This week's Grey's Anatomy was nothing short of crazy. The show made a major time jump that resulted in Meredith Grey giving birth to a baby girl. (But don't worry! The baby is Derek's.) It fast forwarded through almost a whole year, and much of the two-hour episode didn't even include the show's title character. Early in the episode Meredith took off after Derek's funeral, and the next time we saw her she was heavily pregnant. Looks like she and Derek made good on his wish to try for another kid before he left for that doomed trip to D.C.
But as cheesy as it is that Meredith's storyline so closely mirrored her mother's (losing the love of her life, running away, finding out she's pregnant), I'm OK with it. Mostly because I'm especially happy that her story was different from her mother's in one important way: Meredith is determined to survive the loss of her partner. Whereas Ellis tried to commit suicide and later gave up her baby with Richard Webber for adoption, Meredith stayed strong for her family and her new little one. She may not have Derek anymore, but she has Zola and Bailey and now baby Ellis Shepherd to remember him by. (Yes, she named her daughter after her mother because Grey's Anatomy is nothing if not cyclical.)
Honestly, the show was kind of a hot mess, but little Ellis made things sort of better. After the birth of her daughter, Meredith finally came back to Seattle and started her life over again. She's not wallowing in her pain over Derek, but she's not blocking him out either. She even put on his ferry boat scrub cap for her first surgery back. She's slowly moving forward, which is what Derek would have wanted. "Part of me didn't think I could do it," she told Alex Karev after the birth of her daughter. "But then I saw her face and I saw his [Derek's] face in her. She's beautiful."
So, now Grey's Anatomy has a wonderful new baby added to the show, and Meredith seems to be on the road to recovery. (A year of grieving will do that to you.) And Derek has a legacy in his three beautiful children. He may be gone, but his memory will never be forgotten.
Image: Mitchell Haaseth/ABC
