'Grey's Anatomy' recap: Commit to It

Jim the Neurosurgeon How heartbreaking is this guy? We've never seen him before, but apparently he's the second-string Derek who gets to do surgery only when Derek isn't around. Lucky for him, Derek was refusing to come to work since he killed Jen the pregnant aneurism patient and got sued for it. Go Jim.

The Cancer Siblings Two sisters and a brother came in to get their stomachs removed because most people in their family die of this horrible genetic cancer deal. Whatever. The important thing is that the brother was the delicious Michael Rady — that is, Kostas from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Max from Greek, and now, the lead in The CW's increasingly intriguing Melrose Place remake. Anyway, he didn't want to get the operation because, honestly, it did sound like it'd suck as much as you think it would not to have a stomach. So his one sister had hers removed and it turned out she did have cancer, so the other one...oh, who cares? How cute is he gonna be on Melrose? With Ashlee Simpson-Wentz! Okay, sorry, back on track: The oldest sister — the one with cancer — actually did have a pretty great insight that lit something up in Meredith when she said, ''You don't leave the people you love alone.''

That turned out to be the theme of the night — not letting people's icy-cool exteriors stop you from giving them a piece of your mind or heart. Miranda, fed up with the Chief sniping at her under pressure, called Adele in to give him a talking to, which she did. ''Hospital or playground, Richard?'' she demanded before turning her scolding on Miranda: ''You're no better, tattling on a man to his wife.'' But then Miranda gave him some good advice after dressing him down for scoffing at her ''soft'' choice to go into peds: ''Maybe you need a little soft.'' Lexie, meanwhile, seemed like she may — or may not — have wisened up to the fact that Izzie had a personal stake in Patient X. ''Screw the odds,'' she said, then brought up her own mother's demise: ''People die of the hiccups.'' Alex, on a lifesaving high, begged Izzie to get back to surgery. ''I don't want to be the future of this hospital if you're not with me,'' he gushed. Cristina assured Hunt she didn't mind his post-traumatic nightmares: ''It's gonna take more than a bad dream to scare me off.'' Izzie chose Cristina as her first post-diagnosis confidante because, ''You're a robot. You can take it.''

Callie and Arizona finally made a date. But — awww — Mark still turned Neurosurgeon Jim down for an after-work drink.

Which left only Dark & Twisty Derek to attend to. The Chief took Miranda's advice and went ''soft,'' begging Meredith to get Derek to come back to work — he even dropped Derek's planned engagement on her. ''He's planning to propose,'' he said. ''He's been carrying around a big ring for weeks. That's not a man who wants to be left alone.'' She took that to heart and tracked Derek down at his trailer, where he was smashing beer cans with a baseball bat and being generally snarly. I couldn't have been more proud of a character than when she took all his abuse, about how damaged and awful and commitmentphobic she is — ''There's no fixing you. You're a lemon.'' — and simply told him she'd be there for him no matter what.

Yep, I was crying. Grey's was back, cancer, heartbreak, more cancer and all.

What did you think of dark-and-twisty Grey's? Do you like your Derek depressed and your Izzie sick? What can we do to get rid of these interns? Or do they deserve a reprieve for diagnosing Izzie? Will you miss Jim the Neurosurgeon when he's gone?

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