I'll confess: Ever since Grey's Anatomy premiered in 2005, I've had a grudge against it since it stole the thunder from Lost and took its place as the media darling. Of course, being a rational viewer, I started watching Grey's Anatomy to see what all the fuss was about. And I found out that it was great.
But that was then. While Lost has only improved as it has *progressed* (apart from that infamous starting segment of the show's third season and certain characters called "P" and "N"), Grey peaked pretty early on, probably sometime around third season. Like with all character-based dramas (as opposed to grand stories like that of Lost), the problem becomes that you eventually have explored every aspect of the characters and then the show starts running on autopilot or featuring copious amounts of guest stars and bad shock twists (the ending of the fifth season being a quality exception) or gimmick episodes. Speaking of which...
Grey's Anatomy Does Rashômon - not exactly an original idea, since pretty much every long-running drama seems to eventually do it. But Grey succeeds: the episode hits the ground running and the relentless pace never lets up until the conclusion and the obligatory Meredith voice-over, the use of which I've never quite understood. It's usually as welcome as the studio-imposed Deckard voice-over in Blade Runner's original release.
But back to this episode. I decided to avoid spoilers, so I'll just comment on things that don't involve plot. We have a proved premise, the direction and editing are first class and to give support to the main cast, we have some great veteran actors like Bill Fagerbakke, Mitch Pileggi and Saundra McClain. Music is used to build tension and enhance the mood exceptionally well, not heavy-handedly or poorly recycled (see how many seasons worth of The X Files episodes you can watch before the music that was genius at the beginning starts to *really* annoy you). As a whole, the episode is practically flawless, the only problem being that it does not offer anything new.
The first five episodes of the sixth season have been big disappointments, but at least this episode proves that even a show past its prime occasionally pulls off a winner.