This week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy continues to cover the reactions of the remaining staff after a huge round of cutbacks forced the hospital to terminate a large part of the staff.  Seattle Grace is still in the process of merging with another hospital and there are still more job cuts to come.

“Tainted Obligation”  opens with the merger still being in the forefront of everyone’s minds, but the series revisited another issue concerning Dr. Meredith Grey and her estranged family. The father who abandoned her as a child is rushed in to the hospital by Meredith’s half sister who she has grown to accepted as family. However, when it comes to their father, the two stand on opposite ends.

For Meredith her father is more or less a complete stranger and she feels no emotional attachment to him whatsoever.

Here sister Lexi loves their father because he was a good father all of her life. Their father has been a long time heavy drinker, who now has been on the wagon for over three months. Unfortunately, the damage to his liver had already been done and now, if he doesn’t get a transplant, he will die.

Meredith, as it turns out, is the only one who can donate a part of her liver to save his life, yet she feels no obligation to do so. Lexi is in emotional turmoil over the thought of losing her father and Meredith is in a different type of turmoil because most of her emotions revolve around if she can forgive this man and move beyond the pain of growing up without a father.

Merideth does a lot of maturing in this episode of Grey’s Anatomy and the script was expertly written to present how far she’s come out of her emotional shell of not trusting or depending on others in her life.

This was a great episode of Grey’s Anatomy mixed with a bunch of drama as we’ve come to expect but also kept the warm humor that has been the underlining trademark of the show.