'Grey's Anatomy' recap: Taking Charge

Meanwhile, down in the basement of the Love/Trust state we find Lexi and Mark, who are still broken up, and who serve as another lovely example of a situation where I'm having a really hard time feeling sorry for someone. That someone is Mark, who I have decided is an ass. And yes, this is all being sort of played for laffs at the moment (''He's best friends with my sister's Post-It husband,'' wailed Lexi. ''I don't know what to do!'') and they do their best to make Mark into a buffoon most of the time (''... and you ruined my skin graft!'') but come ON. Lexi got drunk and screwed resident man-whore Karev. I don't watch Private Practice, but I'm assuming that when Mark, um, "reacquainted" himself with Addison, (multiple times!!!), it was a little heavier than that. Plus: They were on a break. So yeah. I'm judging. Man up, Sloane — and not just by taking in your deadbeat daughter. We only let you stay because you developed a soul. Don't go all jerky on us now.

Finally, there are the folks currently dwelling in the Love/Trust air ducts (complete with vent burns), Christina and Owen. He's giving Kim Raver the silent treatment for being a lovesick drunk, and channeling all of his redheaded aggression into grabbing Christina and screwing her willful need to put surgery first into submission. Things here climaxed (sorry) when Kim Raver paged Yang for an aortic repair and Owen talked Yang into ignoring it in favor of continuing to be, well, screwed into submission. I found it incredibly difficult to believe that Christina would ever choose sex over surgery — and thus was thrilled beyond belief at Sandra Oh's beautifully honest final monologue, in which she revealed to Owen (and to us) that Burke had taken little pieces of her, one by one, until she wasn't Christina Yang anymore but rather a monosyllabic liar with no eyebrows. Then she said that when Owen asked her to ignore Kim Raver's page, he took a piece of her, too — and she will never let that happen again. The look in her eyes both accused him and challenged him to be better, and I thought, ''Damn, that is some fierce, mature, adult relationshipping going on right there!'' Although I did also have this quick moment where I was like, ''Wait, Christina, was being forced to ignore Kim Raver's page and have presumably really good sex with your boyfriend worse than that one time he tried to strangle you?'' and then I remembered that post-traumatic stress disorder is no laughing matter. Yay, mature adulthood!

A few last thoughts:
-Alex Karev switched over to the ''hardcore'' world of pediatrics this week, joining Arizona to save a kid with mystery symptoms and a rageaholic father by combining both crack medical skills and the ability to advocate passionately for tiny humans. I wonder how many more Revelations of Alex As Secretly Good Guy we'll have to endure before one of them sticks?
-No Izzie again this week, and more and more I don't miss her — am I alone?
-Is ''Please don't cry on my ass'' a brilliant Christina line, or an annoying example of the way this show thinks the occasional quippy quip can make up for the total absurdity of many of its plotlines, i.e. vent burns on lady parts from air duct sex?
-And finally: Dudes, what is the deal with these Mercy West residents? Are they supposed to be growing on me? Because — Cute Anesthesiologist aside — they are not, and in fact, I find them so off-putting I occasionally writhe in anger, especially at the self-absorbed pixie-haired one, and the one who looks like flesh-colored Frankenstein. So is that the point? Are they supposed to be one giant Borg-like supervillain? If so, it's working. Too well. Can they be trapped under the restaurant roof collapse next week, maybe?

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