It’s important that, as series age and their long-running characters become less likeable, they add new characters who can fill that gap. For Grey’s Anatomy, that character is young Zola, the soon-to-be-adopted daughter of Derek and Meredith.

In this clip, a scene from the season premiere (airing three weeks from tonight!), Derek’s in a bad mood mid-surgery while his pager beeps incessantly. He’s snapping at nurses about the distraction, but when someone comes in suggesting that the page is about his baby, Derek puts the scalpel down.

Although he’s near-frantic trying to get ahold of Meredith, we see that she’s not that busy–she and Zola are down in the basement while Meredith mutters her old standard, “What did I do? What did I do? What did I do?”

Is Meredith trying to get Derek’s attention by using their baby as emotional bait? Could she have paged him repeatedly about Zola so he’d drop everything and come looking for them, at which point she could corner him and talk about their marital issues? Even for Meredith, that seems low and probably a bad idea. Could it also be that something is wrong with Zola, and whoever’s calling (say, a tech with bad test results) can’t get ahold of Meredith, either, because she’s being a basketcase not answering her phone?

Whatever the case may be, I’m sure that Zola will be okay, Meredith will get her job back, and Derek and Meredith will work their crap out. And I will keep watching, because Zola is cute.

you're doing what now? // abc promotional photo

Patrick Dempsey announced to Italian Vanity Fair (great scoop, Italian Vanity Fair! Quotes are translated into English on TVLine) that he will be leaving Grey’s Anatomy after next season, his eighth. Dempsey’s departure could mark the beginning of the end for many more of the show’s core cast members, as the initial crew of Seattle Gracers all have contracts that expire next year. Ellen Pompeo, Meredith Grey herself, has expressed an interest in possibly leaving the show, as well, and plenty of insiders speculate that the show would shift focus toward (gag me) Lexie Grey in order to maintain its title with dignity.

While Shonda Rhimes doesn’t seem to be sweating the likelihood that the actors who made her a rich, rich lady could be deserting the series, this writer certainly is.

Let’s just put it this way: If Patrick Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo leave Grey’s Anatomy, there will be no reason for me to continue to watch, and I will move on with my life.

If Dempsey leaves and Pompeo stays? I will revolt.

It’s an outcome I refuse to even dignify with a speculative post.

Eh, what the hell.

The problem is this: they are married and they are (at least now) longtime Seattle residents. They have a home now, and a child. If Justin Chambers decides not to renew his contract, it’s easy to envision him picking up and moving to Africa to take care of sick babies. And while Izzie and Burke could just pick up their crappy little lives and move to … wherever they moved to … Derek and Meredith have ties. It would be very strange for them to decide to move their family to some other part of the country … but perhaps even stranger for them to continue to live in Seattle without working at Seattle Grace or  interacting with the rest of the cast.

It’s a strange little box that Rhimes will have to write her way out of.

More terrifying is the possibility that they will leave at different times. What happens to Zola in that situation? Would Rhimes have the audacity to split them up? To kill one of them? Or would she resort to Meredith talking about her husband but never actually interacting with him onscreen?

What I would propose in this situation is what one might call a “Reverse Doug and Carol.”

Maybe Derek ends up making a deal with the hospital and the trial review board to keep the study-fudging under wraps in exchange for moving away. He moves to Chicago ahead of Meredith, who has to stay for whatever reason. Finally, when Pompeo’s contract is up, Meredith CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE and flies there to be with Derek. She sends for tiny Zola the next day and, for the next nineteen seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, we hear stories about how happy they are. Let’s hope it never comes to that.

In all seriousness, Grey’s is likely facing a mass exodus of main characters next season. I’m not staunchly anti-Lexie, but I also have serious doubts that the character is interesting enough to center the series around. Even if you are enamored of the newer characters (Lexie, Arizona, Hunt, etc.), the originals still dominate a lot of the storytelling, and if Dempsey, Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Justin Chambers, Chandra Wilson, and James Pickens, Jr. all leave, the absence will be palpable. (Well, maybe not Pickens. I wouldn’t miss the Chief at all.)

only one character in this photo was totally likeable this season. hint: it's zola. // abc promotional photo

Where We Started: Post-rampage, the staff of Seattle Grace-Mercy West puts the pieces back together. For Cristina, this means being emo and annoying; for Meredith, coping with Derek’s near-death experience and the miscarriage she suffered during the shootout. Other people are also affected.

