The Following S1E6 Recap – “The Fall”

This week’s episode of The Following opened up right where last week’s left off, thankfully.  We didn’t have to wait a second longer to see what happened next.  This week definitely proved to be a game changer.  This chapter started right with Paul’s gun at the back of Ryan’s head.  Soon after, Emma and Jacob come back in the house.  Joey is sent back to his room.  Unlike I would react, Ryan is very cool in his situation.  He knows how to talk to them and get them riled up.  He doesn’t even seem to be scared or nervous;  in fact, he almost seems to be in his zone even with 3 guns pointed at him by Paul, Emma, and Jacob.  Just when Ryan starts to get cocky, Emma shocks him with an electric shocker, which seriously messes up his pacemaker.  In the other room, Emma and Jacob email “Roderick” asking for help.  Whoever this Roderick figure is, he must be pretty important, and definitely a part of the cult.

Meanwhile, we catch up with Claire, who pulls into a garage with the man who’s car she got into on last week’s episode.  They move to a basement in the building, where he locks them in.  Through flashbacks, we learn that his name is Charlie and that he is a member of the cult.  Claire knocks over a folder on one of his desks and dozens of pictures of her fall to the floor.  He then decides to show her notebooks full of data that he compiled of him following her.  He tells her that he “is her follower.”  He has notebooks full of notes of her daily activities, videos of her playing with Joey, and even videos of her sleeping in her bed.  He tells her that Emma doesn’t even know about him, even though she lived with Claire for years.  Throughout the day, Ryan gets under the killer trio’s skin in different ways, by making fun of their three-way relationship that he learns of by picking up on different pieces of their conversation throughout the day.

We also sees flashbacks to Debra Parker’s past, a first.  Sadly, it is revealed that her family was a part of a cult that she ran away from when she was younger.  15 years later, she goes back to see them and forgive them for what she went through.  They are mostly angry at her for running away.

Back to the standoff at the farmhouse.  Debra and a team of FBI and SWAT agents have been assembled outside all day.  Now evening time, all the drama breaks loose.  Ryan has managed to sneak a knife into his hands, which he uses to cuts his bonds free.  When they aren’t fully watching him, he breaks away and stabs Paul a couple of times and sets Megan free.  Unfortunately, Emma has already woken Joey and snuck him out of the house and through the woods.  Luckily, Weston and his local cop female blond friend walk right into their paths.  Unfortunately (again), the blond cop is in the cult and shoots Weston, allowing safe passage for Emma and Joey, saying “Roderick sent me” (I’m getting very interested to learn who this Roderick fellowis).  Ryan gets out of the house and runs into Mike laying on the ground.  Fortunately, he was wearing a bullet proof vest.  Ryan goes on and catches up with Emma, Joey, and Blondie.  He shoots her, but Emma and Joey escape in their getaway vehicle.  Back at the house, Jacob tries to help a bleeding Paul, but Debra has sent in the SWAT.  They begin shooting all over the house and just as they burst into the room from different angles, it looks like Paul and Jacob have met their match.  But The Following doesn’t allow it to be thatsimple.  Half of the FBI agents in the room are actually members of the cult posing as agents, and they shoot the other FBI agents, allowing Paul and Jacob to escape.  They hitch-hike and steal a car and get away.  Basically, everybody got away and Joey was still kidnapped, but it happened in true Following fashion – lots of action, suspense, and drama.  At least Megan was rescued.

The police also found Claire in the basement with her “follower,” Charlie.  He got away too, but they rescued Claire.  The next day, Ryan sees Claire at her house where she tries shoving him away, angry that Joey still wasn’t rescued after all that.  We also see Carroll’s attorney publicly announcing that she is filing against the prison for mistreatment of Carroll – he did get smacked around a couple times by people like Ryan who visited him.

What’s next for The Following?  They have proved that we will never be able to guess.  Surely this isn’t all part of Carroll’s plan – Emma being separated from Jacob and Paul, not knowing what to do next.  But who knows, there is clearly a huge plan here, and we’re only going to find out parts of it week by week, which I will be back for every time to try and learn a little more.

