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Most surgeons grew up being freaks. While other kids played outside, we holed up in our rooms memorizing the periodic table, huddling for hours over our junior microscopes, dissecting our first frogs. Imagine how surprised and relieved we were when we grew up and found out there were others out there just as freaky as we were. Same microscopes, same dead frogs, same inexplicable urge to take human beings apart. Nobody chooses to be a freak. Most people don't even realize they're a freak until it's way too late to change it. But no matter how much of a freak you end up being chances are, there's still someone out there for you. Unless, of course, they've already moved on, because when it comes to love even freaks can't wait forever.

Superfreak is the third episode of the seventh season and the 129th overall episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Short Summary[]

When Derek receives an unexpected and unwelcome visit from his estranged sister, Amelia, issues between the siblings -- both past and present -- come to the surface; the Chief tries to help Alex when he notices that he's afraid to use the elevators after his near-fatal shooting; and Meredith and Derek continue their efforts to ease Cristina back into surgery after her post-traumatic stress.

Full Summary[]

In the middle of the night, Cristina enters Meredith and Derek's bedroom. Owen's at the hospital and she didn't want to be alone. Meredith tells her to come lie down in the bed.

In the morning, Derek's surprised to find Cristina in his bed, but turns around to continue sleeping.

Andrew has gathered the attendings and tells them all the surgeons have been cleared. Derek asks about Cristina. Richard says they have decided to assign her to something low-stress, like research and administration. Derek requests they put her on his service, because she'll leave if administration's all they let her do. They start debating, but Derek says he goes if Cristina goes.

Meredith's watching the discussion and tells Cristina they won't kick her out of the program for being traumatized, but Cristina doesn't care what they do. Derek leaves the conference room and tells Cristina she's with him today, so Meredith will have to find another service.

Amelia Shepherd walks up to the nurses station and asks for directions to Derek Shepherd's office. The nurse doesn't respond and Mark comes over, explaining last time someone asked for directions, that person shot Derek. Amelia hugs him and compliments his looks. Amelia knows she's hot, too. Amelia says she's here since Derek won't return her calls. She offered him a peace offer. She points towards a man with a brain tumor.

In a lounge, Callie and Arizona are discussing how they should ask Cristina to move out. They ask Teddy to casually ask Owen how the apartment hunt's going, but they notice Teddy's emotional. Andrew is leaving and she got attached instead of being cool. Arizona hugs her and says telling Owen to get Cristina out of the apartment will make her feel better.

Cristina tries to convince Derek to keep Meredith on his service. They walk into Amelia, who says he should've answered his phone, and Mark, who asks why he didn't call his sister. Derek introduces Meredith and Cristina to Amelia, who's also a neurosurgeon. Amelia introduces Derek to Todd, who has a pituitary tumor. Derek figures Amelia had a mile-high hook-up with Todd. Amelia says that doesn't change the fact that he's sick. Derek is not interested and says Cristina will find him a surgeon. He tells Meredith to spend some time with Amelia and leaves.

Richard and Alex are taking their patient to the OR, but Alex backs away from the elevator, claiming he has to get lab results for Hunt. Meredith wants to take his place, but Richard tells her to go help April in the pit. April comes running over and Meredith says she'll help her today. April brings up Cristina, but Meredith doesn't want to talk about it.

In the ambulance bay, Bailey, Lexie, and Jackson find Tess trying to convince Jerry to get out of the car. Jerry shows Bailey something and asks if they can help him with these. She says yes, but he'll need to come out of the car. As Jerry gets out of the car, a shocked Lexie lets out a little scream. Jerry is covered with warts, which have grown considerably large on his hands.

Lexie apologizes to Bailey, who orders her to stay with Jerry all day. She then asks her to get Mark.

April and Meredith have a patient with decreased breath sounds and some chest pain. Meredith quietly tells April she wasn't trying to hurt April's feelings earlier. Gretchen is convinced it's cancer, or just anxiety about the upcoming wedding. Since they're getting X-rays, April asks if she could be pregnant. Gretchen is sure she isn't, because she and Danny have agreed to wait until after the wedding. She's a virgin. April seems to really understand her.

