Grey’s Anatomy season 23 kicked off with quite the eventful premiere with the final minutes of the episode setting up several storylines for the season ahead. Seth Norton was announced as the new chief of surgery, which left Meredith fighting to prevent inadequate patient care in favor of VIP patients.
Bailey named Winston the new residency director as she prepares to return to school for her master’s degree, and that wasn’t the only career change the episode’s closing brought as Jo chose to quit her job. Link was caught off guard by Jo’s decision, almost as caught off guard as fans were to discover that Link is still hiding the extent of his injury and developing a drug addiction to get him through. Finally, Amelia managed to patch things up with Toni, while Simone got the surprise of her life with an unexpected positive pregnancy test.
Needless to say, there was a lot that went down in the opening hour, and episode 2 kept that momentum going.
Episode 2 opens with Bailey heading out for her first day of classes as Blue tries to get Simone’s advice on Bailey’s preferred morning drink, clearly concocting a plan to try to get his job back through her. Simone isn’t much help, though, as the morning sickness is hitting her hard, and Blue quickly puts two and two together, hinting Lucas and Wes will soon do the same.
At the hospital, Meredith heads in to see Richard about Charlie's results, and she’s surprised to see Seth there. Before she can leave, they pitch her on coming back to Seattle full-time to work for the VIP floor, as the patients want top-tier doctors. Meredith isn’t interested in the idea, but then they suggest that in exchange for her working on the VIP floor, they allow her to bump a few patients up to VIP pro bono each year. As a starting point, she gets them to help prioritize Charlie’s procedures. Seth agrees, and they get Charlie settled on the VIP floor and prepare him for surgery after the consent forms are processed.
Winston greets the residents, who don’t seem enthused that he’s taken over as residency director. After addressing the group, Winston pulls Jules aside and asks how she’s doing. She assures him she’s doing good and points out their relationship began before he was her supervisor, so this is a non-issue. Ben arrives and makes it clear to Winston he has no intentions of meddling in their personal matters, but we have a feeling that won’t be the case for long.
Charlie is settled in on the VIP floor as Richard, Meredith, Lucas, and Dani arrive to prepare him for surgery. Later, when Dani comes to draw his blood for labs, her urgency and lack of bedside manner send Charlie into a spiral, as he freaks out and pushes her away from him. Meredith is able to calm Charlie down and apologizes for Dani jumping into things without walking him through what she was about to do. Meredith assures him she’ll personally do the blood work, and it’s clear that Charlie has been through a lot.
Bailey's first day back at school doesn't go as she planned
Elsewhere, Blue meets Bailey at her new college campus, and she asks about his luck in searching for other residency programs, but he’s not had any luck. He’s considering family medicine, but she makes it clear it would be a waste of his surgical talents. Their conversation is interrupted when a pledge injures himself after falling down a flight of stairs in a slip-and-slide accident.
Bailey and Blue bring the pledge into Grey Sloan and get him settled into the ED, as Bailey sends Blue away and works with Simone on examining him. He’s got a severe hip injury, and Link orders a CT to check the extent of his injuries. His injuries are indeed more severe than expected, as his femur is up his rectum, news that Simone shares with Blue when she finds him outside grabbing some lunch. As they chat, she opens up to him about her desires to keep the baby, which surprises him given the circumstances. Turns out having the conversation in public wasn’t the best choice, as Wes crashes the conversation just in time to overhear the news that Simone is pregnant.
Elsewhere, Jules and Wes work alongside Ben and Winston on treating a patient with a complicated condition with limited options. After presenting the case, Jules pitches Winston and Ben an experimental operation that could help give their patient her life back, and Winston agrees to present the plan to the patient. They walk her through the procedure, but she doesn’t want to get her hopes up only to be disappointed again. With the doctors’ assurance that this is her best chance, she agrees to the surgery.
After he stormed off upon overhearing her conversation with Blue about her pregnancy, Simone catches up with Wes and confesses that she’s not sure if the baby is his as she asks him about his feelings on the baby. Simone admits that it’s a miracle, as she never thought she could even get pregnant, as he makes it clear he doesn’t know what to say right now; it’s a lot to process, and he excuses himself before they can have a proper conversation.