New Girl S2E17 Recap – Parking Spot

This week’s New Girl opens with Jess and Nick brushing their teeth and awkwardly discussing how glad they were that things were “normal” between them.  Of course, they aren’t.  Schmidt brings the attention of the gang to the idea that there is a new parking spot open in the parking garage.  The rest of the episode, the gang does what they can to claim the spot as their own, and it was plenty hilarious.

First, they all sit together and try to point out why they each deserve it.  Jess pulls the “I’m a woman” card to which Schmidt hilariously replies “Because i believe so strongly in women’s equality, i refuse to give you preferential treatment.”  Winston is busy texting his new girl the entire time, Daisy (Brenda Song).  He leaves the debate to go to her house for some romance.  Down to three people, Nick caves under the pressure and opts himself out, leaving it down to Jess and Schmidt.  They say that Nick has to be the one to decide.  Later, Jess tries flirting (in a very Jess way) to get Nick to give her the spot, which he does.  When Schmidt tries to convince Nick to give him the spot, he notices a vibe between Jess and Nick and asks them what has happened between the two of them.  They are forced to tell him that they kissed, which sets him off.

Meanwhile, Winston rushes to Daisy’s house, and is ready to go… Unfortunately, he forgot a condom.  She pushes him out and he goes on a wild chase to find one.  He goes to a convenience store and is ready to pay when he reaches in his wallet and finds that it’s not there – because he’s wearing Daisy’s pants.  He is then seen showing up at Cece’s apartment (who is with her other man still) and he awkwardly demands that the guy give him a condom.  He tries to act like he doesn’t have one so that he can appear to be a gentlemen to Cece.  Winston stays long enough to make things nice and awkward between Cece and her guy before she pushes him out the door.  By the end of the episode, Winston finally finds a condom (after being forced to go back to his own apartment) but is lost in the city in the darkness.

Back to Nick, Jess, and Schmidt, things continue to get weird between them because Schmidt now knows they kissed.   He points out to Jess that she lives in an apartment with three men and can’t just kiss one of them.  As things escalate between the three, they all go out on their own and try to race to claim the spot as their own.  Nick gets there first and is sitting in a chair.  Schmidt pulls into the spot and keeps driving while Nick is sitting there, finally bumping into him with his car.  Then, Jess pulls up and drives into the side of Schmidt’s car.  They stand in the spot and wait it out.  Schmidt has to pee so bad that he’s talking out loud to his body, telling it to “absorb it,” which ends with Jess asking, “Did you just pee inside your body?”  It’s all extremely funny until they’re sitting in the spot for hours and Nick tells Jess that he wish the kiss never even happened and that if he could take it back he would.  Jess leaves, upset.

Later, Nick and Jess talk and he explains that he wish the kiss never happened because he regrets what it’s done to the two of them.  Schmidt decides that the only way to fix things is for Jess and him to kiss, which they actually do and realize immediately was weird and wrong.  Winston arrives home after his horrifically funny day, and they decide that he deserves a win for the day, giving the spot to him.

It’s clear that they’re going to torture us with the Nick/Jess thing, and also with the Schmidt/Cece thing.  How do you feel about Daisy?  I hope she sticks around, I think she is funny and I want Winston to have somebody.  What do you think is going to happen with Nick and Jess?  Will they ever get together?

The Following S1E5 Recap – “The Siege”

This week’s chapter of The Following opens with the killer trio waking up in bed, seemingly after a passionate night together in bed.  While the three of them are waking up and getting ready, Joey is sneaking the phone out to make a secret phone call to his mom.  Claire answers, not knowing she is about to speak to her son.  She keeps it together as best she can while talking to him, trying to keep him on the phone for as long as she can and get as much information out of him as possible before Paul finds him on the phone and ends the call.

