The wind is blowing, and this season is finally moving. From extremely gruesome sound effects to emotional devastation, “Shelter from the Storm” had it all. The elevator crunching Will Sasso’s characters's legs will haunt me for the rest of my days.
Despite the mutilation by machinery, the episode grounded itself more in interpersonal tension than traumatic medical emergencies. The three separate stalled elevators saw so much action. Amelia’s joyful announcement she wants to officially foster Betty slowly evaporated as she noticed Teddy and Owen’s awkwardness. And the pregnancy news takes a second to sink in. Caterina Scorsone delivers the realization with the perfect squeak of dismay and confusion. There’s barely time for her to breathe before Teddy and Owen’s patient starts to die. They decide to operate in the elevator, giving us a brilliant morbidly funny contrast of Amelia trying to process her emotions as Owen flings handfuls of blood onto the ground. Teddy immediately starts talking about how she’s not going to make Owen choose. “You can stay with Amelia,” she declares. “Who is right here!” Even as Amelia chimes in, she’s portrayed as the third wheel in this situation. And not just because of how in sync Teddy and Owen are on the surgery. Every new detail Teddy offers up unavoidably twists the knife a little deeper.
It genuinely hurts to watch this happening, even as it’s also sweet to watch Owen and Teddy exchanging smiles when talking about their baby. Once they are free from the elevator, Amelia gently and maturely and tearfully tells Owen he shouldn’t pretend that being with Teddy isn’t an option. She’s going to give him space to make that decision. The next scene is Amelia with Betty, as the latter confesses that Webber caught her looking for drugs. This is a really lovely piece of work from Scorsone, because Amelias’s visibly holding in pain but choosing to focus on being in the moment with Betty. Being the mom that Betty needs her to be.
Helm and Bailey are trapped with Phoebe’s body in another elevator, which they needed to get to surgery to start the organ transplant process for CeCe. Bailey is calmly staring at the elevator buttons, when Helm starts to panic. In spite of Bailey’s orders for her to chill out, Helm begins to paint a graphic picture of their deaths should the elevator plunge. Her fear rubs off on Bailey. Seeing that Bailey is near to hyperventilating brings Helm back from the brink. She suggests they just breathe together and counts it out. The rapport that Chandra Wilson and Jaicy Elliott had here did marvels. The timing back and forth as one escalated and the other reassured maximized the scariness of their situation. Freed from the elevator, Bailey couldn’t calm down, snapping at Alex not once but twice when he appeared. She ordered him to take over the transplant surgery. He later came to confront her over this, but a shaken Bailey confessed that it was because she was worried about what might happen.
"I needed to be somewhere I couldn't do any harm." A text reply from Ben that he was okay broke her down, mandating a hug from Alex. (Insert pause to frown about Station 19’s return being delayed).
The mood was very different in Meredith and DeLuca’s elevator. Her first reaction was to press every single elevator button. He briefly considered climbing through the trap door at the top of the elevator, until Meredith forbid him from any action hero shenanigans. Everyone knows these two have spaghetti-and-meatballs levels of chemistry, but could they make a deeper connection? This scene sells that there is a strong possibility for something real between them, even if it goes overboard. After some light teasing, the conversation gets more serious when Meredith asks DeLuca about his strained relationship with his father. DeLuca acknowledges it’s something he doesn’t like to talk about but wishes he could. When Meredith gives him space to share from the heart, DeLuca spills the beans about his father’s wrongdoing. He speaks in Italian though (swoon) before switching back to English to talk about how he’s conflicted because of the good memories he has of his father. A subject Meredith can certainly relate to, although she doesn’t choose to share her own perspective. In fact, the moment gets a little warm for her liking, so the next thing is Meredith having DeLuca lift her up to the elevator hatch. (Which naturally necessitates her sliding back down into his arms). This is the ideal moment for DeLuca to ask her why they can’t be a thing. Followed by a rather passionate declaration spoken in Italian. Meredith lets him know she too speaks Italian, which means she knows his father’s dark secret but more importantly understood every steamy word he just said. The two come this close to following the invisible spaghetti noodle all the way to the middle. But the elevator door opens. Later, DeLuca asks her out on a date, but Link walks up and Meredith chooses to just go home. I felt a few kinds of frustration throughout these interactions, which I think was the response this episode was intending to provoke.
This was quite the episode for couples. Alex caught Levi and Nico in the ambulance. Their tousled hair and mortification was a dead giveaway. Nico worried about the impression he had just made on the Chief, and Levi had the perfect understated response.
"Please. I've been making impressions for months. And they’ve all been this bad or worse." Alex later pulls them both aside to scold them harshly. It was one of the funniest moments of the season so far. He presented a lengthy list of alternate rendezvous spots.
"Those rooms have locks!"
Teddy and Owen also shared a tender moment. He came to her after the surgery and told her he wants to be involved with the pregnancy and with raising their baby. And they hugged. And it felt right. She cried softly after he walked away. (There is no non-bittersweet resolution to this love triangle, which I appreciate, because these scenarios don’t usually have balanced emotional stakes.)
CeCe died on the operating table. Meredith stitched up the body and had one last conversation with the kindhearted matchmaker. She fessed to almost kissing DeLuca, saying she’s not sure she’ll ever find love again but she’s happier than she’s been in a long time. That scene highlighted the notes of grief and hope which frequented this episode.
So many good things and rough things happened. This was the best episode of the season so far, and it bodes well for what lies ahead.
Other Notes:
Our readers voted for Jaggie in one of our Best and Worst Categories for 2018. However, CeCe’s last spoken words were in favor of Jaggie, which made me want to scream, so there is nothing you or I can do about this ship. It’s here to stay. On another note, Kelly McCreary was especially good in this episode, particularly in the moments following Maggie telling Jackson about his mom.
Also, CeCe's death might have been underwhelming, but Helm crying afterwards was heartbreaking.
