Grey’s Anatomy – Season 16 Episode 20 Recap and Review

The Decline of Richard

As we head towards the season finale, the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy concentrates on Richard’s condition with all our doctors uniting to save their beloved friend and colleague. While the latest chapter still has some weak and unnecessary characters story lines, this was a slightly better episode than last week thanks to the drama surrounding one of the original doctors.

Episode 20 of Grey’s Anatomy starts with Richard taken back home on a plane with Maggie and Catherine while Bailey, Meredith and Amelia are hard at work trying find a diagnosis for him. Bailey rounds up all the doctors and speaks to them about Richard’s medical past and possible diagnosis. Tom mentions dementia and Alzheimer’s but Meredith doesn’t think this is the case. They visit him in his room but he’s acting frustrated and doesn’t understand why he is here. However, Catherine manages to convince him to stay for some tests.

Meanwhile, Link is getting nervous as the birth of his child is just around the corner. His patient is a woman with a broken foot whose husband dropped a heavy book on it. After the surgery, the woman starts suffering from a strange condition called musicophilia which means she can only sing instead of talking.

As Tom and Teddy talk in the hallway, Tom is shocked to see his ex-wife and her 10 year old son who looks exactly like their decreased child. They are here because the boy has a brain tumour and needs help. After admitting him, Tom is having trouble staying in the same room because of the resemblance so Amelia takes over the case and promises to perform the surgery.

While Richard is having a CT scan, all three sisters realize that his incident is all over the internet. The scan doesn’t show anything and Meredith insists that it can’t be Alzheimer’s as she haa seen what it does first hand.

Meanwhile DeLuca visits Richard and applies some of doctor Riley’s methods. He relays this to Bailey who is not happy at first but eventually listens to his ideas. Meredith and Maggie later visit him too and do some more tests. He seems to struggle with it so Maggie decides to stop for now.

Jackson goes to see his mum who feels guilty for not noticing sooner what was happening to Richard. She asks him to go back to the medical room and ask him to do everything he can to figure out what is wrong with him.

Suddenly, the singing patient crashes in her room while Amelia starts having contractions during Guthrie’s surgery. She calls Tom over who still is reluctant to operate on the boy. She manages to convince him though but as soon as he starts, the boy crashes. Tom freezes so Teddy speaks to him from the gallery. He finally gets him stable just as Owen also stabilizes the singing woman.

Bailey, Maggie and Meredith are on the way to see Richard when they see that he has left his bed. Meredith finds him in an OR about to cut himself open as he thinks he is performing a surgery. She tries to help him by claiming she can fix him. He gets angry at first but she manages to calm him down as she tells him she still needs him. He then calls her Ellis and utters that something is wrong with him.

Tom relays to the parents of Guthrie that the surgery was a success. They thank him while Amelia finds out that she is having braxton hicks and not in labour. Teddy apologies to Tom again and after leaving, she finds Owen who takes her to a closet where they sleep together. She tells him she wants to get married this weekend. The episode ends with Richard returning to his room thinking he is in Seattle Grace while Meredith decides to find DeLuca to ask him what he has found.

If it wasn’t for Richard’s latest drama, this episode of Grey’s Anatomy would be another weak one as a lots of the other character plots feel a little uninteresting now. Thankfully, this latest piece of drama for our veteran surgeon brings all the main doctors together for one common goal; find a diagnosis for his ailment. This has also added some much-needed suspense to proceedings and while Meredith is insisting it is not Alzheimer’s, it will be interesting to see just what is wrong with poor Richard.

Another weak part of this latest episode that needs to be mentioned is the practical effects used during the surgery of Guthrie. The dummy used for the little boy was really poorly made, which is a shame as the surgery was quite the tense one.

With the finale just around the corner, the last episode is bound to end on a cliffhanger – as per usual – but whether it will be enough to keep the audience coming back for the next season remains to be seen as Grey’s Anatomy has unfortunately delivered its weakest season so far.