Where We Ended: With a lot of rocky relationships. Cristina and Owen seem to be over, after she told him she was planning on terminating her pregnancy, regardless of his opinion. Derek’s being a baby about Meredith’s clinical trial shenanigans, which is ironic because they have an actual baby now. Alex moved out of Meredith’s house, which is convenient considering Zola didn’t have a room. Let’s see, what else? Sloane “gave” Lexie to Jackson, so that’s decided on. Teddy surprisingly made out with her cancer-patient husband, whose pilot conveniently did not get picked up, so that could be a thing. The lesbians didn’t really get a storyline in the last episode, but they seem to be doing okay.

Outstanding Episode Along the Way: The musical episode. Just kidding! My favorite this season was “Golden Hour,” a real-time episode that showed many characters, and especially Meredith, in new and interesting ways.

MVP: I mean, with Grey’s, this is always going to be kind of a “lesser of fourteen evils,” but I’m going to have to go with Alex. He’d been kind of a sad-sack post-Izzie, and it was fun to see him move on with Lucy, despite how badly that ended. We’ve known for a while (since he was making out with Addison) that Alex was leaning toward neonatal surgery, but this year he really embraced the specialty. It was even his devotion to sick babies (or at least to making chief resident by way of sick babies) that introduced Derek and Meredith to little Zola. It’s just too bad he ended the season as a crapface tattletale.

Best Payoff: Zola! Derek and Meredith’s season of infertility was capped off with them adopting a sick little girl from Africa, and while the adoption process has thus far been unrealistically easy, it’s been great to see known daughter-father McDreamy and known Champion of Mommy Issues Meredith ease into parenthood. Even just seeing Meredith WANT to have a family was such a monumental (and satisfying) change for her. I can only imagine that they will evolve even more next season, and, God willing, that we’ll get to see lots more of McDreamy being a snuggly dad.

Quote of the Year: Related. “Okay, we’re gonna be okay,” Meredith told little Zola when she realized it might just be Mom and daughter for a while. “You and I, we’re a team, right? We’re tough. We have that in common. I am very glad you’re here. I didn’t think your first day would be quite like this, but I’m gonna get it together, and we’re gonna figure this out.” Don’t tell me that’s not the most optimistic and gung-ho that Meredith’s been about anything since the day she cleaned Crazy Ava’s blood off the floor.

Worst Storyline: Callie and Arizona got into a car accident. Although Arizona was fine, Callie spent one episode in critical condition with internal bleeding and hallucinations of her colleagues singing The Songs of Grey’s Anatomy, and one additional episode recovering. Since then, it’s barely been mentioned again. Also, there were no repercussions for Arizona and her terrible driving skills. Note to future boyfriends: if we are driving in a car and you give me an ultimatum about marriage and then proceed to crash the car in such a violent fashion that I am thrown through the windshield WHILST PREGNANT, there will be serious conversations about the future of our relationship when I regain consciousness.

Spend the Summer Wondering…: Last week’s finale really didn’t have any major cliffhangers. I mean, I think it’s very safe to say that Derek will forgive Meredith in time for them to file official adoption paperwork for Zola. (Although, gosh, can you imagine if they had to send her back to Africa? That would be a ROUGH storyline.) Cristina and Owen are obviously headed for a breakup, if not an out-and-out divorce. I will be spending the summer wondering why Cristina didn’t just have her tubes tied after her first unwanted pregnancy back in season two. Last season’s finale was built on such a crazy series of events that it took a good chunk of this season to deal with the fallout. Since this one ended without gunshots, prom sex, or any of the other insane finale fodder that Grey’s has brought in the past, they’re going to have to come up with some fresh storylines going into season eight. Good luck.

Oh, I hold absolutely no hope that the brides (Callie and Arizona) will stay together or stop being annoying, but the rumors swirling around this episode’s B-plots are rather exciting.

See, it’s been known for some time now that Derek and Meredith skip the wedding. Which led people to believed there were but three possible conclusions:

1. Legalizing the Post-It wedding.

2. Adopting a baby.

3. Both.

Now, I had my reservations. Shonda Rhimes has long been of the opinion that Derek and Meredith’s Post-It wedding is completely normal and not at all weird, so I’d given up hope of seeing a real wedding between the two. And adopting a baby usually takes longer than an afternoon. It usually takes, like, A YEAR. If not more. It is not a spur-of-the-moment decision.

But then I remembered that this is Grey’s Anatomy, and they will forgo common sense if they feel they must. And then I saw this sneak peek (for Thursday’s episode, “White Wedding”) and I decided … okay fine. They must.