The killer trio’s drama continues to get more twisted.  While trying to keep Joey under their eyes, working out their emotional and romantic problems, and deciding what to do with their poor captive Megan who is still tied to a chair in the basement with a stab wound, they have their hands full.  Paul and Emma continue to push Jacob  to do his first kill on Megan.  Jacob is seen to be extremely embarrassed of the fact that he can’t get himself to do it.  I am confused why Jacob even wants to be in the cult?  He clearly doesn’t enjoy killing, so what is it that draws him towards it?  Acceptance?  And if so, why does he need to be accepted so badly by this cult?  Meanwhile, Joey makes a run for it and escapes from the crazies.  We see him running through the woods, where he meets a neighbor who brings him back to his house.  They are a middle-aged couple who recognize him from the news.  Just as they are about to bring him inside, Emma shows up and coaxes Joey back, promising him that he’ll be able to call his mom.  He goes with her, but the older couple call the police.  As they are speaking with the cops, Paul shows up and gets rid of them.  Back at the house, Emma locks Joey in his room, telling him that she’s going to get the phone.

Carroll’s attorney is introduced in this episode, a poor woman who is forced to do his bidding.  It is physically obvious that she is repulsed by Carroll and does not want to help him.  We learn through flashbacks that she lost a few fingers through one of Carroll’s accomplices, so she is probably scared for her life to disobey his commands.  She is forced to read on the news something that Carroll tells her to.  It is a work by Poe, which clearly sends a message to certain people watching.  We see two people getting the message – apparently two new members of the cult.

Claire gets a visit from Olivia, Carroll’s attorney, who tells her that she has a message to relay:  if she wants to see her son alive, she is supposed to meet at a certain location at a certain time that day.  She tries to get out of the house, but two FBI agents are not so quick to let her leave.  She has a friend meet her at a restaurant, with the agents close by a table away.  She makes the excuse of going to the bathroom to get away, and sneaks out of the restaurant.  She gets to the location she is supposed to be at and a vehicle pulls up, telling her to get in.  She does, and that is the last we see of Claire for this episode.

The police discover a relative area of where Joey could be, and Ryan and Agent Weston head out there.  While there, they discover that a local girl has recently gone missing.  Upon checking security tapes, Weston and Ryan learn that Paul was the one to have taken her, so they know they are in the right spot.  Ryan and a local cop go to the older couple’s house who called about Joey, only to find them slaughtered in their own home.  The local cop says that the next house is about a half mile through the woods; he and Ryan run through the woods and end up at the house.  Ryan calls for backup, but of course doesn’t wait. The local cop and he venture closer to the house.  Inside, Emma notices someone in the house – it is one of the two men we saw in the beginning receive Carroll’s message.  His name is Hank and he says that “Roderick sent him” – whatever that means.  It is enough for Emma, Paul, and Jacob.  Back outside, Ryan and the local cop are in the barn next to the house, where they run into Hank.  The local cop is clearly not ready for a situation like this, since Hank overpowers him very easily and shoots him.  Ryan walks in at this moment and shoots Hank. Inside, the killer trio hear the shots and venture out.  Joey realizes he is locked in his room and starts trying to break down the door, which he eventually succeeds in.  The poor local cop dies shortly after his wounds, and Ryan goes in the house alone. He sneaks in through the basement where he discovers Megan.  He does his best to keep her quiet and sneaks upstairs.  Just as he sees Joey, a gun is put to the back of his head.  It is the other man from the beginning.  And….. that is how the episode ends!  What a cliffhanger!  We don’t even get to see Ryan move from his spot with the gun pointed right at his head.  The Following knows how to end an episode and keep viewers coming back for more.

Next week looks like it’s going to be a standoff for most of the episode, showing clips of Ryan in the house with the killer trio and the other mystery man.  Now seems like a good time to voice the probably-already-voiced idea that Joey may not even be Carroll’s son.  What if Joey is Ryan’s son?  After all, Ryan and claire were definitely together in the past.  We’ll see if that idea ever comes in to play.  Either way, The Following has proved that it is quick on its feet, keeping us on the edge of our seat during every single episode.