Lexie asks Mark for a consult. He says he'll be right over. He watches her walk away, but Callie tells him to stop staring at her. Her last words to him were "leave me alone", so he should let her go. He'll try to look away.

Amelia asks Derek if it hurt to get shot. Derek says he feels pain now because she won't stop talking. Todd's scans come up, but Cristina says she doesn't know what the right approach is. Amelia then says transnasally. Since there's some compression, she'd like to get in sooner rather than later. Derek tells Cristina to book an OR. She leaves. Amelia criticizes Cristina, but Derek doesn't want to hear it.

Mark tells Jerry that an immune deficiency has allowed the warts, caused by HPV, to grow so much. Tess says they went to a dermatologist earlier, but the warts kept growing back. Jerry thinks they should just go home. Mark says they need to do surgery, or he'll become completely disabled. Each wart has its own blood supply, so they need to cut and stitch each one separately. Mark says they'll do skin grafts to help with his appearance and function. It's not a cure, but with regular surgery, they can keep them under control. Jerry thinks that's no help, but Tess wants to go once in a while to meet some people. No more discussion. Jerry's having the surgery, or she's going to leave him, and he has nobody else.

Meredith fills out Amelia's name on the OR board. Derek comes over and wipes her name from the surgery, not wanting her to do the same thing that she did to his Mustang. She crashed it when she was high on pills, stole his prescription pad to support her addiction, and overdosed. She was dead for three minutes and he revived her. She put their mother through all that after losing their father, so he does not trust her in his OR.

Cristina paged Owen to an on-call room, needing to get away from Derek for a while. They lie down on a bed. She asks if he would love her if she weren't a surgeon. He would, but he doesn't know if she'd love herself. She doesn't know. She tells him she can't sleep when he's not there. He says he'll be there, then.

Alex runs past Richard in the stairwell.

Callie asks Meredith to ask Cristina to find her own place, as her best friend. Meredith lists everything Cristina is going through, and on top of that, Callie wants to put her out of her house? Arizona comes over and Callie says they're monsters.

While doing a bronchoscopy on Gretchen, Meredith tells Teddy she's a virgin. April says maybe she was waiting for someone to get her. It's sweet and idealistic. Teddy says you don't get attached that way. They find a mess, but it's not a tumor. They take it out and try to see what the object is.

"A condom?" Alex asks as he walks down the hall with the other residents. They peek through the room of Jerry's door and see Lexie struggling. Meredith says it's a rare case. Alex says about as rare as 27-year-old virgins. April says it's not impossible. 

Owen and Derek talk about Cristina sleeping in Derek's bed. Meredith and Cristina are like Elliot and E.T., who also had this weird connection. Meanwhile, Derek and Owen are these government guys trying to steer them in the right direction, but in the end, they just don't understand them. Derek says he's okay with that, because he has his hobbies. He assures Owen he's looking out for Cristina.

The residents tell each other about their first times. They notice April's acting weird and don't buy her story about the beach at sunset. They figure out she's a virgin. Jackson, Alex, and Cristina mock her, but Meredith stands up for her.

Amelia joins Derek in the scrub room. She says he can pretend like they're not related, but they are, and something happened to him. It's also about her. Her father got shot before her eyes and Derek won't talk to her about it, or his own shooting. Derek says he has a surgery to get to. Amelia insists on staying as Cristina's not exactly in the game. Derek allows her to stay.

In surgery, the surgeons are removing big chunks of horn from Jerry's hands. Lexie has to dispose of the removed chunks.

April asks Danny to wait outside, but Gretchen says he can stay. April and Meredith then tell Gretchen the blockage in her lung was a condom. They removed it, so she should be feeling better. Danny is very upset that she's been having sex with someone else and storms out.

Derek is working to remove the tumor, and Cristina is not paying attention. She's not interested at all. There's a bleeding, so Derek has to back out. Derek asks Cristina to do some nasal packing, but she can't do it. Amelia shoves her aside and starts to help Derek. Derek says they're going to have to open up the patient.

