Cowgirls Don’t Cry
Season 19 • Episode 13
While two docs fear for their marriage on Grey’s Anatomy, another has reason to fear for her life and those of her family. By the end of Season 19, Episode 13 — April 6’s “Cowgirls Don’t Cry” — Bailey (Chandra Wilson), Ben (Jason George), and their kids are in the crosshairs.
[Warning: The below contains major spoilers for the Grey’s Anatomy Season 19, Episode 13, “Cowgirls Don’t Cry.”]
As the episode starts, Maggie (Kelly McCreary) and Winston (Anthony Hill) are in couples therapy. But Maggie struggles to even find a nice thing to say about her husband.
Later on, we found out why. As Winston guessed last episode, Maggie doesn’t respect him. She hasn’t really respected him ever since he left her stranded on a video call with his parents way back when. “You’re a person who retreats,” she tells him. “When the going gets tough, you retreat. You quit. You disappear. You protect yourself, no matter what it costs anybody else.”
Liliane Lathan/ABC
It gets worse. Maggie also informs Winston that it’s not his heart she has an issue with. It’s his cowardice.
Plus, ever since she was profiled in that medical journal, she’s been getting job offers left and right. And she decides in this episode to take one of those job offers and move to Chicago.“You can stay here and pretend it was you who was abandoned, but we both know the truth,” she says to Winston.
When she’s not dropping truth bombs in her marriage, Maggie spends the episode saving the life of a 16-year-old rodeo rider named Georgia, who got bucked off and then stomped on by a half-ton bull. The docs realize that they can’t operate on Georgia’s spine without running the risk of her hematoma rupturing. Georgia’s parents make the call, however, telling the docs to do the spine operation even with the rupture risk, knowing that it’s the only way for Georgia to get back on the horse, er, bull.
Liliane Lathan/ABC
Sure enough, the hematoma ruptures during Georgia’s operation. Still, Maggie, Amelia (Caterina Scorsone), and Owen (Kevin McKidd) manage to save her life.
Later, Maggie and Amelia confront Georgia’s mom about letting a teenager ride bulls. But the mom says she and Georgia’s father aren’t pressuring the teen to do rodeo stunts. It’s Georgia’s passion. Maggie knows a thing or two about being an overachieving youth, though, so she gives Georgia a gentle talking-to once the teen wakes up.
In other medical developments, Richard (James Pickens Jr.) dismisses a former Adderall-abuser’s pain, but Adams (Niko Terho) realizes that the man has a toothpick rupturing his bowel. And Yasuda (Midori Francis), who’s so broke that she’s selling her plasma and eating donuts out of the trash, convinces a woman to get a chest scan for her pneumonia case, saying that it’s better to be in medical debt than to be dead.
Meanwhile, Levi (Jake Borelli) realizes hasn’t been the nice guy he thinks he is. When he calls hot nurse Carlos (Calvin Seabrooks) for an on-call-room booty call, Carlos reveals he took a new assignment in Phoenix. He didn’t bother to tell Levi because it seemed like Levi was more interested in sex than conversation, he says.
And it gets worse! At the bar, Helm (Jaicy Elliot) tells Levi that all the interns think he’s a tyrant, since he yells so much. Later, Bailey explains to Levi that if he wants to be the vagina of the surgical program, as he famously said earlier this season, then he has to understand that vaginas bring pleasure, joy, and life, and not just strength. “You have to be the whole vagina,” she says. “Not just the muscle.”
So Levi invites the interns out for drinks. Yasuda, desperately in need of money, takes the chance to apply for a job as the late-shift bartender. Griffith (Alexis Floyd) asks Adams if he’ll be her man of honor, despite any lingering feelings he might have for her, since he’s the person who knows her best. And Kwan (Harry Shum Jr.) propositions Millin (Adelaide Kane) at the bar. She says that she can’t sleep with him, since she caught feelings for him when he showed his animal-rights stripe and defended the bull earlier that day. But Kwan says that he doesn’t have feelings for her, so they can still justify their no-strings-attached fun, and they run off to find a bed to jump in.
Meanwhile, Amelia heads to an AA meeting and sees Richard there. They tell each other why they’re having rough days. For him, it’s the fact that he missed a diagnosis. And for her, it’s that she might be losing another sister.
And back at the hospital, someone puts a flyer on Ben’s windshield as he waits for Bailey in his car. Ben gets out, sees what’s on the flyer, and tries to chase the person. When Bailey emerges from the hospital and finds Ben in a huff, he holds up the flyer for her to see: It’s her name, photo, home address, and phone number, with the words “Baby Killer.” She’s been doxxed by anti-abortion activists for her reproductive healthcare at the clinic.
Next week, it’s Maggie’s farewell episode, and it’s a two-hour event. See you then, Grey’s fam!
Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, 9/8c, ABC