The Office Recap S9E16, – “Moving On”

Tonight, we got an extra dose of The Office with “Moving On.” This title was appropriate on more than one level, but we’ll get into that later.

Although some would disagree, I feel that The Office has been getting more back to it’s roots lately as this season has progressed. It’s definitely not the same show that it used to be, but it has been providing more laughs for me lately than usual.

Let’s start with the Andy/Erin/Pete triangle. Or should we say the Andy/Erin/Pete/Gabe/Alice delimma? After Andy finally learns that Erin is dating Pete (which he only finally learns by snooping on her phone), he goes a little crazy trying to deal with it. First, the workers of Dunder Mifflin sit through Andy bawling loudly for a good part of the day. On one of these occasions, Daryl has to point out to Andy that “he’s got a booger bubble,” to which Andy replies with what might have been my favorite line from the episode, “My whole life is a booger bubble!” When Andy finally learns of Pete, he calls him into his office to let him learn the sad news that Erin has chlamydia (pronounced by Andy “ch-la-midia”). He then tries to fire Pete, which Toby politely informs him is impossible. When that doesn’t work, and after Erin and Pete try to talk him through it, Andy reacts by re-hiring Gabe, Erin’s ex, and hiring a new worker, Alice, who turns out to know Pete. In fact, she dated Pete for two years in college. It was sure nice to see Gabe back and being as awkward as ever, pleading with Erin to come back to him, boasting that he had shaved everywhere. By the end of the episode, Andy had just what he wanted – everyone fighting.

Moving on to Pam and Jim, the drama continues with the two. This is something that I thought I would never see, and something that I am still kind of feeling we shouldn’t be seeing. Although it is definitely impossible for a couple to never fight, seeing Pam and Jim struggle is nothing fun to watch, realistic as it may be. Pam has an interview with an insurance company closer to Philly, which she seems unsure about. When she gets there, it seems to be a dream come true for us. The boss of this place is virtually Michael Scott. Although no one can truly ever beMichael Scott except the man himself, it was sure fun to see Pam interacting with a Micahel-like character. In fact, seeing her react to his awkwardness might have been my favorite part of the episode. Felt very “Old Office days-ish” to me. Alas, Pam realizes that she would be working as a receptionist for Michael Scott again, and that is not something she wants. Jim seems too busy for Pam for the entire episode. When Jim makes time forPam at the end of the day (with a very sweet dinner, in fact), she finally tells him how she doesn’t know if she wants this. She says, “I liked our life in Scranton.” We are left with that forthe two of them this episode. I am hoping things start looking up for them ASAP, because seeing them struggle is almost painful.

Dwangela fans can rejoice tonight, for we finally got some Dwight and Angela action! That’s right, they finally kissed at the end of tonight’s episode. After Angela spends the day with Dwight, helping take care of his aunt, the night ended with the two of them kissing. Are we finally seeing a comeback of this dynamic couple? The answer seems to be “no,” for now, at least. Dwight passionately explains to Angela that he actually wants to be with her, but she explains that she made a promise to the husband she has now. I saw some struggle in her speech though – there is clearlysome part of her that wants to be with Dwight. We’ll see where this continues to go.

Things between Nellie and Toby moved forward a tad in this episode also. He continues to try to win her over – rather pathetically – throughout the episode, ending with him in a neck brace after going to the prison to visit the man imprisoned for the Scranton Strangler’s crimes. Nellie does seem to slightly come around, however, calling him brave for doing so. Perhaps things will continue to go somewhere for the two of them. Will Toby finally have a girlfriend?!

Lastly, let’s not forget to mention the ad that popped up on Oscar’s computer at the end: “The Office: An American Workplace. Ten years in the making. A look at the lives and loves of an average American small business office.” Moving forward more with the documentary idea. It seems that the documentary is going to be unveiled to the public soon, maybe? They are giving us little bits and clues to this storyline, but I am very interested to see where it goes.

