Mommy Dearest

After a little checking, I realized that this is my first summary of this show since 5/21/2007, when I summarized the 3rd season finale.

Now this is my Grey's.

Eric Stoltz Serial Killer and Kid Who Needs Organs playing off each other — and more importantly, playing the doctors off each other — perfectly. Ponytail humor. Interesting secondary medical cases that also illuminate the human condition. Tyne Daly guest starring as Derek's mom.

Yes.

Okay, so it wasn't perfect. So Denny was still lingering, and the annoying blond pediatric doctor was still annoying, and Lexie and Mark were still hooking up. But if you ignore those little lingering problems, things went great. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to ignore those things today and focus on the good stuff, because the good was so good, and my complaints about the aforementioned have been aforementioned to death.

So onto the greatness. Bailey's prized kid patient, Jackson, needed a liver and intestines so badly that she was obsessing about it in the middle of the night, even paging the Blond Doctor Who Shall Not Be Named to chat about it. Eric Stoltz was pondering the fact that his execution would be in five days, and he'd rather die in the hospital. We could see where this was going.

Everyone else, however, was quite focused on the impending arrival of Derek's mom. So was I, honestly — I've been convinced since last week's teaser scenes that Tyne Daly would fix everything. And I was correct. If I were acknowledging Lexie and Sloan's right to exist, I'd mention that even they were talking about her coming visit as they also discussed Lexie's insanely young age of 24 in a post-coital chat. And if I were recognizing Denny, I'd say that he was right there with Izzie when she told Meredith she shouldn't wear her hair all down and regular and Meredith-y if she wanted to impress Derek's mom. Cut to Meredith with a teenybopper hairdo, complete with pink awful-scrunchie-thing. And Derek walking in to say, ''You're wearing an alarmingly high ponytail.'' And me, celebrating the return of Grey's.

Of course with the fun comes the drama — and the gore. As in, dude who went to Hong Kong to get his legs surgically lengthened came in with some seriously mashed up calves. ''They said it'd give me a whole 2 inches,'' he explained. (He even made me really, really feel for guys for a moment. Sure, they look ridiculously sexy with gray hair, wrinkles suit them just fine — see Dr. Hunt here for prime example — and they rarely have to wax or tweeze a thing. But I felt it.) Bailey, meanwhile, was gamely setting up the impending departure of Melissa George's Sadie, reading her the riot act for being a teeny bit encouraging to Jackson's mother about his chances of getting a transplant. Bailey even went so far as to call her ''squirrelly.'' Seriously. A little much.

Eric Stoltz continued to be riveting as the serial killer whom we can never really get a read on. Is he repentant? Did he really do what he says he did? What does he want, anyway? He told Meredith a story that may or may not have been true about being beaten as a kid and learning to read on the detergent bottles while he hid under the sink. Right about then his gurney crossed paths with Jackson's, amping up the tension even more. Would he tell the kid about his heinous crimes when the kid asked? No. Would he say something else horrible? No. But when Jackson said he needed organs, he did say, ''Want mine?''

Then we were back to the lighter side as we ignored Denny saying that not having to meet the family was one of the perks of dating a dead guy, and as we cheered when Hunt awkwardly asked Cristina out in the middle of the work day, then scampered off. ''I think you and the pig murderer make a really good couple,'' Izzie gushed to Cristina at lunch afterwards. And then I officially decided to break my earlier rule and full-out acknowledge Lexie and Mark's coupling. Because I must admit, it got pretty good in the cafeteria. She laid down the law, telling him, ''You sleep with me, you lunch with me.'' Which caused all the other interns to enthusiastically join them, thrilled that he was letting his underlings join him for a meal, and squealing things like, ''They have tater tots!'' He freaked so much that he not only fled the scene, he immediately went and confessed his affair to Tyne Daly. ''Which one is she?'' Mama Shepherd asked. ''The one with the juice box,'' he answered. She then tracked Lexie down later in the hallway for a mom-tacular confrontation in which she asked her if she was ''a good girl.'' ''How many sexual partners have you had?'' (The answer: ''Six. Seven. Kinda six. Kinda seven.'' BTW, I was once informed by several guy friends that seven is the perfect number, if you're ever going to tell a guy a number. Just a tip.) ''Criminal record?'' (Answer: Speeding ticket, ''12 miles over.'' As Tyne said, ''That's fast.'') And just like that, I joined team Mark-and-Lexie. For now, anyway.

