Now finished with season 12, and I have so many thoughts. Before I air a couple of gripes, I'll say I still love the show and most of its storylines. The season just had a couple of stumbles that made me roll my eyes and groan a bit. Just because I'm critical doesn't mean I'm not generally a fan.
That season was a doozie. This show has always stretched plausibility, and it's kind of at its most fun when it does, but in this season, it stretches reality, and that's... a bit different.
It's the season of the pogo-stick amputee, which immediately became my least favorite episode. Maybe there's a medical explanation for why he couldn't just have his remaining leg stay where it was, but the show doesn't provide it. Wouldn't this surgery make it harder to get a prosthesis later? And if a prosthesis isn't an option, is this really preferable to being in a wheelchair? We've seen Callie make bones out of everything from metal to a 3D printer, so why not this guy's tailbone? Isn't there a lot of internal, erm, redirection that needs to happen if his leg is now going to be under his butt? I barely care what the explanation would've been, as long as we were given one. We weren't, and it's the most confusing episode.
It's also the season of the Most Unnecessary Custody Hearing Ever. Courts in this situation by default give physical custody to the parent who isn't moving. It's the relocating parent's responsibility to convince the court otherwise, and what they need to demonstrate is usually an indication of abuse, neglect, or substance abuse on the part of the non-relocating parent, or something that might be considered comparably serious. If you're going to remove a child from her school, friends, and support system, you usually need to be able to demonstrate that there's something expressly wrong with the current situation. In this episode, the court makes the correct (i.e., realistic and predictable) decision in the end, but the episode bases its drama on the idea that any of this was up in the air.