As Richard gets off the elevator, Alex comes out of the stairwell. He explains the patient wasn't critical. He's been doing that all day. Richard says he smells, so he won't get into Richard's OR. Richard tells him to go shower.

Mark has trouble finding skin that he can use for a skin graft, so it means Jerry will have a lot of open wounds. Lexie wants to go prepare the wife for the worst, but Bailey orders her to stay.

Danny returns to Gretchen's room and asks for his mother's engagement ring back. April says Gretchen didn't cheat on him. At a bachelorette party, there was a tupperware segment and Gretchen tried to put a condom on a banana with her mouth, and then accidentally inhaled it. Gretchen says she choked and she thought she swallowed it. She wanted Danny to have a good time on their wedding night. Danny laughs and says he'll have a great time no matter what, as he loves her.

Amelia has removed the tumor. Cristina leaves, as they're done. Amelia wonders how she got past her internship, as she seems like a dud. Derek says Cristina saved his life, so he owes her everything. He throws Amelia out of the OR.

The horn pile weighs 12 pounds now. Jackson jokes he's going to put it on Ebay. He and Lexie laugh. Bailey speeches about needing to be able to handle anything the human body throws at you. She cuts off another piece and a spider comes crawling out. Bailey jumps up and is all scared. She needs someone to kill it. Lexie does so with her foot and Bailey finds her calm back.

Derek sits down with Cristina and says he wouldn't have picked her to be a part of his personal life, and he knows she feels the same. However, they are family now, so that means he worries about her. He says she's flaming out and that's not okay. Very few residents have her potential. She says she can barely remember the whole procedure she did on him. The pieces she does remember come back at very inconvenient times, so end of story.

Richard approaches Alex as he comes down the staircase in the main lobby. Richard says he almost died in a pool of his own blood in the elevator, so that's why he's avoiding it. However, some day, he'll have a critical patient and he won't be able to avoid the elevator. Richard says they're going to take the elevator together, until he's not scared anymore.

Mark tells Tess that they need to perform the surgery in stages. They may try to stretch the skin, as there's not enough skin now to cut from. The skin grafts is for later, maybe 6 months to a year. In the meantime, Jerry will still look like a freak. He'll look better than he did before the surgery, but there will be substantial scarring. Tess realizes she's not even getting a few months where Jerry will like half way normal, so he won't want to go out. Tess hasn't touched him in 4 years. He won't let her. She loves him, but she needs to live a life. She thinks love is not enough anymore.

Derek takes Cristina to the morgue to go over the procedure. He shows her his scar, and then gives her a scalpel. She then makes the same cut on the corpse as she did on Derek. Derek asks what happened next. She takes a sternal saw and starts cutting.

Derek's waiting for Amelia outside the hospital. He talks about the day their father got shot. They were in the back of his store and her father had just given her two pennies. She hid them in a crack in the floorboards as she was saving up to buy a town. Then two guys came in and they demanded the watch that their mother gave him. He wouldn't give it up, so they shot him. Amelia then tried to get to him, but Derek held her so tight she couldn't move. He put one of his hands over her mouth so she'd be silent. He thinks he's always wanted her to stay little, and quiet, and safe, but Amelia is not any of those things, and that scares the crap out of him. He can't call her up and tell her she's been shot. He can't tell her about his pain, as he doesn't want her to know that pain exists. Amelia puts her head on his shoulder.

Teddy, Bailey, Callie, and Arizona are drinking in a lounge. Bailey needs it to get over the spider scare. Arizona doesn't want to live in a frat house forever. Callie says their house is an off-campus apartment where people go to buy pot. Bailey asks Teddy if she told Andrew goodbye. Teddy says she's been avoiding him so she wouldn't start to cry. Andrew comes in, and women leave Teddy alone. Andrew asks if they're going to have dinner. Teddy maybe wants to keep it simple with a kiss on the cheek. She confesses she likes him more than she wanted to, and she knew what this was, so she doesn't know what her problems. He says they either don't fit together, or she falls for men who aren't available. She starts crying and he puts his arm around her. He tells her she deserves more.

