The Talented Ms. Oh

Lots of praise for Sandra from reviewers and bloggers after Thursday's episode of Grey's. Here is a small compilation:

• Sandra Oh wins the award for most powerful performance on an episode packed with them last night. Things with Cristina and Owen are literally heating up! - TV Fanatic

• Finally, there are the folks currently dwelling in the Love/Trust air ducts (complete with vent burns), Christina and Owen. He's giving Kim Raver the silent treatment for being a lovesick drunk, and channeling all of his redheaded aggression into grabbing Christina and screwing her willful need to put surgery first into submission. Things here climaxed (sorry) when Kim Raver paged Yang for an aortic repair and Owen talked Yang into ignoring it in favor of continuing to be, well, screwed into submission. I found it incredibly difficult to believe that Christina would ever choose sex over surgery — and thus was thrilled beyond belief at Sandra Oh's beautifully honest final monologue, in which she revealed to Owen (and to us) that Burke had taken little pieces of her, one by one, until she wasn't Christina Yang anymore but rather a monosyllabic liar with no eyebrows. Then she said that when Owen asked her to ignore Kim Raver's page, he took a piece of her, too — and she will never let that happen again. The look in her eyes both accused him and challenged him to be better, and I thought, ''Damn, that is some fierce, mature, adult relationshipping going on right there!'' Although I did also have this quick moment where I was like, ''Wait, Christina, was being forced to ignore Kim Raver's page and have presumably really good sex with your boyfriend worse than that one time he tried to strangle you?'' and then I remembered that post-traumatic stress disorder is no laughing matter. Yay, mature adulthood! - Whitney Pastorek, EW

• And finally, we were treated to a brutally honest monologue from Cristina to Owen after they spent the entire episode engaged in ridiculously aggressive sex just about everywhere. (Only on Grey’s will you have a character being treated for vent burns below the waistline, with said character muttering things like “Please don’t cry on my ass” while keeping a straight face). When Cristina told Owen she would never choose sex over surgery again, all while explaining what tore apart her relationship with Preston Burke, it was a beautiful wrap to a great episode. Definitely one of those “For Your Consideration” moments from Sandra Oh, because she really knocked it out of the park. - TV Done Wright

• Cristina and Owen and Teddy: Owen's still smarting from learning that Cristina would've agreed to give him to Teddy to keep her from leaving, and while he refuses to speak to Teddy, he does all kinds of letting his body talk with Cristina. They're, ahem, intimate all over the place (not quite Cinemax after dark, but not too far off -- wowza), to the point where Cristina ends up with butt burns from a session in the boiler room. It's "Grey's Anatomy" -- of course there's going to be some kind of weird injury.
Meanwhile, Teddy decides to use Avery on her service rather than Cristina, except for when she really needs her in the kid's surgery -- and at Owen's urging not to leave him, Cristina uncharacteristically ignores her page. Owen tries to throw himself on the grenade for her, but it gets infinitely more interesting in the end, when they really get down to what's going on. She accuses him of trying to subdue and control her with sex, and he despairs that she doesn't give any of herself to him, so he can't know her. He didn't know, for example, about her engagement to Burke until it came out in a conversation with Derek and Mark. She insists that Burke isn't relevant to their relationship, and finally breaks down and explains that that relationship took pieces of her away as she tried to be what he wanted her to be. She's terrified that it'll happen again, just as she's getting herself back, and confesses that when he persuaded her not to answer her page, he took a piece of her away. It's a really lovely bit of acting from Sandra Oh, and I remain completely pulling for this relationship. It was fabulous to see Cristina vulnerable, but on her own terms. - Zap2It

• Yang and Owen, however, are hotter and heavier than ever. Especially when their midday romp in the steam room leaves Cristina with burn marks on her behind (or "hot cross buns," as Alex quips.) A later love-making session is interrupted by a page from Teddy, who wants Cristina to assist on the peds patient. Owen begs Cristina to stay with him and she does, but when Teddy yells at Cristina, he tells her it was his fault that he didn't let her go. "What are you trying to do to me?" Cristina asks.
She tells Owen that he's been trying to screw her into submission (he really is too aggressive — all their love scenes make me uncomfortable), and he says he's simply trying to connect with her because she doesn't tell him anything. Case in point: He doesn't know why she jilted Burke. She finally caves and said she loved Burke so much that she stopped being who she was for him. She's frightened now because she loves Owen even more, and when she didn't take Teddy's page, she was doing the same thing all over again, just after she finally found herself again. "And that will never happen again," she says. (Props to Sandra Oh in this scene.) - TV Guide

• Anatomy Lesson OK, Cristina-Owen fans, was it hot enough for you on Grey’s Anatomy this week? Any chance they got, they got it on. Passionately. Including in that hidden grotto where Yang burns her fanny on a grate. “Hot cross buns,” Alex smirks, while Cristina and a weepy Lexi discuss “sex injuries,” leading Yang to caution the brokenhearted mini-Grey, “Please don’t cry on my a--.” It all erupts, ultimately, in a tear-jerking confrontation between Cristina and Owen, as she accuses him of “trying to screw me into submission.” He yells back, “You give me nothing!” and brings up Burke—whoa—as she blasts him for keeping her from answering Teddy’s page (mid-sex, naturally) during a medical crisis. She’s not going to lose herself for the sake of a man again. “You took a piece of me, and I let you, and that will never happen again.” Powerful stuff. Why doesn’t Sandra Oh have an Emmy yet? - Matt Roush, TV Guide Magazine