’s started to favor Penny. Despite not wanting to work with her initially after Weber switched things up, Amelia quickly realized how much talent Penny had. While Stephanie is still working with Amelia, Penny gets picked to assist in their latest patient. This makes Stephanie so jealous that she trash talks Penny to Jo, but doesn’t realize until it’s too late that Penny is just nearby. However, Stephanie doesn’t back down from asking Amelia if she will nominate her to Bailey. While Amelia can’t officially confirm anything to Stephanie she does nod her head and basically does confirm it anyways.
What Stephanie doesn’t know is that her treatment towards Penny has only lit a fire under her. Instead of cowering away, Penny decides to apply for the grant as well. Jo learns from Alex that Penny applied and everyone had lots of good things to say about her in the meeting, including Amelia. Jo and Stephanie decide this must mean Penny is sneaky, even though it’s obvious that they’re just jealous. Looks like their friendship isn’t so strong after all.
Furious with what she’s heard, Stephanie goes to confront Amelia. Even though Amelia says she did nominate Stephanie, she still praised Penny when the others were talking about her. Then Stephanie really steps over the line and says that she was there to help Amelia when she couldn’t even work. Stephanie probably just lost her mentor with that threatening line. I can only imagine how angry she’ll be when she finds out that Penny actually won the grant. Callie definitely isn’t excited to hear that her girlfriend will be traveling for the next year, but tries to act supportive anyways. She’s probably having flash backs to when Arizona left her to travel for work.
I really liked seeing more of the residents, usually they’re more in the background of the story line. It doesn’t seem like we get to see an episode so focused on them but it’s always refreshing to see so much of them. After all, the start of Grey’s Anatomy was about doctors still being taught so it’s fun for us to revisit those plots. I was sad for Penny to see the loss of her friendships though, it seems like she was just starting to fit in with everyone else and now it’s all imploded. It’s good that the attendings see how much potential she has but I’m worried how much her social life will start to suffer. I wonder how Meredith might be able to help her in this department.
The other story at the forefront was predictably about Jackson and April’s ongoing baby drama. While April worked with Arizona, she learned a lesson about how hard it is to keep a secret for someone when it goes against their best interest. April ends up telling her 14-year-old patient’s mother about her secret pregnancy so that she can talk her into getting surgery. This leads to Arizona and April making up since they now have a better understanding of one another.
Catherine is still in town and causing trouble, she goes ahead and contacts lawyers for Jackson without his permission. Weber, continues to try and talk Catherine out of it though. Even when he learns that Jackson’s father tried to take him away from Catherine, Weber wants Jackson and April to work it out for themselves. It might be too late though, because April over heard Catherine talking about it and decides to put a restraining order on Jackson. Sadly, Jackson had decided not to take his mothers advice and sent a crib to April’s apartment – but she doesn’t discover it until after Jackson’s been served.
I’m not sure where April and Jackson will go from here. April can explain to Jackson what happened but too much damage might be done already. Of course it all started because of Catherine but I just don’t see any resolution coming for these two. Hopefully Arizona will be able to help April make some better decisions from here on out. This poor baby is going to be born into a very sticky situation between it’s parents.
Another smaller story line this episode revealed that Riggs has been lying about what happened with Owen’s sister. He wasn’t there when she left to get on the chopper, he was actually busy with a mistress. If this is really the truth than he’s not the good guy he’s been pretending to be. It also comes out that he drank with Amelia when she was supposed to be sober so that makes him look even worse. I’m kind of hoping that Riggs has a better explanation for what happened because I actually like his character.
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