We pick up this mid season premiere right where we left off last year. We get to see a montage in which we see the team still working on putting out the fire at Meredith Greys’ house. Maya still being unconscious next to the treadmill and Jack doing his thing at the fire house until he finds Maya on the floor and gets her to the ER. There is a lot going on this episode, three mayor stories to follow and lots of snippets either touching on some existing storylines or creating an opening for something to follow. Most of the episode revolved on some heavier subjects, but balance was created at the firehouse with a much lighter and even funnier storyline as well.
While it is noted in the beginning of the episode that Bishop still was nowhere to be found, no one really seemed to be bothered by it much. Meanwhile Maya is being treated at the hospital and we learn that the way she has been pushing herself lately has done her more harm than good.
Jack is still at Maya’s side when she first wakes up in the hospital and he wants to be the one that tells Carina what happened and why they are there. Later Jack shares with Carina that he thought Maya was dead and that he found out she was still alive he was afraid she wasn’t going to make it. Fearing it would be like with Dean all over again and he couldn’t lose another person. You see something shift in Carina and realising something needs to done in order to protect Maya.
Maya on the other hand keeps trying to convince everyone that she is fine, and doesn’t need to be in the hospital. Due to her current condition both Dr. Altman and Carina think it is in Maya’s best interest to stay in the hospital for a couple of days until her numbers are back to normal. Maya doesn’t want to hear any of it and is only focused on herself and getting out of there, even trying to get Carina to use her authority at the hospital to get her discharged. But after her conversation with Jack carina is not giving in and tells her that if she doesn’t stay voluntarily they are putting her on a 72 hours hold. This doesn’t do well with Maya and she start to pull out everything she is connected to, Carina tells her to stop or she will put her in restraints, telling her she left her no choice. That is when Maya decides to bring up when Carina was at her lowest after her brother died and that she let her figure it out and not forcing help on her. Obviously hurt by this comment but not sticking up with it anymore Carina tells Maya that Dr. Altman is going to take it from here and she starts to leave the room. You can feel that Maya also feels that she is losing control over the situation in one last attempt she tells Carina that if she leaves they will be over, leading for Carina to respond that she will lose her either way and rather have her alive. Both women lose it at this point, both in her own way, Maya screaming for Carina to come back and Carina in tears and plugging her ears right outside the door.
Carina stuck to her words, heartbroken or not she went home and packed a suitcase to leave the apartment. Nearing the end of the episode the team was still in the dark about what happened to Maya, by the end of the shift Beckett fills them in on her situation and as it seems here, Maya has been pushing away from everyone so hard that nobody really seems to care except for Andy.
Andy and Vic are called to assist the police who have a in their words ‘suspicious’ male restrained to the ground held at gunpoint. While the police want them to sedate the man, Andy and Vic suspect he does no harm and is scared and on the verge of a panic attack. So Andy goes against the cops and demands to get him off the ground and out of the restraints before they treat him. You can really feel the friction between fire and pd in these scenes.
As Andy and Vic suspected the man didn’t need to be sedated and wouldn’t do any harm, he did suffer from high anxiety causing him to have panic attacks. While Vic calls for back-up, the cops are still asking for the man to be sedated, even though he has calmed down. When Dixon shows up with two more cops he is ordering Andy and Vic to stand down, so they can take him down to the station. They are not moving and keep standing between the man and the cops until their back-up arrives in the form of Chief Ross. She tries to talk Dixon into letting it go by profiling each and everyone of them, but he chooses the hard way to solve it.
Things start to escalate when the man tries to get away from the drama, resulting in the cops drawing their weapons. Andy, Vic and Ross immediately jumping between the guy and the cops and Andy catching him to help him calm down and avoid being shot for running away. Ross orders Andy to check his backpack, which only has groceries inside as he told Andy and Vic before. Ross tells them the cops need to stand down, because they are being filmed and will be the top news story if they don't. Then Dixon finally orders everyone to stand down, but he doesn’t have as much control as he is hoping to have since he needs to tell them more then once.
Besides these two heavier storylines, at the station they seemed to have other things on their mind. Three elderly women show up at the station, one of them handcuffed. Apparently they are on a scavenger hunt from their bridge club to win a cruise. Since the key was broken inside the lock of the handcuffs they were unable to get them off. And while being at the fire station already they thought to take advantage of it and asked them to help them with their second quest, being photographed on the lap of a shirtless man.
We see some confused faces and suspect they will be turned down, but later on we see Montgomery, Warren, Sullivan and Beckett all work together to help these women with their quests. There is some confusion when they read the list and see it all has to to with the fire station, but soon it is explained that the scavenger hunt is themed every year and this year is is firehouse. They will help with anything but are still hesitant about the shirtless photo.
After one of the women got unwell due to her diabetes she got to talk to Sullivan and told him about her history. And something in her story convinced him to take the shirtless photo with her, surprise, surprise, he didn’t have to do this alone since Montgomery joined in as well.
Lastly I wanted to touch on the side storylines in this episode, of which I think will have a fallout of some sort later this season. Chief Ross voiced her concerns towards Beckets leadership skills, not wanting to have a single report on him like that again. Becket started drinking on the job again. Montgomery has fallen for dirty politics, causing friction between him an warren and even though Warren convinced Montgomery to make Eli pull the dirt story on Dixon, in the end it did get published.
To end on a better note with Maya being on mandatory leave until further notice, her spot needs to be filled, meaning Jack is asked to come back. Which he accepted.