Now, looking past the fact that tiny Zola (Zola! I assume this references the author of the famed open letter J’Accuse) makes a lot of noises without ever opening her mouth, thus suggesting she is some kind of magical baby, this scene is super cute and sets up some really interesting implications for Derek and Meredith going into the finale. Also, I’ll go on record as saying I love the name Zola. I mean, I was secretly hoping for Zahara, but this is good, too.

Last week, you may remember that Meredith fudged the clinical trial designations in order to sneak Adele Webber into the program. She’s getting away with it for now, but it’s only a matter of time before word gets out–not only to the higher-ups overseeing the clinical trial rules, but also to her Post-It husband, who’s running this operation.

Imagine Meredith agrees to adopt tiny Zola. Let’s give Shonda the benefit of the doubt and assume she won’t make it easier for the Shepherds to adopt this baby than it was for them to adopt that dog back in season two. So then let’s guess that they miss the lesbians’ wedding so that they can go down to the courthouse and legalize their Post-It note. Because that’s not suspicious AT ALL on adoption paperwork.

“You’ve only been married … three days?”

“Well, two years, actually. The first two were unofficial. We can provide documentation of the Post-It if that would help.”

So, say they formalize their marriage and start the process to adopt tiny Zola. Maybe it even happens unnaturally fast, so that by the time the finale rolls around, Derek and Meredith have officially roped tiny Zola into their house of crazy.

Speaking of which, do you think that the adoption people are going to want to look at the prospective parents’ living situation?

“I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd, but we’re going to have to reject your application to adopt this baby. You have nine different kinds of tequila on your kitchen counter and there are two people having sex in your shower as we speak.”

That house is no place for a baby!

Anyway, imagine the authorities (African? American? Who is responsible for this nugget?) give them the go-ahead, but then in the finale, Derek finds out about Meredith’s clinical trial transgressions. And it’s like … oops. Because last week, the only thing tying you to this person was a Post-It note, but now, you’re married and you have a kid. So, that could make things rough.

Now, what I think would be REALLY amusing is if Derek and Meredith speed through this babytaking operation and then find out that (surprise!) Meredith is pregnant. I am all for adopting tiny Zola, but they’ve just spent an entire season on Meredith’s hostile uterus, and at some point, the rules of storytelling say that they should fix it. Also, Meredith just needs to deliver a baby so that Addison can come back and deliver it. In the meantime, I’m just happy they’re actually giving them something to do–and that baby is pretty darn cute.

excuse me, i am trying to operate on this person and you are SINGING. that's just disrespectful. // abc promotional photo

So, tonight’s the already-infamous musical episode of Grey’s Anatomy. As I have since the announcement was first made, I remain skeptical but curious. I’ll likely be watching this episode by peeking through the gaps of my fingers as they cover my eyes in horror.

On the face of it, the whole concept just seems ridiculous. Callie, who’s just been involved in a serious car accident (nice driving, ARIZONA), is in critical condition at the hospital; her fate—and that of her innocent unborn child—HANG IN THE BALANCE.

AND THERE IS SINGING.

While the heavy-handed schmaltz-fest that will undoubtedly be Callie singing out her feelings during her out-of-body experience (seriously) has me already rolling my eyes, I have to admit there are a few things I’m definitely looking forward to.

We can’t deny that Sara Ramirez is a Great Musical Talent. In fact, it was her Great Musical Talent that landed her this gig; after seeing her in Spamalot on Broadway, ABC executives offered her a role on the series of her choosing. (I personally would have picked Lost, but to each her own.) I will gladly take the opportunity to hear her sing.

Apparently, everyone has at least a little bit of singing to do, so I’m expecting at least one .GIF-worthy moment for Mr. Patrick Dempsey and will be sorely disappointed if that opportunity is missed. I’m picturing him bursting out of an elevator at full volume singing.

It’s also a spotlight episode for Meredith, according to reports. Meredith is pretty much the only person who acts like a grown-up on this show, which is HILARIOUS considering that two seasons ago, she was pretty much the acting president of the I’m Technically Too Old to Have Random Tequila Sex, But IMA DO IT ANYWAY, BITCH Club. And retired members of this club deserve babies, but Meredith can’t have any, which is sad. And I like the episodes that talk about how sad that is, because it means that Derek and Meredith’s season finale healthy-fetus “shocker” (c’mon, you know it’s coming) will be all the happier. But for now, Derek’s hugging her while she cries in the elevator, and it is going to be some great angst. (Presumably, this is not the elevator from which Derek erupts with an exuberant tune.)

