Anatomy and

Physiology

Submitted by:

Rusthia Ann I. Maquirang

Submitted to:
 Grey’s Anatomy: Winning a Battle, Losing a War

(Season 1, Episode 3)

Summary:

A first year surgical intern at Seattle Grace Hospital, Meredith Grey, along with her fellow
first year interns Cristina Yang, Izzie Stevens, George O'Malley and Alex Karev, continue to
struggle to survive the toughest surgical residency program of Harvard where they are students
no more, but doctors who are on a job training concerning a matter of life and death. In this
episode, Meredith has discovered that the rules of residency are the same as the rules of life.
Everything is a competition.

The annual Dead Baby Bike Race made it a really hard but challenging day for the
interns and again, Meredith just can’t get away from competition. The race injured cyclists and
innocent by standers which loaded the hospital with patients and brought chaos in Seattle
Grace. As injured patients from the race arrived in the hospital, the interns began to fight over
the interesting patients they want to handle. Through a coin toss, Meredith won the fight with
Alex over Viper, a bike messenger with thin, metal spikes sticking out of his stomach. Alex, with
his arrogance, takes over and pulls out the metal spikes so Meredith stitched Viper’s stomach
up and persuaded him to undergo some essential tests which he refused to do. Viper’s
negligence brought his life to danger, his stomach wound is out of control so he came back to
see Meredith, but all of sudden he collapses on the floor. Without hesitation she clasped her
hands over his wound as they rush to surgery that saved Viper’s life. Meanwhile, Izzie and
Cristina chose a patient they called John Doe where they are on a countdown to find the family
of their unidentified patient. If they see no brain activity in 6 hours, he will be declared brain
dead. Izzie is hoping for a miracle. Cristina, on the other hand, is hoping for an organ harvest.
When the two of them found the brain dead guy’s family, Cristina tried to convince the patient’s
wife to agree to an organ donation, but she can’t handle the emotional stuff. Luckily, their
resident Bailey, helped her to get through it and successfully had the family’s consent to harvest
the organs of the brain dead guy, Kevin. Chief Webber gives George a special assignment. He
has to take care of the Chief’s personal friend, who has been admitted with liver failure. Kevin,
Izzie’s and Cristina’s brain dead patient is a perfect blood match with the Chief’s friend who
desperately needs a liver so, they transplanted Kevin’s donated liver to elongate Macky’s Life.

It was a long and hard day for the interns, but they learned a lot of meaningful things
from it. Meredith learned to get along with her fellow interns who started to treat her as their
sibling which not only gave more fire to their relationship but also, strengthened their bond.
Meredith still deals with her complicated personal life, but despite all of it, she always makes a
great and fair competitor in her own life’s tough competition.
 Movie Review of Grey’s Anatomy: Winning a Battle, Losing a War

(Season 1, Episode 3)

A lot of medical films that was released have inspired many people to become doctors
and nurses probably because of the cool aura that surrounds most of the characters that
portrays the role of Doctors in almost all of the films nowadays. Most of these films include
Hospital mysteries, The life of Medical students, Hospital on a ship, and the most common of all
is Hospital romance like the Korean drama series, Doctor Crush and Hospital Ship which
interests a wide range of viewers. There is also an American medical drama television series
that is worth every second of your time which unsurprisingly, caught a lot of attention from the
viewers because of its interesting plot and exciting episodes. Grey’s Anatomy written by Shonda
Rhimes is fictional series which revolves around the main character of the series, Dr. Meredith
Grey and the lives of her fellow interns, residents, and attending physicians, as they develop
into seasoned doctors while trying to maintain their personal lives and relationships. I really liked
the fact that every title of each episode in this series was named after a title of a song which
added a little fun in the film. Imagine if the next episode you will watch was named after your
favorite song? It will be more interesting than it already is.

In my opinion, Winning a Battle, Losing a War is one of the best episodes of Grey’s
Anatomy for it showed both competitive and emotional side of each character in the story.
According to Meredith, “The Ways of residency, become the ways of life. Everything is a
competition.” This shows her passion for her job above all the difficulty she has with maintaining
good social relationship with her fellow interns. Despite all the flaws of Dr. Meredith Grey’s
character in this episode, I like the fact that she is genuine and has a strong personality that
effectively influences others around her. In addition, this episode had had the best life lesson
and touching ending among all the episodes in the first season of the series. It is interesting how
Meredith, the main character, related the annual Dead Baby Bike Race, to her current life
situation. According to her in the last part of the episode, “Everything is a competition. Whoever
said that winning wasn't everything never held a scalpel. There's another way to survive this
competition. A way no one ever seems to tell you about. One you have to learn for yourself. It is
not about the race at all. There are no winners or losers. Victories are counted by the number of
lives saved. And once in a while, if you're smart, the life you save could be your own.” I totally
agree with her because human lives are what actually count. Anyway, these life changing words
of Dr. Meredith did not stopped me from disliking Alex Karev’s arrogance and overly confident
attitude which annoyed me all throughout the episode. To put light into the darkness, his
character kind of balanced the good and bad atmosphere in the scenario which contributed a
good flavor and smooth flow of events in the story. Although some of the scenes where the
casts perform inaccurate medical practices, which is I think is not very visible to some of the
audiences, might get a lot of criticism from the experts in the field of medicine. I still think it is
amazing enough how the casts made it appear like it is reality when after all; it will always
remain as a fictional drama series.
 So far, Winning a battle, losing a war is a great episode of Grey's Anatomy. What's great is the
general idea of the whole episode is very relatable for many people. It