Jo finally meets her mother on Grey’s Anatomy 15×19 and the firefighters get a big surprise on Station 19 2×11!

‘Grey’s Anatomy’ 15×19 ‘Silent All These Years’

Alex accuses Jo of avoiding him after she leaves when he’s in the shower. He just wants to talk about what happened when she went to see her mom, but Jo doesn’t want to talk about it at all!

By chance, Jo runs into a woman named Abby who’s disoriented and looking for the ER. Abby claims to need the wound on her face stitched up, but her story isn’t making sense and she’s terrified to be left alone.

Jo ends up figuring out that she’s way more hurt than she initially tried to let on. Abby’s whole body is bruised and cut up and her emotional well-being isn’t any better.

At first, Jo thinks it’s possible the woman’s husband might be responsible for what happened to her. But after she actually asks her about it, they find out that Abby was raped by a stranger.

The whole scene is honestly heartbreaking. Abby doesn’t even want to do a rape kit at first because she thinks there’s no way anyone would believe it wasn’t her fault.

Even though Teddy doesn’t want Jo to push her to do the kit, she tells Abby how she was abused by her husband and regrets never bringing him to court.

Somehow, this changes Abby’s mind and she decides to do the kit after all. But that doesn’t make the whole process any easier.

When it comes time to do the surgery, Abby starts to panic about having to be put under. Jo ends up organizing all the women in the hospital to line up in the hallway so she can have their support on the way to surgery.

It’s a powerful moment showing the healing power of having other women on your side. In one way or another, every woman can understand what it’s like to be deathly afraid of what might happen to you or what has already happened to you at the hand of a man.

Abby wakes up to good news that the surgery went well, but she still can’t stop thinking about what happened. Jo and Teddy try to keep talking her through it as best they can.

By the end of the episode, Abby has called her husband and also decided to report what happened.

After her long day, Jo just wants to go home. Even though Alex wants her to talk about what happened with her mother, Jo isn’t ready for it yet and it’s not clear if she ever will be.

In the flashbacks to Jo dropping by her mother’s house without warning, she quickly learns that her mother has other kids. But her mother still doesn’t know who Jo is — until she starts to tell the details of how she was born at a nearby hospital and then left at a fire station.

Her mother tells Jo she can’t be there even though she just wants to talk. But before she leaves, Jo asks her to meet at a diner for one conversation and then promises never to bother her again.

Surprisingly, her mother does show up and says she’s already late for work. Jo is already mad. She wasn’t expecting to find out how well-off her mother is.

She does learn that her siblings’ names are Alexandra and Josh, and that her mother’s husband isn’t her father. But instead of asking her more questions, Jo lets her know all the crap she went through as an orphan.

The conversation is super rough and eventually her mother starts giving off random facts that Jo doesn’t care about, until Jo asks about her father and she learns that he died in a motorcycle accident 10 years ago.

Jo is angry about the way her mother talks about him, until she learns that her father was actually a rapist. Suddenly the reason that she was given away starts to make sense.

She also learns that her mother never told anyone she was pregnant with Jo. Even after she left Jo, it took her time to get to therapy to deal with what happened to her.

Still, Jo can’t believe that her mother never came looking for her. Even though her mother was struggling with what happened to her, Jo still has a hard time getting over her upbringing.

For the first time, Jo also reveals that she was seven weeks pregnant at one point when her ex-husband broke her ribs. She got an abortion without ever telling him because she didn’t want to raise a child in that environment.

In both the flashbacks and the present storyline, the episode manages to deliver a delicate yet powerful array of sexual assault stories.

When they’re portrayed on television, it’s often done in a way that seems to serve more of a purpose to shock viewers rather than to be something others can relate to and feel like they’ve been represented.

Grey’s Anatomy 15×19 “Silent All These Years” does the subject matter justice in a way that doesn’t happen often enough. While it makes the episode hard to watch, it’s also amazing to see that it can actually be done well.

Hopefully, other writers will see this and learn from Grey’s Anatomy.

– Sonya Field

‘Station 19’ 2×11 ‘Baby Boom’

Let’s start with the baby in a bag, shall we?

Hughes and Montgomery are having a chat about how the Chief is Hughes’ naked man friend when Montgomery notices the bag behind them wiggle. A second wiggle signifies that there’s something in that abandoned gym bag on the floor of the station’s entry. It’s a baby.

The fire station is a safe surrender facility, so while leaving a baby in a duffle bag isn’t typical, it wasn’t a completely crazy event. The baby hangs out and is passed from person to person until DCFS can come and pick him up. We’ll get back to the baby later.

Warren is really excited about Medic One, but he knows he has to not only get Sullivan’s permission, but also has to have his blessing. So, Warren is waiting for the opportune moment to spring the big question on his Captain.

And then, BOOM! An RV crashes into the ‘barn’ (AKA the garage where the firetrucks and Aid car are housed).

Turns out a young girl was trying to drive her mom somewhere to get medical help, but she accidentally hit the wrong pedal and ended up in the middle of Station 19. Her mother is having a seizure that doesn’t want to stop, so Warren takes the lead and uses all of his experience as a doctor to find the perfect concoction of medicines to bring her seizure to a halt.

While Warren is impressing his Captain with his advanced medical knowledge, Andy is trying to help the teen girl, Ellie, get through this traumatic event and be prepared to go to the hospital with her mother. They spend time together in the barn in a space separate from where the rest of the crew is working on her mother, but eventually, Andy decides to move to the glass conference room upstairs.

Andy walks away for a moment and Ellie locks herself in the conference room. Andy would have totally tried to talk her down, but she suddenly drops to the floor. Some terrific teamwork and dedication help Andy and Hughes diagnose her with low blood sugar thanks to a malfunctioning insulin pump. Once they get her evened out again, they are ready to get her to the hospital to be by her mom’s side as she gets treated.

Things are not all wine and roses for Hughes and the Chief, though. You see, thanks to Montgomery’s big mouth, the Chief knows that she told another firefighter about their relationship. Ripley is rightfully concerned about the news of their entanglement spreading, especially since he learns pretty soon that Travis isn’t the only Station 19 crew member who knows the truth.

Oh, and in case the initial disaster in the barn wasn’t enough, Travis accidentally loosens a gas pipe in the RV and a spark from a shorting cell phone makes it go BOOM! for the second time this episode. BUT they all work together to get the flames under control, all while Dean’s voice can be heard having a heart-to-heart with his mother about the things he values.

We haven’t talked about what Jack and Dean have been up to while everyone else is running around the firehouse. They head off to his houseboat to entertain Dean’s parents at dinner. Things seem to be going as well as they can, but Dean’s mother is particularly judgmental about how he has chosen to live his life. Not just the job he chose, but his lack of wife, children, and the place he calls home. It isn’t until his sister declares her intentions to move out and support herself that things truly go off the rails. A lot of yelling and debating later, Dean convinces his mom to support his sister, but only because he’s willing to date some women that his mother picks out for him.

In one of the greatest scenes we’ve ever seen, Maya gets a moment with the baby and he proves to be the best little therapist she’s ever had. He listens and helps her come to her own conclusions about Gibson and what they have going on.

Oh, and after dropping hints all day, Warren gets Sullivan’s support.

In the episode’s final moments, we see Andy and Maya run into Ryan and his date when they head out for a drink after their shift. It definitely acts like a smack in the face to Andy, as she realizes that cold and casual may not be the best way to show her interest.

– Kristen Kranz