Alex and Richard are still riding the elevator.

Mark watches Tess kiss her husband goodbye.

At the bar, the residents are still mocking April for being a virgin. Lexie joins them and tells them about Bailey's spider scare. Alex tells her April is still a virgin. April tells them to stop. She is a virgin, but it's not something she talks about. She points out they all have stuff they don't talk about: Alex is afraid of the elevator, Jackson has nightmares every night, Meredith is afraid Cristina will never be the same again, and Lexie just has to accept that Mark is still in love with her. He doesn't think she's a psycho, he just can't keep his eyes off the woman he loves. April says she's a virgin because she wanted her first time to be special, then she waited too long, and she's also sure guys find her annoying. Meredith says she likes April more and more.

Owen comes home and sits down with Cristina on the couch. She thinks she could be happy being a plumber. Callie and Arizona then burst in, kissing and losing clothes all over the place. They enter their bedroom and giggle. Cristina says they have to get their own place.

Lexie's on her way to Mark's apartment, only to catch him kissing Amelia in the hallway. She doesn't have to be at the airport for another couple of hours. They enter his apartment as Lexie looks on.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Stars[]

Co-Starring[]

Medical Notes[]

Todd[]

  • Diagnosis:
    • Pituitary tumor
  • Treatment:
    • Surgery

While on the plane to Seattle, Amelia noticed that Todd, another passenger, had spongy hands while they were hooking up. She brought Todd to Derek to operate on what she was sure was a pituitary tumor. When scans revealed the tumor, he was taken into surgery. In surgery, there was unexpected bleeding and they had to open up a craniotomy. The surgery was finished successfully.

Jerry Adams[]

  • Diagnosis:
    • Human papillomavirus
    • Immune deficiency
  • Treatment:
    • Wart removal
    • Skin grafts

Jerry's wife brought him in as he had developed warts covering his face and hands due to HPV combined with immune deficiency. He had gone to a dermatologist four years prior, when the warts were smaller. The dermatologist removed some of the warts, but they grew back. He operated again and they grew back again. Mark planned to remove the warts and use skin grafts to bridge the gaps in the skin. Jerry didn't want the surgery, but his wife insisted. In surgery, while Mark was grafting what he believed was normal skin, it immediately started to grow warts, meaning that Jerry wouldn't be able to get his skin grafts. They removed more than 12 pounds of warts from Jerry. After the surgery, Mark explained to Jerry's wife that they could try stretching the healthy skin they did have, but it would take a long time.

Gretchen[]

  • Diagnosis:
    • Bronchial obstruction
  • Treatment:

Gretchen, 27, came in with trouble breathing. She was concerned that it was cancer. A bronchoscope pulled out a mass from her lung which was identified as a condom, which Gretchen had aspirated while learning to put a condom on with her mouth. She assumed she had swallowed it.

Music[]

Song Performer Scene
"Worried About" Lissie
  • Cristina climbs into bed with Meredith and Derek in the middle of the night.
  • She couldn't sleep because Owen was at the hospital.
  • Derek wakes up and is confused.
"Sheep in Wolves' Clothing" Ash Koley
  • Teddy, April, and Meredith discuss their patient while they operate.
  • They pull the object out of her lung.
  • The doctors discuss the condom that was found in her lung.
  • They all peek in on Lexie working on the warts.
  • Owen and Derek discuss Meredith and Cristina. They agree that they just don't understand.
  • The residents discuss the first time they each had sex. They realize April's a virgin.
"Goodbye" (Acoustic) Greg Laswell
  • Derek tells Cristina it's not okay for her to give up on surgery.
  • She tells him she barely remembers his surgery.
  • Richard figures out that Alex is afraid of the elevator, so he says they're going to ride up and down together until he's not scared anymore.
  • Mark explains to Jerry's wife that it'll be a long time before they can finish the work on Jerry.
  • She says she needs to live her life and love might not be enough anymore.
  • Derek takes Cristina to see a cadaver.
"Belong" Cary Brothers
  • Andrew tells Teddy she deserves more.
  • Richard and Alex continue to ride the elevator.
  • Tess kisses Jerry on the cheek and leaves him.
  • The residents discuss April's virginity. She calls them out on it.
  • Owen comes home to Cristina, who says she thinks she could be happy being a plumber.
  • Arizona and Callie burst into the room, making out on their way to the bedroom.
  • Owen and Cristina realize they need to get their own place.
  • Lexie goes to Mark's, but sees him making out with Amelia.

