Grey’s Anatomy season 16, episode 5, “Breathe Again,” pulled on the heartstrings while simultaneously leading the characters through more problems.
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ season 16, episode 5, ‘Breathe Again’ review:
In last week’s episode, the storyline was all about the drama going on with Meredith’s article and all the problems it caused for everyone. This week though, the storyline was more emotional with characters having to deal with the problems in their lives.
After skipping out on too much community service, Meredith is supposed to appear in court to face the consequences. While she has every intention of going at first, Zola wakes up not feeling well and once she throws up Meredith decides to bring her into the hospital.
Her instincts turned out to be correct and scans showed that Zola needed surgery on her spina bifida shunt. As they were booking an OR for the surgery Meredith was getting texts from her lawyer to get to court. Not surprisingly, Meredith doesn’t listen to her lawyer or DeLuca.
Meredith stays put at the hospital for Zola’s surgery while getting text messages as updates because she’s not allowed to watch. It doesn’t take long for her to start worrying though and thinking the worst. Amelia and Maggie try to keep her calm. In the process, Meredith kind of makes fun of DeLuca for thinking she’d go to court and leave Zola. Along with the way he offered to stay with instead of going into the surgery. She doesn’t understand it even though her sisters think he was just being sweet.
The moment exposes that Meredith is still unsure about her future with DeLuca even though she’s in love with him. The fact that they’re in two different places in their lives might mean their relationship doesn’t go any farther than where they are. But at the same time, Meredith seems thankful when he’s there for her after the surgery too.
There isn’t time for anyone to dwell on what’s going on in their relationship though because Meredith’s lawyer shows up. At first, Meredith was relieved to hear that her lawyer was able to get some sympathy from the judge. But when they were all shocked to hear that the sympathy was in the length of jail time.
For someone who had been expecting to do jail time in the beginning, Meredith didn’t do a whole lot to avoid going. I’ll be curious to see how she takes it but I’m assuming that it will be a big adjustment for her. It might also be more opportunities for her to come face to face with injustices of the system. Let’s all hope she doesn’t get into more trouble along the way.
Ever since Jo returned from her treatment it has seemed like relatively smooth sailing for her. She was able to dive back into work in an even better position than the one she left. No one really treated her differently like she expected either.
Yet, it all seemed to come crashing down when a patient came in with carbon monoxide poisoning and that person was her therapist from the center. It was both the therapist that gave her the hardest time but the one that helped her to start to heal from her trauma.
Working on trying to save her brings back a lot of memories for Jo. All of her hours and hard work spent with the therapist starts to cause her to panic. She tries to use the methods that her therapist taught her but when it doesn’t work Bailey steps in and distracts her with the news of her pregnancy. For a while it helps and they focus on Bailey’s worries. But when Bailey starts to panic is Jo who has to help her calm down.
All of these things show how far Jo has come, but it also shows that she’s wasn’t magically cured. Jo still has work to do on her mental health and learn how to keep dealing with her sadness and anger. Which is actually a great thing, I had been a little concerned that Grey’s Anatomy wouldn’t follow up on that storyline.
Even with all of that, Jo is relieved to find out that her therapist didn’t try to commit suicide. It was all an accident because she didn’t change her carbon monoxide alarm while using her space heater. Still, Jo admits to Alex later is was a rough day and teaches him one of her methods for dealing with it. Together, they throw things at the wall to help work through the stress of the day.
I really loved this episode and how much insight we got into the characters development and thoughts on what’s going on in their lives. Sometimes the show moves quickly with everything going on and this was sort of a nice slow down to check in with people and where they’re at without it feeling boring.
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ season 16, episode 5, ‘Breathe Again’ extra thoughts:
🚑Bailey’s arc through the episode is cute to watch. She goes from trying to tell Ben, to telling Jo and panicking, and then telling him later and getting to celebrate with him. I’m glad to see these two in a happy place and I’m enjoying seeing where this will go for them.
🚑Amelia admitted that there’s a lot she doesn’t know about Link and seems to realize that she’s jumping into the situation quickly. It pretty clear that she’s still nervous about it but also happy at the same time. Meanwhile, Maggie is worried she’ll never find a true love other than surgery. I do hope we’ll get to see her happy soon after everything she went through with Jackson.
🚑I’m not sure how to feel about the whole situation with Weber and Gemma. It seems like the show might be preparing us for something to happen with them but I hope that’s not the case. Weber and Catherine haven’t really tried to fix things in their marriage and it would seem sudden for him to take this turn.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.