And that’s not to say that most episodes of Grey’s Anatomy are not unbelievably real, because that’s the farthest thing from the truth. For as many times as I’ve thought, “This is ridiculous,” there have been twice as many instances where I’ve still been thinking about storylines days, even years, later. Grey’s tackles even the harshest storylines with grace, from the everyday neglectful parent to the mass shooting, from a lost little girl to the alcoholic chief of surgery, from the struggle of pregnancy and adoption to the sudden loss of a coworker to rapists brought to justice, so much so that even the deaths of minor, first-time patients often leave me in tears.
Jo, Jenny & Dr. Paul Stadler
This past season we’ve seen touches of the #MeToo and more recent Time’s Up movements in Jo’s storyline, which finally came to a head in this week’s “Personal Jesus.” We’ve known for a while now that Jo has a dark past, growing up in the foster system and living in her car in high school, and discovered in the season 12 finale that Jo was actually the name she adopted to hide from her abusive husband.
We first met Jo’s husband, Dr. Paul Stadler, when Alex stalked him at a conference near the end of season 13, but it wasn’t until last week’s “1-800-799-7233” that the pair came back into contact, and that we finally learned the full extent of her abuse.
Knowing Alex’s history, and having seen the look on his face last week when Jo said that she wished Stadler was dead, Meredith was certain that the pair was behind Stadler’s hit and run accident at the beginning of this week’s episode, but when the group saw Jenny, Stadler’s fiancé, speaking with police across the hall they realized that she must have been behind it.
Alex tried to convince Jo to stay away from Jenny, not wanting it to seem like they had conspired together, but when Jenny found them later, promising she hadn’t told the police and thanking her for doing it, Jo realized that they were both in the clear, calling whoever was responsible an avenging angel.
Jenny apologized to Jo, who forgave her immediately, but Jenny persisted, admitting to Jo, “I really thought I was better than you. I believed everything he told me about you. God, I’m smart! I’m a scientist. I’m a feminist. I never thought I would end up in something like this.”
She explained how slowly it had happened, how she lost friends one by one until Stadler was all that was left, and how she started to believe him when he said she was crazy.
“…he can zero in on an insecurity and make a whole argument turn on a dime, and now it’s my fault. It’s my fault again, I’m always the one that’s wrong. When he started hitting me it was just barely a surprise, and he told me it was my fault and I actually believed him. Until you talked to me yesterday, I really believed him. How did I believe him?”
“Because he was good to you in the beginning,” Jo told her. “…Jenny we’re not stupid, we don’t fall for someone who beat us. We fell for someone who made us laugh, and feel wanted, and loved, and seen. …the good outweighed the bad, until it didn’t.”
In those two, incredibly raw minutes Jo and Jenny answered the questions that thousands of women ask themselves, that the public asks the women that have found the strength to remove themselves from those situations: “How could you let this happen? How did it get this far? Why didn’t you leave him sooner?” Because they’re smart, too. They break you down and target your insecurities until you think they’re right.
After Stadler woke up, Jenny and Jo walked in together and he once again tried to make Jo out to be the bad guy. He wasn’t surprised that she was trying to “poison” Jenny while he wasn’t there to defend himself. Even in one of his weakest moments, in front of witnesses, he still thought he could control them. When he told Jenny to get his stuff so they could leave, she finally stood her ground.
He thought he had her when he started talking about their life and their wedding, and she told him he should probably call his office and let them know he’d be gone for a few days. He smiled, nodding his head, before she added, “or like ten to twenty years.”
She had him hook line and sinker, and it was such sweet satisfaction to see the look on his face. Jenny promised to take every time he ever hurt her to the police, and when she asked Jo if she’d testify she agreed without hesitation. He called her crazy, trying to use his position and credibility against her, but she, Jo and Meredith all told him she wasn’t. I know I preach girl power a lot these days, but seriously?
Stick it to the man, ladies.
Stadler continued to act as though he was the victim, but when he realized she was serious he switched gears, immediately becoming threatening. Some serious dumb luck was on their side as he tripped on his way out of bed, slamming his head against the bed frame and the floor. Dr. Stadler gave himself a second concussion, causing a brain bleed leading to brain death.
Oh, how the mighty fall.
When Jo had the realization that what became of him would be up to her, she broke out into hysterical laughter, apologizing as she struggled to stop before finally breaking down. She and Jenny discussed the options together, the latter asking what would happen if they left him plugged in. Jo explained how he would die, and Jenny said she had wanted him to rot in jail.
