This week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy is filled with shockers and they came from literally every direction. The Chief, as it turns out, is coming off a twenty year alcoholic binge and ends the show as a stuttering mess. Between that time, he has taken Meredith as his number pupil and as a viewer you really don’t know what is truly motivating him to do so because the script is carefully crafted and it can lead in multiple directions.

Mark meets his eighteen year old daughter for the first time when she marches into the hospital and cheerfully introduces herself. Mark Sloan, the Sam Malone of the decade, having a child, is shocking in itself.

 Of course, what’s more shocking is when he reveals he knew she existed all these years, or at least he knew she could have existed, but never took any action to find out one way or the other. The truly inspiring part of this entire story is how far he has come in his emotional development now that he has the love of Lexie in his life.

Throughout this episode we are led down a path that we believed would end up with Cristina and Owen breaking up because of an old love interest of his. It comes to a head as Owen and the woman confess their desire for each other and they seem to be on the brink of a passionate kiss when Owen pulls away from her and declares his love for Cristina. This sequence of events was artfully crafted to lead up to that moment, and it was a total shock when Owen pulled away.

Miranda’s father comes to visit her at the hospital and is unhappy that she chose medicine over keeping her family together. It was an awkward scene as Miranda finally stood up to him over Christmas dinner at Meredith’s home. This was a particularly emotional scene that you really could picture happening in a real life family argument at the holiday dinner table.

This episode of Grey’s Anatomy was full of surprises but perhaps the biggest shock, at least to me, was Shonda Rhime’s closing out the season without any forewarning.  This episode rolled through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day…  This tells me we won’t have any more anatomy lessons until next year.