No One Who Ever Worked At Seattle Grace Can Ever Be Professional

As I confessed last week, I took the better part of a decade off from Grey's Anatomy, so I cheerfully grant that there's a lot I've missed in the intervening years. But one of the aspects of the show that initially drove me away was the plot-convenient yet infuriating lack of professionalism among its characters, and as we check back in with Burke for the first time since I stopped watching the show, I SEE THAT NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

It starts with the plot point that reunites Burke and Yang in the first place: she gets invited to deliver her big paper in Zurich, and since all that's going on at her current job is a lot of recriminations about the award she just lost -- which, understandably, she's kind of sick of hearing about -- she decides to go. She gets put up in a beautiful hotel room and delivers her paper to a positive response, and then gets pulled up short when the most trenchant questions come from...BURKE! He's totally the one who invited her! Somehow, even though she should be conversant with the biggest developments in her professional field, she had no idea that he worked at this hospital -- and when he decided to invite her to speak, he didn't let her know she'd be seeing him, out of fear that she wouldn't come. So that was my first outrage at the episode -- that Burke would have so little regard for her professionalism that he would think her antipathy toward him for leaving her at the altar would supersede her good instincts about her career; after all, when he's done showing off all the amazing shit his hospital is doing -- surgical holograms, a whole room full of 3D printers -- and (duh) offers her a job there, she considers it seriously enough to ask Meredith what she should do! Okay, so, the show is actually taking the position that Burke's underestimated Cristina and that the ambitious, driven woman you've been watching all these years is still focused on what's actually important and not petty shit from A WHOLE MARRIAGE AGO.

Then Cristina goes to give Burke her answer on the job offer, and everything falls apart.

1. Cristina turns Burke down because she doesn't want to work for him again.

I'm kind of with her when she says it's because she doesn't want to work for him -- she wants to be him. But as this episode and the last have already established, Cristina has definitely reached the limits of what she's going to be able to achieve back at Grey Sloan Memorial. Is she likely to get other offers based on her research, even though she didn't win the award? Sure. But this offer is now, and if she really wants to be Burke someday, maybe working for him is the way to get there, eventually, regardless of their personal issues? EXCEPT THERE IS NO "REGARDLESS OF THEIR PERSONAL ISSUES" IN THE GREY'S ANATOMY UNIVERSE.

2. Burke says he could never work with Cristina again either.

Let's backtrack for a second: when Cristina first thinks Burke is offering her this job as a first step on the road to their getting back together romantically, he very dramatically turns around the photos on his desk to show her his wife and children, and also includes the information that his wife was a surgeon but that she gave up her career to run their family; not only that, but he confidently declares that the ideal partners for people like Cristina and himself are people like his wife, who will keep a home and (I'm paraphrasing) put their own professional interests second (or last, in this case). Cristina does get a line disputing this, but just on the basis that he doesn't know her or her needs anymore and not, for example, that maybe Burke is only speaking for himself, and that there are lots of high achievers who are happy to be married to other high achievers who choose to remain in their jobs even after they have kids, and isn't this kind of bullshit attitude maybe part of what made him decide not to marry Cristina? ANYWAY: Burke says he couldn't work with Cristina because he'd just fall in love with her again and wreck his family. Maybe if we found out this was coming from Mrs. Burke, uncomfortable with the idea of her husband working closely with his ex-fiancée, I'd kind of buy it -- that even if he could be professional enough to put what's best for his institution/patients/MEDICAL SCIENCE IN GENERAL ahead of those old feelings, he would defer to her wishes for the sake of her happiness -- but we never actually meet Mrs. Burke because she is not a character but an abstract idea: The Opposite Of Cristina, a.k.a. The Right Woman For Burke And His Needs As A Great Man.

3. Burke's actually offering Cristina his job.

And, again, he didn't actually make this clear when he was making the offer -- AS ANY REAL PROFESSIONAL WOULD DO -- because if he did, this dumb confrontation would never happen.

4. Burke's giving up his position to move to Milan with his wife

Oh my God, the show would have done SO MUCH to win me back over if the reason were that she was returning to work and that was where her amazing opportunity was, but no, it's just to be closer to her parents, because in case you missed it when he said it before, she is ALL ABOUT FAMILY and BECAUSE SHE'S SUCH A SUPERMOM has probably TOTALLY EVEN FORGOTTEN HOW TO DOCTOR and ISN'T THAT GREAT FOR BURKE???

So now the path is clear for Cristina to be Burke, because Burke is letting them resume leading separate lives while also handing her the job of her dreams. We all knew she'd take it because...Sandra Oh is leaving the show, and once TV characters move to Europe, they never come back. Fine. And I guess they had to take Burke out of the equation because people would be mad if there were even the possibility of their getting back together (not just because of how things ended between them but because of the offscreen events that landed Isaiah Washington in TV jail until The 100 rehabilitated him). I just wish the show could have gotten us here completely on Cristina's own well-established merits without throwing in so many contingencies with regard to everyone's stupid hurt feelings. YOU'RE SCIENTISTS. FUCKING BE DISPASSIONATE FOR ONCE YOU GODDAMN IDIOTS.