Guilty Arizona! Okay, this may bother some folks, but I REALLY don’t like Arizona, known selfish nag. In fact, I’m not convinced she didn’t crash the car on purpose, just to get rid of the baby she despises. (Oh, did she mention that she hates babies and hates that Callie had sex with Mark, even though they were broken up and SHE LIVED IN AFRICA AT THE TIME? Because she does. And she will make it very clear that this is Not What She Wanted, but she will go along with it, because she loves Callie so much, but she does have some conditions, including that she is allowed to hold it over Callie’s head FOREVER that this is Not What She Wanted—oh, and she would like to get married, because she NEEDS commitment.) So here’s hoping that this episode requires Arizona to do some serious thinking about her choices and her driving skills and her TERRIBLE PERSONALITY. In all honesty, it’s probably an opportunity for her to realize how much she does want Callie and the baby, and by the end of the hour, everyone will probably be siding with Arizona and not trying to send her off to bad driver’s rehab.

Will this episode be the perfect blend of poignancy, humor, and AWESOME TUNES MADE FAMOUS BY GREY’S that Shonda Rhimes is promising? I’m doubtful. But at least if it’s bad, we can laugh about how embarrassing it is.

Well, it may have taken almost three years, but between Peter and Olivia’s tiny-hands-in-a-snowy-tulip-field introduction do-over and Anna Torv’s pitch-perfect performance in those final moments of “Os,” but my perspective has obviously changed completely.

But while I was going through all that old news, I was reminded that Joshua Jackson was actually supposed to do a long-term guest run on Grey’s Anatomy before the writers’ strike hit. The papers were all signed for Jackson’s first post-Creek commitment, but during the strike, he made plans for Fringe, and the Grey’s episodes never materialized.

At the time, I was DEVASTATED. See, I was hosting Pacey-Cons at my house long before Jackson got in on that action. And at the time, Grey’s was The Place to Be, so it was a pretty big deal in Allietown.

Obviously, things worked out the way they were supposed to. (And Jabrams HAS to be a way better boss than Shonda Rhimes.) But I can’t help but wonder … what would have happened?

For starters, let’s state the obvious. Jackson is immensely likable, and could have fit in well in the world of Seattle Grace. Rumor had it at the time that he would have been a love interest for Cristina, suggesting that his character was probably one that ended up being reimagined as Owen Hunt, who was introduced shortly after.

Personally, I would have imagined him as the only guy who could snap Izzie out of that whole George situation, if only so that Jackson and Katherine Heigl could’ve spent time together reminiscing about the old WB days. And while it would’ve been fun to see him as a trauma surgeon, I just don’t see him having a whole lot of chemistry with Sandra Oh.

Of course, that’s what I said about Josh & Anna three years ago…

Could that be changing?

Spoilers and speculation after the jump.

Callie wants to have babies. That’s cool and all, except Callie is kind of a lesbian, and her go-to gal doesn’t want kids. And as Neil Patrick Harris said in this week’s issue of People, featuring his new baby twins, “Same-sex parenthood doesn’t happen accidentally.”

So Callie’s kind of stuck.

So it seems mighty convenient that Callie had sex with a GUY in December–one Mark Sloan, a man who has previously gotten at least two women pregnant. Now, I get that Callie and Arizona were on the super-outs when Callie decided to have heterosexual sex, but it’s hard to imagine a situation wherein Arizona participates in the raising of Callie and Mark’s pity-sex child. Especially if you’re a lady who was on the fence about kids from the get-go, that’d pretty much be a dealbreaker.

As far as where that leaves Callie and Mark … I think it’d be interesting to watch them try to have a platonic baby together. Kind of like Ross and Rachel were going to do before they got together and didn’t even mention their baby in the series finale. (Not bitter at all.) Or kind of like reverse-Will and Grace, who at one point planned to have a kid together before she went back to Harry Connick, Jr. and didn’t talk to Will for twenty years.

Yeah, it hasn’t worked out so well in the past. Although it does seem to be working all right for Clay Aiken and that woman he has a kid with.

It seems pretty likely that the baby thing will happen. And it will definitely shake things up for this semi-triangle, and for the show. Bailey is still the only character with a kid, and since we’re not friendly with her ex-husband, we don’t see a whole lot of Tuck. But a kid with two (even three, possibly!) parents who we follow home–that’s going to make an impact on the series.

Now, of course, what I’m wondering is how this affects the baby I REALLY want to meet: Baby Girl Shepherd. Would a Callie kid postpone the inevitable McBaby?