Notes and Trivia[]

  • This episode's title originated from the song Super freak, originally sung by Rick James.
  • This episode scored 12.75 million viewers.[1]
  • Amelia comes to Seattle to reconcile with Derek as directed by Addison in the Private Practice episode Take Two. This marks her first appearance under Grey's Anatomy credits.
  • In the final scene with Callie and Arizona as they enter the apartment kissing, a body double was used in place of Jessica Capshaw, who was heavily pregnant at the time.[source?]
  • Goof: When Meredith writes Amelia's name on the OR board, she incorrectly spells her surname as "Sheperd"[source?]

Gallery[]

Episode Stills[]

Quotes[]

April: I'm a virgin. Yes. So what? It's not something I talk about, okay? We all have things we don't talk about. Alex, you've been afraid of the elevator for, like, a month, but I never said anything because it's none of my business. And, Jackson, you wake up every night screaming because you have nightmares. And, Meredith, you don't talk about Cristina because you're afraid she's never gonna be the same Cristina again. And, Lexie... for God sake, Mark never thought you were a psycho. He loves you. That's why he stares at you, because he can't keep his eyes off the woman he loves. Of course, he's never gonna say anything 'cause he doesn't feel like he can. Look, we all have stuff we don't talk about. I am a 28-year-old virgin, mainly because I wanted my first time to be special, and then I waited too long, and partially because I'm pretty sure guys find me annoying. I'm a virgin. That doesn't make it drinks conversation. We all have stuff we don't talk about.
Meredith: Oh, April. I'm liking you more and more.

Derek: Cristina Yang saved my life. She saved my life. I owe her everything.

Derek: We were in the back of the store. Dad had given you two pennies. And you always hid them behind the counter in this big crack in the floorboards. You said you're saving them so you could buy a town. And then the two guys came in, we could hear them talking but we weren't paying attention until dad yelled. And you looked up. They had already pulled the gun, and they had already taken the money… And now they wanted the watch that mom gave him. He wouldn't give it up. It was a gunshot, you lunched forward…
Amelia: I remember, I was trying to get to him but... I couldn't move.
Derek: Because I was holding you so tight that you couldn't budge. Put one hand over your mouth so you wouldn't scream and wrapped the other one around you and just held on for your life. Prayed to God that you would be quiet and wouldn't say anything. You were so little. I think that's what I've always wanted all this year, you just to stay… little and quiet and safe. But you're not any of those things. You're loud and fearless and that scared the crap out of me. How am I supposed to call you and tell you that I've been shot? I can't tell you about my pain. I don't want you to know that pain exists.
(He hugs her.)

Miranda: Give me back my bottle.
Callie: Teddy needs it, she's pathetic.

Derek: You're flaming out. And as someone who cares about you, it's not okay. I've seen a lot of residents come and go and very very few with your potential. It's not okay.
Cristina: I can barely remember it. Your whole procedure. I took a bullet out of your chest and all I can remember is bits and pieces. Bits and pieces that come back at very inconvenient times, so end of story.

Cristina: Would you love me if I wasn't a surgeon?
Owen: I would love you if you were a plumber, but would you love you if you weren't a surgeon?
Cristina: I don't know, maybe?

Teddy: I'm not G.I. Jane, I'm Attachment Barbie!


See Also[]

A complete overview of this episode's crew can be found here.

The Grey Matter blog post on this episode can be found here.

References[]

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