“I wanted to stand up and tell the whole world what he did. I wanted to stand up in court and humiliate him the way he humiliated me.” Jo knew what would make up for it, though.
They sat in the gallery as Alex and Meredith harvested his organs.
Jenny asked if Jo thought he was evil. “I mean, I’m a scientist and I think I’m an atheist, but there’s a little part of me wondering if a girl in Billings is getting an evil kidney.”
Jo said she didn’t believe that anyone was just evil.
“Paul was awful in his life, but now in death he gets to do all this good. So there’s light in darkness, and they both coexist. Sometimes it’s really beautiful.”
Police Brutality
But while Paul Stadler was being brought to unusual justice, a 12-year-old black child named Eric Sterling was brought into the ER with a gunshot wound to the neck, cop cars flanking his ambulance. In another timely reflection of far too many police murders, the show took on the Black Lives Matter movement in the same hour.
Police shot Eric as he was trying to climb through the window of his own house after he forgot his key. Despite protests from Ben, Bailey and Avery, the police refused to back off, and they won’t even remove Eric’s cuffs because “they have orders and are doing their jobs, and the suspect is under arrest.”
Eric seemed okay all things considered; Jackson couldn’t find any bullet fragments bedside, but the doctors debated getting a CT due to his age and size and the high level of radiation, with the other option operating blindly. Just before they took him to CT, his family rushed in, revealing that he forgot his keys a lot. He promised his mom that he went to the neighbor’s house before climbing in, like she told him to, but they had not been home.
Eric said he was reaching for his phone to call her, and that’s when they shot him. His parents started to fight with the cops, who wanted to see their IDs and have a discussion, but Avery stepped in, telling the officer that the parents would speak to them when they were ready, ensuring that they could have time with their son before surgery, the first of many times Avery shut everything wrong with his awful situation down.
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“Our tax dollars hard at work,” he said of the officer standing watch, protecting them from a 12-year-old who was strapped down to a CT. When April said he was just doing his job, Avery said, “That’s what they always say. What about the cop that shot the little boy. Was he just doing his job?”
April tried to defend them, comparing it to her time in a war zone, and then acknowledging that this had happened in an upper-class neighborhood.
“Those can be the worst neighborhoods for us,” Avery said, “Just being there is suspicious. Just constantly stopped for fitting the description.” He recounted a time he was carrying speakers for a friend when cops slammed him into their car and cuffed him a block from his own house, guns drawn. Even now there is such a stigma surrounding that fact, and when April pointed out that she had never known that, he said, “It doesn’t really come up until it does.”
The CT showed that the bullet had missed Eric’s major vessels and he would only need IV antibiotics. Bailey sighed in relief, because it could have been so much worse.
“But they took his childhood today,” Avery said. “He’s never going to be the same.”
Unfortunately, that statement was truer than anybody would have thought. Eric’s carotid artery later ruptured due to the stress of the incident. The police were waiting outside for him while he talked to Eric’s parents. After having gone back and forth all day, they tried to defend themselves. “It was a high-pressure situation and the officer made a judgment call.”
Avery still wouldn’t have any of it, though, speaking the truest words of the episode: “No, there’s no judgment in that call, there was just a reaction. You see skin color, we all do, but the reaction that you give to a white kid versus a brown kid in that split second, that’s the measurable fixable difference. Bias is human. You have guns, you’re using guns, so yours is lethal. …lucky for us, bias is fixable. …You can fix it, or you can keep pretending that it doesn’t exist at all. …This kid is dead, for what? So many people that look just like him are dying…”
Just when I thought the episode couldn’t get anymore powerful than it was, Bailey and Ben coached Tuck through an interaction with police, showing him how to place his hands and making sure he knew to give his full name and declare himself unarmed.
“Be polite and respectful,” they said. “Don’t fight back. Always tell them what you’re doing before you do it. …Remember, your only goal is to get home safely. …if your white friends are saying things and mouthing off, know that you cannot. You can’t go climbing through windows, play with toy guns, throw rocks, and you cannot ever run away from them, no matter how afraid you are. …everything we’re saying to you, we’re saying because we want you to come home again. We want you to grow up to be anything and everything that you wanna be. …you are amazing. You are perfect, and we want you to stay that way.”
It’s time for more shows to take this lead. It’s time for us to normalize talking about domestic violence and deadly racism, even more than we already have. It’s time for things to change.