Dream a Little Dream of Me, Part 1

Brief Summary
It snow. Meredith has dreams of Derek dying. Derek moves in. Lexie develops an interst in George. The chief is enraged by his number 12 staus in a top hospitals list. Erica and Callie avoid each other. Cristina gets stabbed.

Full Summary
We opened the new season with Meredith standing on the a as candles slowly started to blow out, one by one, and she talked about not believing in happy endings. She said the "happily ever after" thing is a fairy tale that never comes true. The "dark and stormy night" stories are the ones that come true, she said. Next, Meredith rushes into the emergency room where she is told that Derek had an accident trying to avoid hitting a bus. Bailey and Sloan work to save his life as Meredith watchees through a window. They finally give up and Meredith sees Bailey mouth the words, "Time of death..." Meredith screams hysterically and wakes up.

The doctors are huddled around a computer for word on the new rankings of teaching hospitals around the country. Some hoped Seattle Grace could bump Johns Hopkins for the top spot after a year at No. 2. Others were content with a top-five ranking. They were all thrown for a loop when the ranking came in at No. 12. The chief was upset, the doctors were dejected and Cristina talked about how she's a "double doctor" because she had a Ph.D. in biochemistry. "Double doctors should not be doing their work at second-rate hospitals."

George, meanwhile, struggled over whether to ask the chief about retaking his exam. The chief was upset about being downgraded in the rankings, but also the fact that the hospital lost its "Level 1 trauma center" status. Lexie helped George review what he knew. Oh, and she's in love with him. She said, "I totally adore you," but it was just after he'd walked out of the room.

Meredith told Cristina she kept having the Derek-dying dream and thought it was because she was afraid of the happy ending. She decided she would ask Derek to move in with her. Cristina pondered transferring hospitals. Meredith went on to Cristina about how complicated the situation with Derek was and, for some reason, mentioned how she'd slept with George, which caught Lexie off guard. Lexie asked Cristina for the details, but Cristina rebuffed her, saying not to bother her with anything that isn't medical.

Rose gave Derek the cold shoulder and Sloan told him she had "delayed rage." He said that while Derek broke up with her personally, he still had to break up with her professionally. Dr. Hahn asked the chief what she could to become a better teacher because he'd told her she was a bad teacher, but he said, "Not right now." It was snowing outside and he became angrier when she continued to ask and he explained that all the patients from ice-related accidents would go to Mercy West because it was a Level 1 trauma center and Seattle Grace no longer was. Then Callie and Hahn had an awkward moment where they walked toward each other but didn't speak, and each turned around and walked away.

The doctors were all standing outside in the cold waiting for an emergency patient to roll in, but no ambulances showed up. Just then a woman named Sarabeth, played by Bernadette Peters, haphazardly drove up to the ER with a car full of crash victims, including one really bad one -- the driver of a limo. The three women in the car were going to the "Fire & Ice" ball and their husbands were in another limo. One of the women, Betty, suddenly failed to recall what had happened and where they were.

Callie and Hahn had another awkward moment, and then Hahn explained to Bailey in some detail some medical ailment because she was trying to improve her teaching. "Well, don't try it on me," Bailey said. Later, Bailey heard that a limo with three men had been in an accident and told the three women to "insist" that they be brought to Seattle Grace. The chief praised her for stealing the patients from Mercy West.

One of the husbands had been given a tracheotomy with a pen by an Army doctor, something which Cristina found to be pretty hot. One of the women, Anna, called this man "sweetheart," but it wasn't her husband -- it was Sarabeth's husband. Anna explained the situation to Meredith, saying that she still loved her husband, but that "little pieces of you get chipped away by another person, and you shave little pieces of yourself away so that you'll fit together. Then one day you look up and you don't even know who you are." Not surprisingly, this gives Meredith something to think about.

One of the husbands was "circling the drain," but the chief insisted that they were saving him -- he had something to prove. The patient had an injury that would likely prevent him from walking again, but the Army doctor, Owen, said they could perform a procedure involving freezing him in order to give him a chance. Derek didn't appreciate him giving his patient and his wife false hope, and told Cristina to get him out of there.

Sarabeth was told that her medical insurance was going to expire at midnight and she said, helplessly, that her husband took care of those things. Cristina took Owen to get his leg stitched up, since it had been badly cut in the car accident. He began to staple it himself without anesthesia, which Cristina again found to be pretty hot. Callie then came in and asked him to tell her about the freezing thing. Rose, meanwhile, was taking each chance she had to hit Derek with zingers. First, when he decided to use a different scalpel than the one he'd asked for, she chastised him for changing his mind. Then, when he was working on two patients at once, she said, "That's what you do. You juggle people."

Meredith worried aloud to Izzie that in 40 years, she'd feel dead inside and become a big, fat, lying cheater. Izzie told Meredith that Derek's a good man, then went on to talk about how Alex had changed and become a good man as well.

The chief decided that the No. 12 ranking must have been some kind of clerical error. Hahn told the chief she'd been studying other doctors' methods, but he suggested she ask her students about how they like to learn, and wanted her to start with Cristina, since she was there. Cristina said she learned best by being asked questions rather than just being told what to do, and Hahn got defensive, asking if she was talking about her.

Sarabeth asked her husband about the insurance and told him she learned that all the credit cards had been canceled. He didn't respond and was wheeled away to surgery. Lexie confronted Sloan and said that he was "unnecessarily mean" to George, but Sloan figured out that she wanted George to be her boyfriend, and refused to change his ways. Meredith mentioned to Alex that "Izzie was right" about him having a softer side, and Alex got upset, thinking Izzie had told Meredith that he'd cried.

Derek approached Rose and told her that he couldn't have her in his OR if she continued to act the way she was acting. She played a joke on him and told him that she was carrying his child, then laughed and said he had no right to ask her to leave his OR -- she wouldn't be going anywhere.

Callie asked the chief if they should try freezing the potentially paralyzed patient. George told Lexie to stop defending him and said he knew he was the hospital joke. Meredith went on and on and on about planning her life with Derek, and Cristina told her to shut up. She told Meredith that she and Derek "will not work" and that she was making a mistake by moving in with him. Cristina yelled at Meredith to consider shutting the hell up, then hurried back inside before slipping, falling and having an icicle break off from the roof and lodge itself in her stomach.

Music

 * Other Lives - Black Tables
 * Beck - Youthless 
 * Jade McNelis - ''Wins
 * Emiliana Torrini - Jungle Drum
 * Steve Reynolds - Mistaken Identity
 * Bon Iver - ''Skinny Love
 * The Perishers - Never Bloom Again
 * Greg Laswell - And Then You
 * The Rescues - Crazy Ever After
 * Taylor Swift - White Horse
 * Jont - Another Door Closes