Wes joins Winston, Jules, and Ben as they prepare for surgery, and Winston asks Jules to prepare the OR. Wes offers to take point, but Winston requests that Jules handle things, which is when Ben confronts him over him giving Jules preferential treatment.
While in surgery, Dani again becomes distracted by her other VIP patient as Meredith reminds her their focus should be on Charlie. Meredith is not happy, which is when Richard interjects and makes it clear that hiring one doctor she doesn’t like doesn’t change the fact that they provide excellent patient care and a first-class education for their residents and that if she doesn't agree, she shouldn’t be here. That's when Charlie begins crashing. Turns out that Dani ordered a second bag of potassium and forgot to log it in his charts when running around with her other patient. Another page from the VIP patient comes through, and Meredith dismisses her from the OR.
Later, Dani finds Richard, and she’s relieved to know that Charlie is in recovery and didn’t code again. As Richard reminds her that this was a learning moment on the importance of documenting everything. Their conversation is interrupted when Seth arrives to confront Dani about how her VIP patient needs ice chips and has been waiting for nearly 20 minutes. He makes it clear that this patient is a top priority and pulls her away as he reminds Richard that people expect to get what they paid for.
While Meredith performed Charlie’s surgery, Bailey, Link, and Simone worked on their pledge patient in a case that caught the attention of the new chief of surgery. Blue just so happened to bump into Seth in the gallery, and the pair struck up a conversation as the observer from above as Bailey and her team work down below in the OR. Not knowing Blue’s background, Seth suggested that he pursue dermatology, as the money is great and you’re not dealing with life-or-death cases, before he excused himself, leaving Blue with a lot to think about.
After the surgery, Bailey finds Blue in the hospital and apologizes for letting the day get away from her. She sends him away and wishes him a good night before greeting the pledge’s sorority brothers and overhears them joke about kicking him out, as she lays into them about everyone deserving a second chance. This encounter seems to have inspired Bailey, as she seeks out Seth to encourage him to hire Blue back; only we don’t find this out until after Blue heads into Seth’s office to ask for a second chance. To his surprise, Seth hires him, and that’s when we realize Bailey beat him to the idea and convinced Seth to give Blue a second chance.
Later, Richard comes to check on Charlie as he comes to. Meredith informs Charlie that his heart stopped during surgery, but they brought him back and removed all the visible cancer. Once he’s healed, they’ll start chemo, as she informs him she has to head back to Boston but will be back to check on him. On their way out Richard admits that Meredith might be right about having an issue with Seth, but he’s not sure what to do about it.
Winston and Jules call it quits
While Bailey and Meredith both have success with their patient’s surgeries, Winston’s experimental surgery did not go to plan. In the OR, there is a bleeder, and Winston calls on Jules to help with the bleed. He ends up course-correcting a little too hard and critiques her knots quite directly, and things continue to go downhill from there. The flap does not take, and the surgery fails, leaving their patient in a worse condition than she would have been in had her husband not encouraged her to proceed with the operation.
As for Winston and Jules? His new position seems to be too much of an obstacle for them to overcome, and the pair call it quits. While their relationship comes to an end, another seems to be blossoming as after shift Lucas finds Dani at Joe’s and apologizes to her for doing whatever has made her mad. She confronts him for leading her on, but to her surprise he confesses that he does like her and makes his intentions clear that he’d like to see where this could go when she’s sober.
Speaking of the future, we close out the episode revisiting Simone and Wes’s relationship. Wes finds her as she’s getting ready to leave the hospital and apologizes for losing his cool earlier. He admits that he shouldn’t have reacted as he did and makes it clear that he cares about her and he’s not walking away. Simone admits that kids deserve to be the priority, and right now she wants to be a surgeon, hinting she’s going to terminate the pregnancy. Wes makes it clear to her he’s with her wherever she is and will stand by her no matter the decision she makes.
In other odds and ends, outside of the hospital storylines, we get to see Jo struggling to adjust to life as a stay-at-home mom. It’s a major adjustment, and Jo is putting a lot of stress on herself to be perfect, which Toni and Amelia help to remind her is not doable, as all she can do is her best, as they spend the day helping her out around the house with some odd tasks.
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