As for our other couples, Cristina and Owen (we're going to try his first name now that there's real live dating going on, because I don't like calling the girls by first names and guys by last names — gender parity, y'all) plunged into further awkwardness when she tried out one of Izzie's dating tips on him. All wrong, of course: ''I finished your post-ops,'' she told him. Then stared at him in silence. Then added, ''So, what was your best surgery ever?'' Then he didn't answer. Back in the serial killer room, Eric Stoltz was unconscious and Meredith was refusing to sign the consent form — the one that needs two doctors' signatures to operate when the patient is out — for Derek, which could not bode well. Cristina stepped in and signed, and thus got to scrub in on his surgery instead. Just before the surgery, Cristina and Meredith ran into each other and seemed to strike the closest they could get to a truce. ''That ponytail looks ridiculous,'' Cristina told Meredith, and Meredith took her hair down. This, friends, is why we love Grey's.

We also love it for the following reasons: Mrs. Shepherd gave Mark a good talking to and making, I'll once again admit, a good case for him trying things with Lexie. Short Guy's brother laid into him for using his shortness as an excuse for everything: ''No one knows how short you are except for you, dude.'' Mrs. Shepherd gave Major Hunt unsolicited advice about taking Valerian Root to sleep. Basically, a lot of Mrs. Shepherd.

Oh, and I just realized Patrick Dempsey is finally getting to act! (That is, act something other than sappy and sorry for Meredith.) That's why he suddenly got a sad backstory about his dad being shot by robbers! So he could get material worthy of an Emmy reel! ''There's no way in hell I'm gonna let you die in this hospital,'' he growled to Eric Stoltz, setting up the conflict sure to ensue next week since we learned Jackson's first set of donated organs wasn't working. Thanks to the prisoner, Meredith also got to confess her emo tendencies to Mama Shepherd. ''I'm dark and cloudy,'' she told her, ''because I'm the type of person who feels bad for serial killers.'' Mom seemed to walk off in a snit of disappointment, but — ah, there it was — she told Derek later that she knew Meredith was the one for him. Awww. Of course, Meredith also hinted strongly to Eric Stoltz that if he bumped his head post-surgery it'd probably kill him, and then we had to actually see him repeatedly bang his bandaged head against the back of his bed, but, well, that's a mess to be sorted out next week, too.

The better news: Izzie broke up with the person we're no longer acknowledging! Because he's dead! And Alex wanted Izzie to meet his mom! And PLEASE TELL ME DENNY IS NOT THERE WHY DO I STILL SEE DENNY IF ALEX STARTS TALKING TO HIM NOW I AM DONE. Okay, Alex didn't talk to him. But really. Let's wrap it up now.

And best yet: Owen showed up to Cristina's for their date hours late and drunk. Okay, that's not really the good part. The good part starts with the fact that he brought her flowers and wore a suit. The good part continued with Cristina telling him he needed a shower. So, of course, he headed right for hers, fully clothed. And he stood there, under the water stream, and he told her about his best surgery, something about a guy he saved who then later killed himself. It sounds sort of ridiculous, but in the hands of these two, it was masterful, riveting. And it's worth noting that Hunt is also a wonderfully nuanced depiction of a veteran. No annoying flag-waving and histrionic heroics, just a guy who somehow survived an unbelievable job, and was destroyed by it in some ways, but is still muddling through back in real life now, and still needs love. Anyway, then she stepped into the shower with him, also fully clothed.

And, wow, that was good.