Cheap Things...

(Grey's Stuff, don't look if you haven't watched.)

There are quite a few things to hate, or at least be disappointed with, concerning tonight's Grey's Anatomy. I won't go into those here. Instead I'll try to focus on a moment of beauty.

I've said elsewhere how the Grey's writers are masters of metaphor. Tonight they shunned all that for a more straightforward, if a little weird, storyline. But there was one key place they employed it tonight and this should be used by preachers the world over for years to come.

Christina Yang-- Cold, calculating, become-superb-at-all-costs, Christina Yang has spent her entire life avoiding being close to someone. We found out tonight why-- Her life has been haunted by watching her dad die right in front of her. But lately all that has changed. Her boyfriend almost dies and one of her fellow interns loses his father. Slowly the rough edges began to fall away and we saw a heart in there somewhere.

And then she, quite literally, loses her "person," the name she gave Meredith to avoid using the f-word. (Friend.) Does she complete her transformation? No, she grasps for the last shred of dignity she can find, leaves the hospital to walk the aisles of a dollar store. Everything is a dollar. Plastic chairs, bottles, toys, all a buck.

Life, death, love and beauty rush in and out and all around us and we are grasping like children for the shiny things that are cheap and fall apart and can never make us happy once we leave the store.

Luckily Christina had Burke to shake her back into reality and to bring her back to the world of people and touch and, well, of love.

Even for a disappointing episode, there's still some good stuff in there.