grey’s promo pics: what’s up with derek?

IMPORTANT COMPUTER STUFF! // abc promotional photo

There are new promotional pictures for Grey’s Anatomy up on SpoilerTV. (Spoilery!) thoughts are after the jump!

First of all, in the picture above, you can see that Callie’s lab coat reads “Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital.”  Did we know that’s what they were going to call the hospital post-merger?  Because that’s insane.  I’m glad I’m not their receptionist, because seriously. That’s a mouthful.

gross // abc promotional photo

The biggest news out of these photos, from the upcoming episode “Give Peace a Chance,” is the sad state that McDreamy seems to be in.  The episode synopsis reads, “When the hospital lab tech, Isaac, discovers he has an inoperable tumor wrapped around his spine, he turns to Derek for help; Derek challenges Richard’s authority.”  It seems like Derek’s going to throw himself into the case and, like he has been doing for the past few weeks, will stand up to the Chief to get things done.

It’s about time.  The Chief is another hateful character–I wish it had been him who had been thrown under the bus instead of George.  He’s just such a whiny baby, and if he hates his job so much, then why doesn’t he just RETIRE already like he’s been talking about doing since FOREVER?  NO ONE WOULD MISS HIM.

So I personally love that Derek’s Big Story While Ellen Is On Maternity Leave revolves around kicking the Chief’s ass.

Also, while we’re on the subject–we know that Ellen Pompeo’s going to miss a grand total of zero episodes because of her maternity leave, but we also know she’s going to be pretty downsized at least until around Christmas.  They said they filmed a lot of her scenes before she had the baby, so given the way last week went, I have to assume these scenes are, at first, of her recuperating in bed and Derek coming home to her after a hard day, and then, later, of her randomly standing around in the hospital.  Still, though, the canonical reason for her absence is that she’s recovering from giving her dad a piece of her liver.

That would be all well and good if it hadn’t just taken Izzie FIVE MINUTES to go from one end of the scalpel to the other.  I mean, seriously, if Izzie could recover from her INOPERABLE BRAIN TUMOR enough to already be back in the hospital in episode three, it doesn’t really make any sense for Meredith to take until Christmas to recover from a little liver-giving.  Whatever.  I shouldn’t be surprised, when this show has the most effed-up timeline in the history of television.  But that’s a rant for another post.