What do you think? Is the Pam/Jim drama too much for you? Did you enjoy seeing Michael Scott’s twin tonight? Do you want Dwight and Angela to reunite? And who is the right man for Erin?

The Following Recap S1E4 – Mad Love

This week’s chapter of The Following opens with the trio of killers, Emma, Jacob, and Paul, contemplating what to do with their little problem known as Megan.  This poor woman has been held hostage with them, tied to a chair.  They even discuss their options on what to do with her right in front of her.  Meanwhile, back at the station, we are informed that Jordy is indeed dead.  The scene from last week showing him choking himself on medical gauze did result in his death.  No more leaked information of the plan coming from him.  This news also shows  just how deeply committed the people in the Following are committed to Carroll – willing to kill themselves in order to keep parts of the plan from being revealed.

This week, we learn more about Ryan’s past.  Through flashbacks, we learn about his family.    When Ryan was dating Claire in the past, he has trouble opening up to her.  One night, she finally breaks through to him and he reveals the grim details.  In his youth, his mother died of leukemia when he was only 14.  His father, a street cop, also died off duty.  He had an older brother, a firefighter, who died during 9/11.  This leaves only him and his sister Jenny.  Through more flashbacks, she is revealed to be a chef with her own restaurant.

Ryan continues to get calls from her, but he keeps ignoring them.  Finally, he answers the phone – and good thing he does, because Maggie is the one on the other line.  Maggie is the woman from last week who killed Agent Turner.  She is taking revenge on Ryan for killing her husband.  She has taken Jenny hostage.  Ryan sets out to save his only sister and family member, but Parker notices something off about him and sends Agent Weston to follow him.  Ryan agrees to let Weston come along.  Parker seems to be very intuitive.  She understands Ryan very well for the little time she has known him.  On the ride to Boston, which is where Jenny is being held captive, Weston tries to open up to Ryan, but Ryan shuts him down, proving once again that he has trouble opening up to people.  When they get there, Ryan goes in alone so that Maggie is unaware that there is another agent on standby.  He is forced to put on a blindfold, and she knockshim unconscious.  He wakes up tied to a table with his hands over his head and Jenny tied to a chair at the other end.  Maggie plans to kill Ryan in front of Jenny so that Jenny has to go through what she did when Ryan killed her husband.  She places magnets on his chest to mess up his heart monitor, which definitely works.  He immediately starts to have trouble.  Luckily, this is right about when Agent Weston decides to come in and help.  He sneaks up on Maggieand is forced to shoot her to stop her.  Later that night, at the crime scene, Weston tells Parker that Maggie used her cell phone and they can trace the call to the location to possibly find out where Joey is.  Later, Ryan is telling Claire this news, and she seems to still have feelings for him.  She tries to get him to stay, but he refuses.  I sense some rekindling going on between the two of them before this season is over.

Meanwhile, back to what is possibly one of the most twisted, complicated, and messed up love triangles ever created, Emma, Paul, and Jacob continue to contemplate what to do about Megan.  Paul reveals privately to Emma that Jacob has never actually killed anyone.  We learn through flashbacks that Jacob is ashamed of this.  He deeply wants to be part of the cult, but he has trouble when it comes to killing.  Emma confronts Jacob about this and tells him that he is the one who is going to have to kill Megan.  He goes downstairs to do the job, but struggles once again.  She pleads with him to let her go, even coming up with a plan to make it look like she was killed.  Finally, he cuts her loose and tells her to go.  She sneaks out of the house, but not without Emma and Paul hearing her.  They chase her down, and Emma stabs her in the stomach.  Later, Emma and Paul clean off the mud and blood from their bodies.  Some attraction is felt between them as they do this, and they end up kissing and showering off together.  As if this love triangle wasn’t complex enough!  I guess that’s what you get when you’ve got three killers living in a house together with two of them loving the same person.  To make things worse, Jacob walks in on them in the shower.  He is ashamed for what he’s done, but Emma assures him that they (she and Paul) haven’t given up on him yet.  Instead of being angry at them, he joins them in the shower.  It seems that they are solving their love problems by just becoming one giant, messed up, three-person-couple.  I’m sure that’s going to work out great.

