'Grey's Anatomy' recap: Choosing Love

This looked like Grey's Anatomy at its most solid, right from the moment Meredith ''called Post-It.'' She didn't want Derek to betray her confidence about the Chief's alcoholism, and, in the end — at least for the moment — he agreed to honor their unusual form of marriage vow. And they were the cutest fighting couple ever, the exact kind of couple we all dream of being, the kind who can very seriously disagree but still maintain their love and passion and good kissing despite their conflict.

Out in the kitchen that morning, another conflict was brewing as Alex and Lexie woke up together, and Meredith was being judgy. Alex, however, dished it right back at her: ''You were a total dirty mistress like two weeks ago.'' And Lexie had another rationale: ''Alex and I, we've done it before. That was, like, good for the environment.'' Of course, that was right around the time Izzie decided to return (from Katherine Heigl's maternity leave) — and, wow, did she look fantastic or what? Bonding with her new kid did her good. And that stunning purple sweater didn't hurt, either.

As she blathered to Alex about possibly getting a new job in Tacoma to be near him, though, she made the theme of the night clear: How much do you sacrifice work for love, and/or vice versa? The main patient of the evening underscored that point. An opera singer, he soon faced possibly losing his lung to a cancer diagnosis. But his partner wanted him healthy more than he wanted him to save his career — and, when it came down to it, he wouldn't have minded seeing him sing less and settle more into a normal job like teaching. ''I sing. It's my entire life,'' Opera Guy explained. His husband responded, ''Besides me. What you meant to say is singing is your entire life besides me.''

All hail the return of metaphorical resonance between medical cases and the doctors' love lives. Because Cristina also faced this question after being the one to originally broach it at the end of last week's episode when she, um, offered Teddy Owen in exchange for staying at Seattle Grace as her mentor. Meredith advised against further discussions of the matter. ''It's like if you tell someone their baby is ugly. You know it, they know, everybody knows it. But you don't talk about it.'' Cristina countered with her own unanswerable query: ''But you would choose surgery over Derek, right?'' The philosophical discussion continued straight through lunch. ''If you think you're losing your love,'' Izzie pontificated, ''suddenly nothing else matters.'' But Opera Singer guy put it into even more perspective by saying to his partner, ''If all I have left is a life of making myself smaller, then I don't want to live. And believe me, honey, you don't want me to live.''

NEXT: My pain/secret is greater than yours

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