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— The supposed theme of Thursday's exceptionally strong "Grey's Anatomy" was sensitivity, a word used in the episode in its watery "sensitivity training" sense. More precisely, the theme was kindness.
The primary story concerned 700-pound Bobby, who the doctors started out mocking after he came in with a massive infection in the skin and fat of his abdomen. But once they met his perfectly normal, perfectly lovely pregnant wife and learned from her that his weight skyrocketed after he was laid off and became depressed, they recognized a human being.
Bobby initially resisted the risky surgery he needed, figuring it might be better to die than live as an embarrassment to his future child. It was Alex, in the end, who gave it to him straight that Bobby owed it to his family to make an effort to live, no matter how much everything hurt.
Ultimately, surgery resolved Bobby's immediate crisis, and what started out as an annoying, snickering story about Bailey hissing demands for forced politeness became quite touching, not to mention one of the better showcases Justin Chambers has had in a while. Chambers has been cramped this season by the endless limbo of Alex's marriage to Izzie, and this was the episode where he got his freedom — both as a character and as an actor — when the divorce papers were signed and Alex headed home with Lexie.
Elsewhere in the hospital, a young girl brought her mom in with vague symptoms that turned out to be a heart attack. Cristina became the child's companion, even to the point of making the very un-Cristina-like move of missing the mother's surgery to stay with her. When the mom died, Cristina coached the girl through the agonizing ins and outs of surviving the loss of a parent.
Avery, who saw the whole thing, offered to talk to Cristina about whatever loss of her own had fairly obviously given her all that insight. Cristina blew him off, insisting she was just using sensitivity training to her advantage. But she then went to Owen and collapsed in his arms, sobbing, "I miss my dad." Sandra Oh is reliably fabulous, but she showed remarkable range in this episode, from brittle nastiness to confident reassurance and then bruised fragility.
One thing that's never kind is being the boss, and there are signs that Derek is considering surrendering his post as chief. He had another tough week when the husband of a patient he removed from life support (in accordance with her health care directive) returned with lawyers in tow to put Derek through a brutal deposition, blaming him for the woman's death.
At the same time, Derek began to question whether he could share things with Meredith without worrying that she'd inadvertently leak something to her friends. The episode circled back to simple, friendly, person-to-person contact as the weary Derek closed the hour hitting golf balls on the roof with Mark, returning to the simplest gesture — that of simply having company for comfort.
But any look at kindness would be incomplete without some recognition that being kind can also be brutally difficult. That story came from Callie, who flirted with a pretty patient at the hospital and realized that part of her will always wonder whether there's someone other than Arizona — particularly someone who might want a baby.
The two of them talked, agreed that they loved each other and couldn't make each other happy, and broke up. This story, too, was nicely handled, in that it started as the episode's most lighthearted thread and ended as its saddest.