That’s all for this week.  Next week, based on the previews, Claire gets a call from Joey, but it doesn’t sound like it’s something that is planned.  It even looked as if they find the house that they are all in.  What do you think of the show so far?  Is it getting better?  Worse?  And when will the public find out about this cult, and what will be the results of that?  I’m thoroughly sucked in to the show, and will follow it weekly, hoping for answers.

The Following Recap S1E3 – “The Poet’s Fire”

This week’s chapter of The Following gave us an even darker look at Carroll’s cult of killers.  The episode began with a horrifying opening scene of a seemingly random man having gasoline poured over his body and then being set on fire by a masked man who, seconds before, was performing in front of a street crowd.  Although we had already seen this before from the ending of last week’s episode, it was nonetheless shocking and disturbing.  The Following makes it clear that it is a dark show just by the opening scenes.

Meanwhile, Ryan (Kevin Bacon) tries to get some information out of Jordy, the man who held Claire at gunpoint in last week’s chapter.  When he refuses to speak, Ryan hits him.  I’m seeing a pattern.  Ryan seems unable to not strike back when interrogating.  (See: Carroll’s broken fingers.)

Joey seems to be having a relatively good time with his captors.  We learn that they even have bought toys for him to keep him happy.  They, on the other hand, are having some issues.   At least Paul is.  This isn’t too shocking as it is a house full of killers.  We continue to see Paul on edge throughout the episode.  Could he possibly actually have developed feelings for his fake boyfriend during their years spent together?  It is revealed that the answer is yes.  During a flashback scene, Jacob and Paul are shown at home in the past, pretending to be gay, talking about their day.  They end up kissing, revealing that there definitely were some true feelings there.  Paul’s edginess isn’t just due to feeling like a third wheel around Emma and Jacob; he feels abandoned by Jacob.  Paul attempts to get on Emma’s good side, and when he sticks his hand out for a truce, she slices his wrist with a knife.  Although they are all three killers and clearly unstable, Emma might be showing herself to be the most unstable of all.  She seems to enjoy impulsively acting and hurting things (i.e. the way she unexpectedly killed her own mother during last week’s episode).  The drama doesn’t stop there with the killer trio.  Paul goes out on the town (against Emma and Jacob’s wishes, of course – his picture is all over the news) and creepily walks around a department store, smiling at women.  He finally settles on a worker, and the two are shown later that night making out in the woods.  When things are getting heated up, Paul begins to choke the woman.  She feels weirded out and wantsto go home. Paul violently bangs her head against the car until she is passed out.  Emma and Jacob wake up the next morning to find her tied to a chair in the house.

As for the current case, Ryan and his partner Debra Parker find the man who set the other man on fire during the opening scenes.  They break into his house to find his scared wife Maggie hiding in the closet with a knife to protect herself against her husband.  Agent Riley is put on house duty and watches over Maggie that night.  Ryan and young agent Mike Weston sit outside the house in a car.  They learn through Jordy’s slip of the tongue (due to Agent Parker’s smooth interrogating) that Maggie herself is part of the cult.  Ryan and Weston run to the house, but it is too late – Maggie has already stabbed Agent Riley in the throat.  As Ryan chases her outside, Weston tries to stop the bleeding.  Just as Ryan is about to catch Maggie, her husband jumps out of nowhere and attacks Ryan.  Maggie escapes as Ryan fights the husband off, shooting him to death.  The show has proven that anyone can be in the cult.  Ryan returns inside to find that Agent Riley has died.

Throughout the episode, we see flashbacks of Ryan and Carroll’s past.  Ryan met with Carroll on several occasions  to discuss the case, forming an almost friendship.  The two share drinks together.  Ryan blames himself for being deceived by Carroll.

