'Grey's Anatomy' Recap: Burke Lures Cristina To Zurich; Jackson & April Reconcile

by Chelsea ReganMay 2, 2014, 12:00 amNews >

Grey’s Anatomy episode "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," highly anticipated due to the return of Preston Burke, began with a voice over about finding a new perspective as Owen informs Cristina that she’s in high demand to talk about her conduits all over the country.

Grey's Anatomy Recap

When Owen (Kevin McKidd) and Cristina (Sandra Oh) get to the board meeting, Richard (James Pickens Jr.) takes the lead, talking about the problem Grey Sloan Memorial has with the Harper Avery. If it’s known that no doctor from the hospital can win the coveted award so long as the Avery Foundation essentially owns it, and they’re going to struggle to get funding and to keep on talented doctors. Head of cardio Dr. Russell has already fled. Richard suggests that Cristina fight the Harper Avery decision.

Cristina isn’t exactly eager to become the face of this particular fight and exits the meeting without committing to Richard’s plan. In the elevator, Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) tells her she might want to consider heading to Zurich to present her conduits and get away for a bit. Now that the kids with the heart troubles are being discharged, now could be a perfect time for Cristina to take a break.

Picking up their drama from last week, April (Sarah Drew) and Jackson (Jesse Williams) go for an ultrasound appointment. When the married pair are asked if they’d like to terminate the pregnancy, they both say no, but the friction between them is palpable. Things only get worse when Jackson and Richard go at it about the board meeting Richard called without him. Richard explains that the hospital, as he’d helped build it, had certain ideals – ideals that the Avery Foundation doesn’t seem to share. He calls the partnership a doomed marriage. April, hearing the whole thing, of course relates the conversation to her marriage to Jackson.

Derek & Amy Separate Conjoined Twins

Amy (Caterina Scorsone) is still in Seattle and is working with her big brother Derek (Patrick Dempsey) on a massive surgery – separating 25-year-old twin girls that are conjoined at the head and consequently sharing a brain. Dozens of other doctors are helping the neuro duo on the case, leaving poor Jo (Camila Luddington) to pick up everyone else’s slack around the hospital. With her hands full, Jo struggles mightily to keep everything under control. Meanwhile, her boyfriend Alex (Justin Chambers) is flying around in his new ride, and loving his new job.

The massive surgery isn’t going as well as they’d hoped. The twin named Lizzie got a clot, which forced the doctors to separate them faster than they’d wanted to. In the end, Lizzie dies, but Derek thinks that Amy did a great job and has already recommended her to take over his role in Callie’s project.

Up in the gallery during the surgery, tensions were just as high as they are down below, as Richard goes after Jackson again upon realizing Yang is off in Zurich. Richard blames Jackson and the Avery family for Cristina likely taking her skills elsewhere. Surprisingly, April stands up for her husband, telling Richard that Jackson isn’t Katherine (Debbie Allen) and that he’s over compensating for his own sense of guilty for wrapping the hospital up with the Avery Foundation in the first place.

Later on, Jackson goes in search of April and finds her at the hospital chapel. Ready to reconcile, he tells her that he’d be happy to go to church with her and their kids every Sunday as long as they can go out for waffles afterwards. In other growing family news, Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) is floating some horrible baby names at Callie (Sara Ramirez) in the hopes that it’ll make her warm to some of the cuter ones she’d like for their new baby.

Bubble boy Braden seems to be making a miraculous recovery, which the parents think is due to having all of his treatments stopped. However, Stephanie (Jerrika Hinton) runs some tests and realizes that Bailey (Chandra Wilson) gave him the enzyme despite his parents’ insistence that she not put anything else into their son’s body. Stephanie vows to keep her mouth shut, but it’s likely Bailey’s secret will come out eventually.

Burke Invites Cristina To Stay In Zurich

In Zurich, Cristina is soaking in her luxurious time away from work and communicating to Meredith through voicemail messages. After giving her presentation, still up on the podium, Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington) stands up to thank her for her presentation. Cristina later learns that he’s the one who invited her to the Zurich hospital, but had left his name off the invite, knowing she would have declined had she known. After all, the last time they saw each other was before he left her before the wedding.

Meredith, after receiving Cristina’s message that Burke was there, left one of her own, reminding her best friend about that horrible day. However, Burke knows the one thing that can get Cristina to put that behind her – at least for a few hours. He invites Cristina to watch him perform a surgery he’s about to have published, and he has her hooked.

In the OR, Burke brings up Cristina’s Harper Avery loss and tells her not to worry about it too much. He goes on to tell her the hellish aftermath he had upon winning his – the pressure, being overwhelmed, his eventual need to flee. It all turned out okay, though, as he managed to find a wealthy man in Zurich to fund the hospital that allows him to do his work without the need of government funding. As for his new project, it’s a holographic heart that will allow doctors to see a 3D model of the heart to access the best course of action without ever having to go in blind again.

If she wasn’t already sold on Burke and Zurich, he tells her that he has 49 printers at the hospital. As he anticipated, Cristina’s next project idea was to print a fully functional human heart. Where better to do that than a place with 49 printers at her disposal? If she wants, she could start tomorrow. Cristina wonders if it’s all a ploy to get back together with her, but that’s not the case. He’s happily married to a woman who wanted to stay at home and raise their two kids. Burke wants her at the hospital because of her skills as a surgeon.

When Cristina goes back to her hotel room, she leaves Meredith a voicemail and before she gets a return one, she heads back to Burke. She doesn’t want the job. Working for him again, according to Cristina, would be the worst thing for her. She doesn’t want to work for him; she wants to achieve what he’s achieved and more on her own. By freeing her when he didn’t go to their wedding, he’d paved the way for her current success. Her rant, however justified, wasn’t necessary. Burke didn’t want her to work for him.

Burke is self-aware enough to know that it would be too hard on his marriage to be so close to someone he’d loved so deeply and had no plans on her working for him. Instead, he wants Cristina to take over for him. His wife wants to move to Milan, but before he goes, he wants to make sure the hospital is in the right hands. Cristina, when she gets back to Seattle, tells Meredith she’s moving to Zurich.