Grey’s Anatomy Season 21 Episode 7 Review: If You Leave

Critic’s Rating: 3.65 / 5.0

3.65

I have to admit, Grey’s Anatomy Season 21 Episode 7 did not go the way I expected.

There was a shocking death, an emotional goodbye, and a heaping portion of callbacks to older Grey’s Anatomy storylines, and I wasn’t really prepared for any of it.

Granted, some of the episode’s reveals were predictable, but overall, the hour left me reeling.

Knowing that Midori Francis is slated to leave the show and her character, Mika Yasuda, this season, I wasn’t shocked at all to see a near-death experience for the talented intern.

The part that shocked me was that she survived.

Tragically, her baby sister, Chloe (who was already fighting cancer) didn’t survive the car accident that nearly claimed Mika’s life.

But somehow, Mika pulled through after a tense hour of touch-and-go surgery and angst from her friends and sort-of-girlfriend.

Now, the question remains: how exactly are the showrunners planning to write Yasuda out of the show?

Saying goodbye to her character via a traumatic accident made sense, and that option was in line with how other Grey’s Anatomy departures have gone.

Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd, George O’Malley, Lexie Grey, Mark Sloan — I could keep going, but the point is, there have been plenty of dramatic and bloody deaths for major Grey’s characters.

So it begs the question: what was the point of putting Mika through a car accident that she technically caused and then killing her sister off?

Call me jaded, but now I fear that Mika’s actual exit will be far more tragic and hard to stomach.

Throughout the episode, other characters waxed poetic about how they felt about Yasuda.

Jules, whose relationship with Mika has been heating up all season long, was particularly inconsolable, but all of the interns struggled with the prospect of losing their friend.

Despite several moving speeches (the one from Blue actually made me a little sniffly), thankfully no one had to actually say goodbye to Yasuda. Yet, anyway.

This week marked Jake Borelli’s final episode as Levi prepared to move to Texas for a pediatric research fellowship.

First of all, Texas? As a gay man? In this political climate? Why couldn’t the writers have sent Levi somewhere slightly more queer friendly?

At least his new love interest, James, will be by his side, I guess.

Is it probably way too soon for those two to be moving in together, especially to a new city and state across the country? Yeah.

But you can’t stop true love, so James quit his job as Grey Sloan’s chaplain (which he’s had for, what? Two months?) to follow Levi to San Antonio.

It was a terribly romantic gesture, even if it was a little rash. I wish those two the best.

Of course, Levi couldn’t go anywhere without first spending a few emotional moments with Jo.

The bond those two shared was, at times, a little baffling, if only because of how downright mean both of them could be.

But no one could deny that there was a lot of love between them.

No matter the physical distance, Levi and Jo will always be close, especially now that Levi has an official godfather role in the unborn twins’ lives.

Levi’s arc ended with a beautiful montage of some of his best moments throughout his tenure on the show, and it was the perfect way to honor a character who experienced such immense growth in a few short years.

The storyline has him moving to Texas for now, but Levi says he’ll be back in Seattle at some point, so we won’t be surprised to see him pop up again someday. (One can hope, right?)

This week, even though Chloe, Mika, and Levi were the obvious focal points, my character spotlight was on Lucas.

Since his first day, he’s struggled to fit in and find his place in the hospital and with his class.

He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and thinks he’s responsible for everyone and everything, and that was clearer than ever in this episode.

From the physical manifestation of his stress (vomiting into a biohazard bag as he raced between Chloe and Mika’s operating rooms) to the way he stormed away from Simone as she tried to comfort him, Lucas showed a lot of his internal struggle.

In no world is he to blame for Chloe’s death.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to blame himself for it, especially after Mika asked him to take care of her sister.

Adams isn’t the only one shouldering blame and guilt, either.

When Mika is ready to see her friends again, she’s going to have to contend with Lucas’s heartbreak over not being able to save Chloe as well as Jules’s guilt over tagging Mika in for surgery before the accident.

It’s a classic setup, and I’m honestly not looking forward to it.

I think they’re going to have Mika provide some sort of absolution for both Lucas and Jules, and while I get that they need to hear that she doesn’t blame them, the focus really should be on Mika right now.

It’s unfair to put anything else on her.

As a side note, I hope Midori Francis gets an Emmy consideration for the scene where she reacts to Chloe’s death. Her sobs shook me to my core.

Bits and Bobs

• While Chloe was coding, the interns were responding to the code alone. Why are there never any grownups when things go south in this hospital?
• There were so many callbacks to old Grey’s Anatomy scenes: the interns crowding outside the trauma room window and Jules and Simone watching babies in the nursery for comfort. It was nostalgic in a heartbreaking way.
• Owen and Teddy managed to move past the weird Cass Beckman kissing storyline because of all the chaos, but Sophia Bush will be back, so I can’t imagine that drama is over.
• Watching Bailey comfort yet another class of interns as they grappled with losing one of their own was a special kind of awful.

Overall, it was a stressful and impactful episode, and it left us with the promise of things getting worse before they get better.

Next week is the fall finale, and the promo has already set up an incredibly terrifying premise that is yet another callback to an old storyline.

Adams and Jo will be in a convenience store when it’s robbed at gunpoint — which, if you recall, is exactly how Adams’ grandfather died. Bad vibes all around.

Sound off in the comments to let me know your thoughts on this week’s episode!

Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 10/9c on ABC.

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