During Parker’s talk with Jordy, he also reveals that everyone in the cult is part of the plan; but no one person knows all of the plan – that way if someone gets caught, the entire plan isn’t revealed.  Rick, Maggie’s husband, wanted his “chapter” to be about fire.   Jordy is shown at the hospital during the ending scenes eating gauze, apparently trying to choke himself.  I’m hoping we don’t find him dead at the beginning of next week, only for the fact that he could possibly have more information to reveal.  Although we saw a man lit on fire during the opening scenes, the closing scenes sent worse chills down my spine.  Claire is sent a video of little Joey, playing with his captors.  They teach him to kill bugs by holding a magnifying glass and burning them alive, and trapping a mouse in a jar.  They’re brainwashing him to be a killer.  This deeply sickening scene ends the show.

What do you think of The Following‘s first three chapters?  Is the show too dark for you?  Too intriguing to stop?  What will happen next?  Who else is in the cult?

Grey’s Recap S9E13 – “Bad Blood”

This week’s installment in the lives of the doctors at Seattle Grace had us hoping for a win.  However, in true Grey’s fashion, the ER was nevertheless closed by the end of the episode.  Despite April and Derek’s best efforts – in their own ways – to keep the ER alive, Alana closed its doors.  But, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves.

The Couples   Callie and Arizona weren’t getting along too well in this episode, but for a change it was about their daughter instead of Arizona’s leg, or lack thereof.  The two spent the majority of the episode arguing over Sophia.  While these two are one of my favorite couples on the show, I thought that they got an awful lot of screen time where we instead could have seen some Meredith/Derek action.  Speaking of couple action…  When will we see Alex and his “best friend” intern finally hook up?  Some episodes we see them together all the time and other episodes they don’t even get a scene together.  Lastly, what are we going to do about April?  Although her cute paramedic man didn’t make an appearance in this episode, I’m betting there will be some drama when he comes back.  While Jackson has his intern to fall for, when he sees April eyeing the paramedic, will he be jealous?  Or will he look the other way?  I’m guessing there will be some drama.  And is it so bad that I almost hope there will be something that happens between April and Jackson?  While I really just want to see April happy and with somebody (whether the paramedic or Jackson), I can’t help but hope that something else happens between the two.

The Patients   Christina did her best to keep her patient alive without being able to give him blood, but she also spent a majority of the episode doing her best to make her intern understand that as much as they both wished they could give him some blood, they just couldn’t.  I also got some flashbacks to the old intern days when the new intern tried to sneak some blood into the patient’s IV.  It definitely reminded me of the original interns always breaking the rules.  As for the troubled teenager, Alex wasn’t mean enough to get her out of bed and walking.  How fitting that Arizona, usually the quickest to back down from confrontation, was the one to get the girl out of bed.  Of course she had her own personal story to relate to her with.  In the operating room, Owen thought he was convincing Alana to keep the ER open by logging some hours with her working on a patient. How funny was it when Jackson was making fun of her without realizing she was in there the whole time?

The Hospital   If viewers had any hope that the efficiency expert Alana would change her mind about closing the ER (or just not be back this week), they were wrong.  Even after spending hours in the OR helping with a patient from the ER that she unintentionally got herself involved with, and regardless of April and Derek’s attempts at finding ways to keep the ER open, by the end of the episode the ER was no longer open for business.  How long will it stay closed?  Surely not forever, but I am curious to see how they plan to open it back up.  Perhaps with some settlement money?  I’m hoping that something more original than that ends up happening.  Also, the cameras?  I’m curious to see if those will be a long lasting investment.  If not, it was worth it just to see Christina telling the camera off for telling her intern what to do.  While the doctors learned a new technique for surgery, not all of them were happy to do so.  I have to say, I loved to see Bailey wearing her prize-winning sweater, just to snap back at the instructor that “It’s itchy.”  I hope we don’t see too many more like him telling them how to do their operations.

We’ll see how much more the efficiency expert plans to change things in next week, I’m sure.  Based on the previews, it’s going to be a patient-centered episode that will be the focus of next week.