Of course they had to bring up the glasses. On Thursday night, Grey’s Anatomy said goodbye to our favorite tender-hearted dork, Levi Schmitt, and if there was one thing you just knew going into this episode, it was that someone would bring up Schmitt’s tenure as a bumbling baby surgeon with the surprisingly schoolyard-cruel nickname “Glasses.” That said, I’ll admit, the feel-good montage of Big Schmitt Moments was somehow even more earnest than I expected.
We’ve known for a while that Jake Borelli, who’s played Schmitt since 2017, was headed for the door. This week marks his final episode as Schmitt heads down to San Antonio to work on a pediatric clinical trial and sample his — [Ed. note: somehow]— first taste of Tex-Mex cuisine, so of course, much of “If You Leave” leaned hard on sentimentality. But that episode title isn’t just about Schmitt; it doubles as a nod toward Mika Yasuda, who’s also leaving the show this season after a tragically short tenure. (This is a devastating moment for all of us who love our weekly dose of Midori Francis, and we appreciate your deepest sympathies at this difficult time.) Grey’s lives and dies by these moments, and although some of the schmaltzier bits from this episode might’ve made season-one Meredith cringe hard enough to self-destruct, I personally ate up every bit of it like Mika fishing an old, stale donut from the trash.
Like any good network soap, Grey’s loves to torture us with exaggerated teaser clips. I know this. You know this. We all know this! And yet, this week’s preview really did have me worried that Mika might actually leave this series in a body bag. I mean, did you see all that blood in her mouth as they wheeled her in from her car crash? If you want to immediately convince me that someone’s suffered a grievous, life-threatening injury, show me their teeth covered in cherry red corn syrup. I’m breaking a sweat just thinking about it. (Why the hell is someone as medically anxious as me addicted to a surgical drama?, you might ask? You’d have to ask my therapist; this is a question I dare not broach myself.) Mika’s little sister, Chloe, is in pretty awful shape from the accident as well; she was, after all, on her way home from her first round of chemo.
Mika’s fate dangles over us for most of the episode, as each of her friends processes her and Chloe’s injuries in their own special, broken ways. Blue, who’s got some experience with women getting grievously injured in horrible car accidents, sits by Mika’s bedside and promises to do her laundry forever if she recovers. Adams and Griffith take turns pulling away just as the other tries to lean in for emotional support. (At one point, Adams pukes in a biohazard bin, which was probably the most relatable moment of the episode for me). And Jules yells at everyone as though all of this is only happening to her — an understandable response, given that no one knows her and Mika are a “thing” yet.
Mika and Chloe’s injuries are both pretty horrible. Chloe is at risk of losing her leg, and Mika’s liver is damaged so badly that Bailey has to stop all of the surgeons in the OR from fighting and run over to her treadmill desk to come up with a brilliant, cutting-edge, life-saving idea. Basically, they remove Mika’s still-healthy spleen and repurpose its vessels to help the small, still-healthy part of her liver recover. Cool! Let’s just hope it works.
There’s something very perfect about the fact that while all of this is happening, Schmitt is just… wandering the hospital thinking about how he’s gonna miss his boyfriend while they try out long distance. Hot Hospital Chaplain James might have ice cream hair, but despite this questionable grooming choice, he’s a total cutie who loves Star Wars and Trek as much as Schmitt. More importantly, he somehow makes quoting Bible verses in bed seem kinda kinky. It’s very understandable that Schmitt would be worried about losing all of this bliss, but man is it funny to cut between his relationship malaise and the actually perilous drama happening just a few wings away. That’s Schmitt for you, though — he’s just a sweet, sweet boy who skips through life with an open, completely oblivious heart (and, sometimes, hilariously absurd timing).
Anyway. Let’s return to the actually traumatic story at hand. The stress of this horrible mess finally forces Jules to tell Griffith that she and Mika have been making out all over the hospital, which is a very thin but undeniable silver lining. Unfortunately, things go from dire to actually tragic when Chloe, who’d been recovering from surgery, suddenly spikes her potassium levels and starts coding. After 40 minutes of CPR, it’s Adams — who promised Mika he’d take care of Chloe in surgery — who’s forced to call Chloe’s time of death. This feels like a source of anguish that’ll resurface later. When Mika wakes up, it’s Bailey who’s there to hold her hand, and who’s forced to tell her that Chloe is gone. Even after 21 seasons, the sight of Chandra Wilson holding Midori’s hand and cradling her face in her palm as she cried still jerked the tears right from my eyes. That’s what TV legacies are all about!
But Grey’s isn’t just about these wonderfully awful moments of sorrow. That’s just one half of the formula. Just like every dark and twisty Meredith needs a well-intentioned, puppyish O’Malley, this show loves to pair soul-disintegrating tragedies with injections of pure, unadulterated, nearly embarrassing sincerity. Which brings us right back to Schmitt, who gets a full-on legacy montage on his way out — but of course, not before Jo reminds him of the time he accidentally dropped his glasses into a patient’s abdomen. The best exchange of the episode comes later, when she hits him with the line, “Getting drunk and sleeping with you is the best mistake I ever made. Will you be my babies’ godfather?” His response took the words right out of my mouth: “Are those two things supposed to be related?”
Really, though, the awkward non-sequitur is just set-up for the episode’s thesis statement: “The world is a hardened place full of hardened people,” Jo tells Schmitt, “but you walk around with his giant open heart.” So should we all, am I right? This is why Hot Chaplain James decided to say “fuck it” (or maybe “frick it”? Can Hot Chaplains™ curse?) and move to San Antonio based on nothing but a few months of dating and a prayer. If there’s one thing life at Grey Sloan teaches us over and over, it’s that life is far too short and unpredictable to waste on being scared.
The OR Board
• I swear to God, I’m doing my best — my very best — to not let my resentment of one Dr. Owen Hunt overtake these recaps, but now that we’ve made it safely to the postscript, may I just say: I AM SO SICK OF THIS MAN!!! How the hell does he get from Teddy immediately telling him about an unwanted kiss from a colleague, to accusing her of “letting” them do so? Where does he get off? Do they bottle this kind of audacity and sell it in stores, or is that delulu something you’ve gotta be born with? Good on him for realizing when a colleague’s life was on the line that his perspective might’ve been a little shot, I guess, but this nonsense still earned my biggest eyeroll of the week.
• I’d say that this new crop of interns has given Grey’s a little of its old mojo back, but this week, I also realized how deeply I’ve been traumatized by this show’s early seasons and their bleak twists. Like, when all the interns went to do CPR on Chloe, did anyone else immediately assume that Mika would somehow die while they were all distracted? I could have sworn that I saw the foreshadowing! The horrors that befell team MAGIC will forever haunt me.
• What do we think the exit plan is for Mika now? Will this terrible loss make it impossible for her to set foot in Grey Sloan again? Will she somehow also land a job in San Antonio? Whatever happens, I’m rooting for her and Jules until the end of time.
