Grey's Anatomy: Season 3
Episode 2

Synopsis:

Cristina meets Burke's parents; the interns campaign for Izzie's reinstatement; Addison takes a break from her hospital duties; a surgical patient lives what may be her last day to the fullest.

(From ABC)
Cristina meets Burke's parents -- and in the most awkward of circumstances -- the interns campaign for Izzie's reinstatement to the surgical intern program, Addison takes a break from her hospital duties, and a surgical patient lives what may be her last day to the fullest.

Poor Derek Shepherd. Even when he tries to control his love life, someone else always holds the cards.

"Whatever you decide, I'm ending it with Addison today," he told Meredith at the start of the season's second episode. He kept that promise, going to Addison's hotel room and solemnly uttering the words "our marriage is over." But moments later, Mark — Derek's former best friend and the guy Addison cheated with — emerged from Addison's bathroom fresh from the shower. Clearly, Addison had moved on hours before Derek ended things.

It went only slightly better for Derek with Meredith, who summoned him (along with the increasingly appealing Finn) to Joe's bar. She told the men she wants to date both of them before choosing one. Reluctantly, they agreed. Not quite the resolution viewers might crave, but it's a clever move. The writers can now prolong the thrill of the chase while offering the Meredith/Derek love scenes fans clamor for.

Cristina's romance has also hit a speed bump. Burke's parents are visiting, and his imperious mother (Diahann Carroll) was blunt: "You're selfish and my son is giving and the combination is, well, it's not gonna last." Rather than fight, Cristina made an effort to soften.

Callie is doing the same: She took the rap for Meredith, whose missing black panties surfaced on a bulletin board at the hospital, then let George get a bit jealous before telling him the panties weren't hers. By the end of the episode, she'd moved in with him, at least temporarily. Callie is fast becoming a full-fledged member of the interns' makeshift family.

Izzie, too, made progress: After obsessively baking muffins all episode, she surfaced from her mourning long enough to hear Bailey, who suggested she return to the hospital and ask for her job back. "I went soft and I'm partly to blame for what happened," said Bailey, who'd heard similar words earlier in the episode from the father of a teenage patient who barely survived being impaled on a tree.

Two other patients also livened up the episode: One, a woman with cancer, found the courage to beat her disease after a romantic romp with Alex in the bathroom at Joe's bar. The other was a man named Benjamin O'Leary whose brain tumor caused him to say everything he was thinking, much of it deliciously blunt. "You're pretty. But you look kind of tired and I think maybe you should change your hair conditioner," he told Meredith. Benjamin joins Denny Duquette in the pantheon of fabulous patient characters who've died on "Grey's Anatomy."

Cristina surprises Burke in his hospital bed by stripping down to her lacy red underwear just as his parents arrive for a visit.

Cristina agrees to meet the mother in the cafeteria for a chat, but first begs Burke to get her out of it. Mrs. Burke says she assumes that Cristina intends to follow a less time consuming career path if she expects to marry her son. While Burke is getting coffee, Mrs. Burke tells Cristina she's selfish for getting him out of bed and that's why their relationship won't last long. Stung by the criticism, Cristina stops by that night on her way home, and asks them both if they need anything.

When Miranda sees Meredith's panties pinned to the lost and found board, she's furious and sure they belong to either Meredith or Cristina. Callie comes to their rescue by pretending they are hers, which causes George to become insanely jealous. Meredith offers to tell George the truth, but Callie says she loves him being jealous.

Addison tells Richard who's been sleeping in his office since Adele's ultimatum that she needs the day off to go drinking, because she knows her marriage is over.

After hours, Richard finds Callie rocking out in the basement in just her underwear. He tells her he knows why she lives here, to get all the best cases, but that she has to leave. And that means he'll have to stop living at the hospital too.

George arrives with flowers, finally telling her he's jealous, and finds her in her underwear, sitting on the bed with Richard. She runs after George to explain and ends moving in with him.

A middle aged woman with aggressive lung cancer who's never smoked a day in her life decides against surgery in favor of going out and "living life." She ends up at Joe's, where she flirts with Alex, and asks him to join her in the bathroom to help a possibly dying woman live a little. She emerges with a smile on her face and goes right back to the hospital, ready for her surgery now.

A teenage boy is brought to Seattle Grace with a tree trunk piercing his body from a luge accident. His frantic father is blocking the stretcher so Alex shoves him out of the way and into a wall. Miranda snaps at him for that and for helping Izzie; he tells her she's confusing him with Izzie.

The father of the boy tells Miranda that the accident is his fault for being too soft after his divorce. Miranda has a revelation and goes to tell Izzie that part of Denny's death is her fault, and that she wasn't around when Izzie needed her. And then she tells her she should come back to the hospital.

Derek decides that today is the day he's going to end it with Addison, but he can't find her. Richard tells him that he knows something about affairs himself, and to give Addison some time. Derek tells him he can't wait, and that "Meredith is not an affair."

Another surgical patient, Benjamin, says everything that pops into his head because of a tumor that's pressing on his frontal lobe. He tells Cristina that she always seems annoyed and he asks Derek if he's sleeping with Meredith.

Meredith, taking a cue from Benjamin, is determined to follow her gut and pick Derek. Until she goes home to check on Izzie and finds Finn instead. He came with lunch for Izzie, because he says bringing food was the only thing that helped when his wife died. She's so impressed that she thinks maybe she should choose him instead.

At Joe's, she tells Cristina that she's going to flip a coin to decide between them and be spontaneous like Benjamin. Cristina tells her that Benjamin isn't spontaneous, he's mentally ill, and that he just died on the operating table.

Finn and Derek both show up and Izzie tells them she's not choosing: she wants to date them both, if they're up for it. Neither man follows her out of the bar.

Derek finds Addison at a hotel room, in a robe, drinking champagne. He apologizes for sleeping with Meredith at the prom, but adds, "Our marriage is over," and that he's very sad about it. And then the bathroom door opens and Mark steps out in just a towel. "I feel much better now," says Derek, finishing off the champagne.