Grey’s Anatomy Recap: At Last

AAAAAAHHHHHH! Finally. Finally! After decades of friendship, six seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, three seasons of hook-ups, fights, love confessions, and a pregnancy that’s turned out to be twins, Link (Chris Carmack) proposes to Jo (Camilla Luddington) in this week’s episode, and he does so in the most “them” way possible: impulsively after a patient made him realize that the gesture was way overdue.

The JoLink ship has been strong ever since season 15 when Jo’s old friend waltzed into Grey Sloan as an ortho god. Jo was still with Alex at the time, but some of us know chemistry when we see it. After Alex left, there was the hurdle of Link and Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) — and that disastrous moment when Link roped Meredith’s (Ellen Pompeo) kids into helping him with a proposal that quickly went awry. But then, when Link moved in with Jo to weather the fallout, it was time. Sure, it took a while — they hooked up, fought about it, and took a full season to get together after that. But you know what they say: good things take time, and they’ve been friends since college, so you know this one’s built to last.

Link’s proposal might be a long time coming, but it also lands in an episode worthy of its inclusion. This week is all about important friendships and repairing relationships through honest communication. Even more fittingly, Link’s inspiration comes from a patient who jumped off a bridge to retrieve her wedding ring.

Catherine (Debbie Allen) calls Meredith back this week to operate on her former student’s wife, but things are still icy between Grey and her husband, Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.). He’s still mad at her for the whole “treating my wife’s tumors without telling me my wife had tumors” thing. Fair! But also, it’s not like Grey had much of a choice; Catherine basically blackmailed her into it. Regardless, they’ll need to work together to save this patient’s life.

But why did this case come to Grey Sloan in the first place? Why has the patient, Tasha, been rejected by two hospitals already when it seems like her liver transplant case seems like a straightforward case of … *checks notes and then Googles for spelling* hepatic encephalopathy? And why is Tasha’s wife, Catherine’s former student Evan Moore, being played by a very special guest star, Lena Waithe?

For a while, Meredith and Richard are too busy drowning in their shared tension to ask the important questions. He’s being catty with her for wanting to do a brain scan without asking Evan, and she’s tired of him being pissy at her for doing what his wife wanted. Eventually, though, they get on the same page about at least one thing: something’s off about this case. It turns out Evan’s been hiding Tasha’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis from them in order to secure the transplant. Even worse? Catherine didn’t know about it either — which means she’s about to go absolutely ham on Evan’s ass next week. In the meantime, the transplant is obviously off and Meredith and Richard are slowly repairing their bond.

Meanwhile, Jules (Adelaide Kane) is still not over Mika (Midori Francis) quitting the intern program. She’s avoiding everyone, and last week, she threw Simone under the bus during a surgery. Bailey (Chandra Wilson) knows everyone’s a mess from the loss, so she decides to host an intern “retreat” in her living room. She hires a facilitator to do a bunch of team-building exercises like the human knot, but Jules struggles to engage and instead spends most of the time trading mean comments with Simone. In a sublimely unsubtle metaphor for these two’s relationship, the spaghetti tower they’re tasked with building crumbles under the weight of a single marshmallow.

Eventually, the group facilitator quits — not because of Simone and Jules, but because after hearing about one too many tragedies that have struck the hospital staff, he realizes his CEO-oriented program is simply not equipped to help the trauma factory that is Grey Sloan. No kidding! The good news? Bailey finally manages to crack Jules open by acknowledging that, yes, the situation sucks and the team is in shambles. At the same time, she points out, Jules being a sourpuss is not going to help fix that. When Jules comes by the intern house with a bottle of wine, it’s clear they’re all going to be fine.

And then there’s Dr. Ndugu (Anthony Hill), who’s working on fixing a different kind of relationship — his friendship with himself.

We’ve all seen the flirty looks that Ndugu’s patient Jackie’s mom has been sending him for weeks. He might’ve ghosted her on a dating app in the past, but the spark is alive and well now — or at least, the potential is. So why hasn’t he made a move? It turns out that being “the divorced guy” has made him less confident about his dating prospects. But as Ben (Jason Winston George) points out while they’re transporting some organs, divorced people can make perfectly wonderful partners — just look at his wife and Ndugu’s friend, who’s organizing that intern retreat as we speak.

Armed with newfound confidence, Ndugu asks Jackie’s mom out. She politely declines because Jackie knows him and will have “expectations,” which honestly feels like a huge copout. Maybe these two will hook up later in the season? It feels like this show isn’t quite sure what to do with Ndugu lately, apart from giving him impossible surgeries and (this week) having him cut open a cardiac patient on the side of the road after he skidded off the road on his motorcycle. He might be crushing things professionally, but his personal life is aimless as hell. This week was Link’s turn for a life-altering epiphany; maybe his will come next week.

That said, can we take a moment to honor the friends who helped our last patient of the week, Marley, celebrate her divorce? The act itself is a wonderful gesture that should be replicated more often, and also, it’s an absolute miracle that they all kept their wedding party attire. Still throwing your ring off a bridge? Girl, that’s a bridge too far.

The cost of pettiness is often steep, and in this case, it’s spinal fusion surgery. But the jokes Marley’s friends tell at her bedside are a wake-up call for Link. As they go on and on about what a dillweed this ex was (he apparently wore sandals to one of her friend’s weddings and asked her to go splitsies on their first date at a sandwich shop — the nerve!) Link realizes that could never be him and Jo. They’re best friends — they’ve always been best friends. What is he waiting for? What is he so afraid of? They’re having twins, for god’s sake! When one of Marley’s friends reveals that firefighters have fished her ring out of the water, that’s the final push Link needs to run home and pop the question.

The proposal might be hastily planned, but it’s still romantic as hell. “What do couples who’ve been together a long time say?” he asks her. “I married my best friend. That’s us. It’s been us.” It is! And it has! I never thought I’d say this, but thank God Alex Karev made that horrible, unceremonious exit to Tacoma. This relationship is even better. And best of all? Link learned his lesson about engagement rings. Instead of enlisting a gaggle of children to assist with this proposal, he gave Jo an empty box so that she could pick her own. Diamonds might be a girl’s best friend, but men who know how to learn from their mistakes are worth their weight in gold.

The OR Board

• I’m very curious to see what Catherine says to her former acolyte — and how Grey Sloan will probably wind up treating Tasha anyway. Something tells me that even if Evan did wrong, the docs aren’t going to let her wife suffer.

• When are we going to hear more about Blue and his ex? It seems like they’ve agreed she’ll dump her boyfriend, but how long does that take? I need to know so that I can start my countdown clock until this entire situation blows up in his face!

• Do we think Adams’ trauma from the convenience store robbery is going to become a season-long story arc? I can’t decide if that would be compelling or tiresome, but it would be very Grey’s.