S5/#12, an EO episode of "Grey's Anatomy"

Episode Twelve of Season Five of Shonda Rhimes's "Grey's Anatomy" was so good that I have to review it. I of course love the show anyway (more than my wife, who has come to think of it as a soap opera, but who did happen to watch Episode Twelve with me). When I say "was," I'm referring to night before last, when we watched it on DVD borrowed from our local branch of the Alamance County Libraries.
    Like many a fine story, there's lots going on in any episode of "Grey's Anatomy." In this episode, for example, a 5'-5" guy ends up in Seattle Grace Hospital with severe infections in both legs owing to having had surgery in Thailand to lengthen his legs by two inches. His main complaint seems to have been that he could never get a second date from any girl he dated. Being short just sucked. Unfortunately, in Seattle he lost not only the two inches gained in Thailand but also another quarter-inch due to the surgeon's having to shave the ends of the reconnected bones. The guy is even more dejected now. His brother, there to offer moral support, but quite exasperated by now, asks, "Five-three, five-five, what's the difference anyway?" His brother acknowledges, "Not much, but at least you can actually say you're five-five; anything shorter than that, you can't."
    This wasn't just a nice joke. In the course of the conversation of which the "joke" was a part, the guy's brother has let him know how much his obsession with being short has disrupted the brother's life. In paraphrase, the brother says, "I'm five-ten, but I didn't play basketball because you'd moan about being too short to play. Girls didn't not want to date you because you're short, but because you're always complaining about being short." The beauty of the scene, for me, was the sense (from the brilliant writing, acting, and directing) that the guy got it and might now be able to move on.

But the story line in Episode Twelve that figuratively made me jump up and shout bravo was the one with guest actor Eric Stoltz in the role of a PDR (prisoner on death row) who is brought in to Seattle Grace to have multiple stab wounds tended to. An X-ray reveals that there's a sharp object about three inches long sticking through one of his vertebrae. (It's a broken-off toothbrush handle that was filed down and sharpened for use as a shiv.)
    The PDR's presence in the hospital surfaces significant differences in moral response from the doctors....
    I just realized that it could take more words than I think a post (even one of mine) should have to clearly recount the plot lines of Episode Twelve. I'm thinking of Dr. Mark Sloan in the previous episode's having gone to bed with "Little Grey" even though he'd promised "Big Grey's" boyfriend (and his long-time friend), Dr. Derek Shepherd, that he wouldn't; so what's going to happen with this? And Derek's mother (who was practically a mother to Mark too) is coming to visit and meet "Big Grey," who is being coached by Dr. Izzy Stevens how to impress a potential mother-in-law. Derek's father (we learn in this episode) was murdered in a store robbery, so Derek has no sympathy for the PDR, and his mother might be expected to have none either. And there's a little boy in the hospital, at death's door and desperately needing a new intestine and liver, whose blood type and antibodies just happen to be matched by the corresponding organs in the PDR....
    Indeed, in the hands of a lesser writer than Shonda Rhimes and her staff, of a lesser director and lesser actors, this could be soap opera of a laughable kind. But the writing and all are so perfect (I might mention the editing too) that it's just ExtraOrdinary!
    I recommend that you see it for yourself, and not just this episode, but the preceding eleven episodes of the season, if not the preceding however many episodes of four seasons! Nearly a hundred, I guess. Do I need to get a life, or what?