Fans of "Grey's Anatomy" should be careful what they wish for.
The CTV show's writers have been asked repeatedly by die-hard "Grey's" watchers whether two beloved characters -- dashing heart patient Denny Duquette and fearless bomb squad captain Dylan Young -- might somehow reappear, despite having been killed off last season.
(Spoiler alert: Stop reading now if you've saved the episode for later viewing.)
This week, both men appeared in a brief scene with Meredith Grey. But since Denny and Dylan are dead, that makes Meredith ... Oh, come on. Could the show's central character really be gone for good?
Meredith lingered beneath Seattle's icy waters for a ridiculously long time on last night's episode. But she was finally plucked from the water by Derek and rushed back to Seattle Grace, where the hospital's finest worked on her.
Things looked grim, but Meredith's encounter with Denny and Dylan was likely a near-death experience. (Or perhaps she'll now narrate the show from beyond the grave, like Mary Alice Young of "Desperate Housewives.")
As the episode ended, the senior staff rallied around a devastated Derek -- even Mark Sloan reached out to him -- and the interns huddled together.
Izzie, the group's self-appointed den mother, gave a somewhat overwrought speech about survival and bluntly told George that his marriage to Callie was a mistake. He didn't appear to disagree.
Earlier in the hour, at the site of the fiery ferryboat crash, Izzie drilled holes in a patient's head while the chief talked her through the procedure by phone. She handled this gruesome task so well, the chief ended her probation.
Meanwhile, George managed to find the missing son of Bailey's surgical patient (the boy was on Callie's operating table) and Cristina tended to minor injuries.
Sandra Oh, who plays Cristina, was underused in this hour. Each of her brief scenes involved whining about Meredith not being around to hear about her engagement, which further alienated Burke.
In some of the episode's most moving scenes, frantic families converged on Alex, begging him for information. With no updated list of survivors to share, he improvised by grabbing a camera to photograph the injured and dead.
It worked: Some family members were reunited, while others digested the news that their loved ones didn't survive. This flood of emotion moved Alex almost to tears ( Justin Chambers was wonderful as the normally stoic Alex) and inspired him to take a small step closer to Addison.