We haven’t seen a whole lot of progression for Derek and Meredith since her miscarriage.  It frustrates me to no end that we haven’t seen that dream house get built yet. They’re surgeons, for crying out loud! He’s rich! Surgeons don’t need ROOMMATES. I think it’s possible that the reason they can’t get pregnant is because the universe is saying, “Umm, grow up and move out of your mom’s house first.”

A Callie pregnancy wouldn’t necessarily postpone the McBaby. In fact, it could be a nice juxtaposition between Callie’s crazy pregnancy situation and Meredith’s (relatively) angst-free one.

The really good part of a joint pregnancy is the possibility of a joint delivery, with Addison Montgomery helping BOTH women give birth. Now that would be epic.

weirdest duet ever, maybe? // abc promotional photo

In some ways, I’ve been waiting for Grey’s Anatomy to do a musical episode since season two. Shonda Rhimes has a long history now of hiring Broadway powerhouses for her series, and I’ve been hoping to see some of her characters put their pipes to work for a good long while. Between Taye Diggs, Audra McDonald, and the unbelievably talented Sara Ramirez, the Grey’s/Private Practice universe has a LOT of musical ability to mine from.

But a musical episode? Really?

I’m really not sure this is going to end well.

Plenty of shows have done musical episodes to great success. Scrubs’s “My Musical” is well-regarded, as are Fringe’s “Brown Betty” and Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “Once More With Feeling.” But all of these shows have a certain element of fantasy inherent in their premise. Grey’s Anatomy … doesn’t. Rhimes promises, “Nobody is going to be dancing and singing down the halls; that’s not our show. Our show is known for its music. I very much wanted to do something that was musical without being a musical,” but I still don’t trust that the reason for the singing will be natural and diegetic.

Also curious about this choice is whether or not the singing will involve the whole cast or just the professionals. Rhimes specifically talked about Chandra Wilson and Sara Ramirez, but will we get any samplings of the musical stylings of Patrick Dempsey or Justin Chambers? I will say, I have the Ally McBeal Christmas album, which features a rather nice version of Joni Mitchell’s “River” sung by one Robert Downey, Jr., so I do kind of hope that they go all out with it and make everyone sing.

But back to the question of plot … I still just don’t see how this comes across naturally and without some weird set-up that hasn’t already been done. Scrubs’s musical episode involved a patient whose condition (aneurysm-related, I believe) caused her to hear everything in song. So that option is out for the Grey’s writers.

I’ll withhold judgment until I actually see this episode, but at this point, it just seems like a weird choice to me. I’m all for making Sara Ramirez sing, but why have a whole musical episode when you could just have her sing some incredible karaoke at a bar?

There are new sneak peeks out from Thursday’s Grey’s Anatomy, and they suggest that certain characters may finally be becoming self-aware. Hallelujah. Spoilers after the jump.

Sometimes, watching Mark and Callie makes me feel old, because I’m 23 and yet I behave more rationally, work-appropriate, and grown-up-like than those two ever will. So it’s nice to see clips like this one, where they’re maybe finally realizing what they need to do to have a grown-up life, things like compromising and being kind and NOT BEING CRAZY.

And then there’s Arizona, who, despite being a grown-up, also uses words like “frowny.”

We’ll call it a draw.

angsty eyes! // abc promotional photo

I’m loving this so hard. Spoilers after the jump.

In episode four, Meredith and Derek, now apparently actively trying to conceive a baby, go to a fertility doctor. The doctor diagnoses Meredith with a “hostile uterus.”

Now, this is a real thing, at least according to Google, and I’m sure it really sucks, but I just can’t get over how amazing this writer is for coming up with such an apropos diagnosis for the most hostile uterus-prone character in the history of television. I mean, it’s Meredith! Her lady parts are super-hostile! This is the gal who once told her now-husband, “I make no apologies for how I chose to repair what you broke. You don’t get to call me a whore.” If episode four was written by Debora Cahn, I will just die. (She is brilliant. Look her up on the Wikipedia.)

I’ve already talked about how the obvious solution to Derek and Meredith’s fertility troubles is miracle worker Naomi Bennett, but this is all just such PRIME real estate for a Private Practice/Grey’s Anatomy crossover of wonderment once she actually gets pregnant. I mean, who DOESN’T want to see Derek super-stressed about Meredith and their daughter baby and call the one person he knows can fix her? I’ve wanted to see that for, like, five years. In Addison’s first episode, where she and Meredith work together on that case where they operated on the fetus in utero, and it was mega-tense because Addison had just shown up to wreck Mer’s new McRomance, I thought to myself, “One day, you’re gonna have to do something like that to save the McBaby and it is going to be AWESOME.”

And it totally will be.