#Grey’s Anatomy Season 17 Episode 16 Review: I’m Still Standing

For a penultimate hour of the season, the installment didn’t feel like a lead into a finale.

It’s hard to describe even what Grey’s Anatomy Season 17 Episode 16 felt like at all. It had time jumps, babies, a dog, wedding planning, and all the couples are weird.

But let’s see what we can do here.

Link said what everyone was thinking when he wanted to cut to the chase on Jo adopting baby Luna. It’s been a storyline building in the background of the season for some time, and we know she’s grown attached to her.

One could argue the whole reason she returned to residency in a different field was because of her Luna obsession.

Link, flying high on his recent bout of wanting ALL THE KIDS after he was JUST saying he was tired of ALL THE KIDS and no privacy, was the perfect person to gas Jo up. Their friendship is always cute.

But Jo’s claws came out when Carmen, the social worker, entered the picture and disrupted the mommy vibes was rolling with unfettered. Carmen does appear to have some distant disinterest, but social work is such a grueling, emotionally taxing, thankless job, and who’s to say Carmen doesn’t compartmentalize to function?

Jo got her hopes up for baby Luna, but they denied her application because of her inability to pass a background check. Did they ever go into detail about why that was the case?

Jo has a lot of things that could potentially work against her. Unfortunately, her history of mental illness is one of them, but didn’t she also have an arrest record or an assault charge or something? And she also left her steadier position to return to residency in what felt like an impulsive move; that drastically affects both her hours and salary.

Hayes: Wilson?

Jo: I’m her mom. I’m going to be her mom.

Is it that time she almost kidnapped that safe haven baby? I don’t know. Whatever the case, Jo’s mission to adopt baby Luna was derailed and sent her to the tiny apartment she shares with Helm and Levi, curling up on Alex’s side of the bed and getting her depressed sulk on at the setback.

Maybe something will come through for her or not, but respectfully, I can’t say that I remotely care about any aspect of this storyline.

Unfortunately, Hayes had a chunk of screentime, but nothing of substance came from, and inquiring minds want to know why they’ve wasted so much of McWidow. We don’t know nearly enough about him as we should in all of this time.

If they randomly throw Mer and Hayes together in the finale, it would be the wildest thing imaginable since they’ve done very little to build this relationship with any consistency.

They’re shippable, but they’re not feeding us at all.

On that note, Schmico fans, how are you guys feeling?

When the series first introduced the pairing, it was cute, fun, and sweet, but the Nico portion has been the weakest aspect of this relationship.

To this moment, a wet napkin has more character development and personality than Nico, and it’s been such a disservice to his character and Landi.

We know very little about Nico; they change the little bit we do know whenever it suits the plot, and then this “situationship” is so inconsistently and infrequently addressed that you never remember where they even stand anymore.

When Nico asked Levi if they broke up, it was the million-dollar question. Can anyone keep up with their relationship?

Sometimes they’re together, but then they aren’t. They have casual sex, but they love each other or hate one another.

Nico, more often than not, treats Levi horribly. At what point do we stop rooting for this toxic couple?

Levi left Nico on read, as Levi should’ve, regarding moving in or love, or goodness, does anyone remember anymore? And Levi found some potential good times with the new, hot vaccine doc, Mason.

Shoutout to @Middlechild81 on Twitter for the nickname, McCovid; it stuck. Levi and McCovid were cute and had a nice, flirty vibe going on. Levi should’ve climbed the man like a tree, and McCovid would’ve happily welcomed it, but bless Levi’s wee heart, he went right back to the entanglement that is Nico.

At this rate, they’ve stopped showing us what the draw is between those two anymore, and they’re merely resting on the appeal the couple had upon its introduction. We should’ve felt something pleasant when Levi knocked on Nico’s door, but at best, one could only muster up annoyance.

The current version of Nico (and we know he changes like the weather) was sweet with his candle-lit apartment and sweeping Levi off his feet. And damn, did that man know how to wear the hell out of that shirt. Whew. 

Fine, it was a cute scene; I’ll give that to them.

And the Maggie and Winston thing, what?

They’re the cute It Couple that the patients ask about and all, and it’s still just there, you know?

Gwen got invested in the pairing, and that came with some sweetness. Apparently, I learned that Gwen is a patient that was around for some of the season, and I don’t know what it says that I couldn’t remember her at all.

The poor woman was so lonely that she got a heart transplant and still pretended to be sick to stick around the hospital longer. They all felt like her friends.

Hell, at some point, I thought Helm would bring another stray to Jo’s loft, and Gwen could accompany Jo, Helm, and Levi in that one-bedroom apartment. Why not?!

Outside of Gwen, Maggie and Winston spent the hour planning their wedding, but then they had the most contrived argument that came out of NOWHERE.

Winston thought Maggie was putting off their wedding plans and trying to draw out their engagement or something by not wanting to rush into things quickly, and does Winston know who he’s marrying or no?

Helm, you can either live here or talk, but you can’t do both.
Jo

And Maggie seemed to lack enthusiasm with planning a wedding during a pandemic, which is reasonable, you know? But apparently, it had something to do with her missing her mother or something.

She invited her father and his mother to town, and they’re now having a family wedding, and yay for them, I guess.

Then, of course, there’s the pending issue between Amelia and Link. So far, they’ve been the most stable couple, so it wouldn’t be Grey’s if they didn’t screw with that for shits and giggles, whether it makes sense or not.

Link went from not wanting to have a bunch of kids to suddenly claiming he wants more children. And now, Amelia doesn’t want anymore.

It was interesting to have her confide in Owen about this, and sometimes you get whiplash with their weird friendship, but it manages to work.

Outside of a few quintessential Owen moments where he had to get one last Tom dig in after the cringiest piece of dialogue to explain away his absence, and you know, doubting Amelia Shepherd’s methods with the music thing, Owen was cool.

He and Amelia have a nice friendship thing going, and it was genuinely sweet that he offered to go to a meeting with her. I guess we got the best Owen during this hour.

But it’s still worrisome that Amelia has not confided in Link about her reluctance to have more children. I also hate that we keep rehashing this same storyline in different ways.

By now, Link and Amelia should be on the same page. They’ve talked about all of these things before, so why are we doing this again?

And, of course, we have to discuss Meredith.

If skipping out on a clap-out wasn’t bad enough, she chose this installment to sound whiny and ungrateful with Bailey and others. Why would you get so annoyed at people checking up on you?

They spent months thinking she would die, and now, she behaves as if they’re all nuisances for caring. You know it’s messed up when after waiting an entire season for Meredith to wake up, you end up wishing she went back to sleep.

Would it kill her to enjoy the time with her kids? Anyway, she’s recovered from COVID, but there are lingering effects that can affect a person for the rest of their lives, and she felt it would affect her career.

Somewhere in all of this, Bailey offered Meredith Richard’s of heading the residency program. Somehow, inspired by Jackson and Tom’s quest to do good, she thinks Meredith Grey is the right person to usher in a diverse future of medicine.

I guess the thought process was that Meredith is an ally who could put that to the best use, but it was such an odd, bizarre, random, and hamfisted thing.

It wreaked of more Meredith worship and had a heavy hand of what the kiddies refer to as white saviorism.

I don’t know what that was supposed to be, but whatever the case, Meredith is the gatekeeper to the future of medicine and equity in the field or something.

Look, I don’t know. Meredith and Ellis playing catch were cute, though.

Over to you, Grey’s Fanatics. What did YOU think of this hour?

You can watch Grey’s Anatomy online here via TV Fanatic. 

Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.