Long-time Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo (Meredith Grey) made her directorial debut in last Thursday’s poignant and beautifully cinematic episode “Be Still, My Soul,” the 18th episode of season 13, which chronicles a cancer treatment that hits close to home for the doctors of Grey Sloan Memorial and explores the idea that love can sometimes do more harm than good.
The patient is Diane Pierce (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), who has late-stage breast cancer and is the adoptive mother of Dr. Maggie Pierce (Kelly McCreary). Maggie was given up for adoption by Meredith’s late mom, Dr. Ellis Grey (Kate Burton), after her affair with colleague Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens, Jr.), former chief and current surgeon at Grey Sloan, when Meredith was five years old. Maggie and Meredith met when Maggie started working at the hospital in season 10 and the two have since become close.
As such, Meredith passionately assists on the case as head of general surgery but hits a roadblock when a CAT scan reveals that Diane’s cancer has metastasized to her liver. Meredith pushes for more chemotherapy and refuses to do what she believes would be a risky, ill-advised surgery. Maggie is outraged, already feeling guilty that she couldn’t help her mom earlier, since Diane kept her in the dark for months about the cancer for fear of unnecessarily worrying her.
To appease Maggie, Diane fires Meredith and turns to the other doctors on the case, including Webber. Mer secretly helps them come up with an alternative, safer surgery, which goes well and qualifies Diane for a clinical trial. None of the doctors think the trial is a good idea, though, fearing it will kill Diane more quickly than the cancer. But Maggie can’t accept doing nothing, and Diane can’t accept disappointing her daughter, so she consents.
In one of the episode’s best scenes, Pompeo demonstrates her ability to craft a non-melodramatic montage. While Grey Sloan Chief Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) is informing Diane of the potential side effects of the treatment, viewers hear the symptoms in a voiceover while simultaneously watching as Diane experiences each of them in real-time, confirming and probably even exceeding the doctors’ worst fears.
In a kind of eye-of-the-hurricane scene, Diane finally experiences a reprieve from the side effects and decides to teach Maggie her recipe for homemade lasagna. She invites some of the doctors over for dinner at Meredith’s house where she’s been staying with Maggie, one of Mer’s roommates.
The dinner proves to be the comedic relief of an otherwise somber episode, ironically when Diane expresses her desire to pay her respects to Ellis, who died back in season three. Mer hesitantly but hilariously admits that she and Webber actually dumped her mom’s ashes down a sink drain in her mom’s favorite operating room because “it seemed like the right thing at the time.”
After an awkward moment of shock, everyone bursts out laughing, including Diane. But just as suddenly her laughter turns into a violent and bloody coughing fit that lands her back in the hospital with a torn esophagus.
Unable to stand by any longer, Meredith and Webber confront Maggie and Diane. Mer insists that Maggie is being unfair and not giving her mom a chance to have a say in a treatment that is “only doing her harm.” Maggie harshly counters that she simply loves her mother in a way Mer could never understand. For those unfamiliar with the show, Mer and Ellis did have a notoriously strained and complicated relationship that led Mer to brink of suicide.
Meanwhile, Diane tells Webber that she can’t bear the thought of her death giving Maggie a “darkness” that would never go away, so she wants to make sure Maggie knows when the time comes that there was nothing more she could’ve done to save her. After Webber assures her that Maggie is strong enough to handle her death, Diane admits to Maggie that she doesn’t want to keep fighting, leaving her daughter absolutely crushed.
Maggie, realizing she has to do what’s best for her mom, turns to Mer for help getting ready to let go. Mer says she’ll never be ready but that she can spend time with her mom while she still can and mentally “record her voice.” With that, Maggie turns off the projectors showing the scans of her mom’s cancer, finally accepting the inevitable.
The scene that follows is without a doubt Kelly McCreary’s finest performance of the season and the highlight of Pompeo’s directoral debut. In preparation for the end, Maggie is painting her mom’s nails while her mom tries to offer some life advice. She says Maggie needs to relax a little more and not always strive to be perfect.
Maggie eventually opens a window to let out the nail polish fumes, and in an affecting directorial move, Pompeo shows Diane’s still frame in the background of the shot. She doesn’t turn her head to face the window as someone would normally do, which lets the audience know a moment before Maggie that Diane is gone, heightening the emotional impact.
But it’s McCreary’s performance that truly sells the scene and had me on the verge of tears. After realizing what’s happened, Maggie breaks down and closes her mom’s eyes. She doesn’t try to get help. She doesn’t run from the room. Still sobbing, she lifts her mom’s hand and continues painting her nails.
Proving that she can also close well, Pompeo’s direction makes the final scene another stand-out. Back at Mer’s house, Maggie is sitting in front of a half full tray of her lasagna, staring off into space. In a panoramic shot, viewers see Mer and Amelia, Mer’s other roommate and the late Dr. Derek Shepherd’s sister, at the entrance to the kitchen.
Lastly, to cap off her first (and hopefully not last) venture as director, Pompeo ends the episode with a first: a special message to viewers in which she explains the warning signs of breast cancer and where to go for help, allowing the episode to surpass entertainment.
