Cristina saved the last dance for Meredith. We expected anything else?
Sandra Oh’s Cristina Yang finished her long goodbye Thursday night on “Grey’s Anatomy,” moving to Switzerland to run cardiothorassic surgery at her very own hospital.
This came as no surprise, since that part of the deal was all laid out two weeks ago during Yang’s surprise reunion with Dr. Preston Burke. He gave her the hospital gig as a sort of belated “Sorry, hon” for standing her up at the altar back in Season 3.
So the last two weeks were about Yang coming back to Seattle to wrap things up, a few details of which she found difficult.
Specifically, she told Meredith that “it feels unfinished. . . . You and I aren’t finished.”
It all sounded pretty cosmic, or at least that kind of endearing space-cadet cosmic into which Yang would sometimes lapse.
But as the minutes ticked down on the 10th season finale and Yang’s parting episode, it turned out nothing was unfinished that couldn’t be wrapped by Cristina and Meredith doing a high-energy, slow-motion dance to the 2004 Sara and Tegan hit “Where Does the Good Go,” which is your basic teen heartbreak lament set to a catchy beat.
To be completely accurate here, Meredith and Cristina really got to do two goodbye scenes.
The first one, a few moments before the second, involved Meredith grabbing Yang’s suitcase, barking at her to let Pierce do the heart transplant and physically forcing her into a taxi that would take her to the airport for her plane to Zurich.
As the taxi pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared into a right turn, we saw Yang looking back at Meredith, who was working hard to keep it together.
“What you do you need?” Meredith had snapped a moment earlier. “I love you or something? I love you.”
That wouldn’t have been a bad last note, but if Yang hadn’t come back she wouldn’t have had her last major impact on the cast and hospital she’s leaving.
Meredith and Derek Shepherd, a/k/a McDreamy, had been planning to move to Washington, where he’d been offered the “job of a lifetime.”
She had reluctantly agreed to go.
Then Yang, on her own way out the door, said, “Don’t let what he wants destroy what you want. He’s very dreamy, but he’s not the sun – you are.”
So when Derek came back and gave Meredith the final papers to sign on the house he had picked out in Foggy Bottom, she said no.
This left their future unclear, at least for the time between Thursday’s season finale and next fall’s season opener.
Nor was that the only cliffhanger. The usually confident and in-command Dr. Webber learned his new hire Maggie was adopted and her mother was a “Grey.” Neither of them then raised the F-word, “father,” but, well, we’ve got the summer to try to figure out where that one could be going.
Also, Webber told Bailey she would get Cristina’s spot on the hospital board, as a sort of consolation prize for Bailey’s gene project being defunded.
Bailey, when we last saw her, was eagerly making big plans while getting a foot massage.
What we saw, and she didn’t, was Alex opening a package in which Cristina had sent him her shares in the hospital and her position on the board.
Oops.
Cristina’s other major goodbye came with Owen, and no, she didn’t deliver it as they were waking up in the morning. She was behind glass in the gallery while he was starting an operation. She waved, she cried, he operated and that was that.
This being a Shonda Rhimes show, of course, there was also a major bit of ancillary melodrama.
The first half hour of the episode was enveloped in the chaos of a massive fatal explosion at a local mall.
This not only filled the hospital with mangled victims, almost all of whom were patched up by the amazingly efficient medical staff, but it temporarily scared everyone into fearing terrorists were employing chemical weapons.
These fears were fanned, of course, by an irresponsible media.
When it turned out it was just a gas line explosion, the wave of relief left almost everyone feeling spiritually fulfilled about the joy of being alive and the importance of raising children in this crazy, but redeemable world.
The explosion also induced its own brief cliffhanger, because it occurred soon after Cristina had told Owen she was going to that very same mall, and now she wasn’t answering her phone.
Cristina had also delivered a brief opening voiceover in which she talked about how nobody thinks anyone will ever get hit by a bus until they do.
Rhimes isn’t above writing out a character that dramatically, but in this case, Yang never got to the mall.
As a final note, it could be argued that the real miracle of Thursday’s farewell episode was Yang making her plane.
Before she said her first brief round of goodbyes, she told Meredith it was leaving in two hours. It was a few minutes after that when Meredith shoved her into the taxi. Then she came back, did the dance, left the advice.
Then she presumably had to call another cab and this time actually go to the airport, get to her terminal, check in and clear security. Plus you have to be there early for international flights.
After Dr. Yang develops that new heart, she should write a book on how to catch a plane.
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