Grey's Anatomy Recap: 5.4 "Brave New World"

A sex talk — Back in the dog-eat-dog world of general surgery, Bailey can't take one more moment of the lesbian crushiness that's permeating her corridors. She confronts Callie in an OR scrub room.

Bailey: I don't talk about sex.
Callie: Please. Let's just pretend I never said even a single word.
Bailey: I don't talk about sex with anyone, ever. Not any kind of sex.
Callie: Bailey, I am begging you…
Bailey: Zip!

Bailey takes a moment to gather her thoughts and choose her words of wisdom carefully.

Bailey: The va-jay-jay is undiscovered country. It is the motherland. You've never traveled there. You don't know its customs and ways. Now me? I've always wanted to go to Africa. But if I go, I'm going to have to learn a few things first. I'm going to have to prepare. I'll need shots... bring my own syringes, in case something goes wrong. And I'll want to know how to get to the embassy...
Callie: OK, now you've lost me.

You? She lost me, and I've been to the motherland so many times, I had to add pages to my passport.

And there's an embassy? Good to know, in case there's a coup.

Callie needn't be so worried. It's like spending time at a neighbor's house, in a neighborhood where all the houses are the same. You know the floor plan and where all the light switches are. Their house just doesn't feel like yours because it's decorated differently. But when their basement floods, you know what to do, because your does, too. What the hell am I saying?

Motherland, rainforest, deep blue sea. The land down under, south of the border, the promise land. It doesn't matter what you call it, although I prefer to think of it as a little slice of heaven.

Bailey's point is that communicating about rules and expectations is a universal language. But don't talk to her about it. Talk to "the other one" about that, and "how to gracefully demure if you find that you don't like the, eh, local cuisine."

Oh, we're doing food metaphors now? Don't get me started.

Narnia, just north of the motherland — George stumbles through the overgrown thicket of the surgery floor and emerges in the tranquil valley of dermatology. Izzie, Cristina and Meredith are all on the couch now, watching the peaceful natives in their natural habitat.

George is not as easily seduced by raspberry-infused water and hand massages, and tells the girls to snap out of it: These people apply lotion for a living. Cristina muses how much better their lives would be if only they learned to love lotion.

Don't say "lotion" around Erica. She won't like it.

Izzie likes Lotionland better than the wild, wild west. In Lotionland, nobody steal your patients. George tells her to buck up, little buckaroo.

George: Izzie. In the wild, wild west, there is always a woman in the saloon and nobody messes with her, even thought they all have guns.
Izzie: She's a prostitute. The woman in the saloon is a whore, George.
George: No, she just has other skills she uses to make her way in the world. So, just use what you got.

George grabs the girls and drags them back into the real world. If he has to live in it, so do they.

Other skills — Izzie takes George's advice to heart and charms her way into the patient's good graces using her saloon whore charms. It works: Alex is out, Izzie is in. Alex doesn't have what Izzie has: Blond tresses, a disarming smile and northern mountains, er, molehills.

Cristina's rash patient took a turn for the worse while she was in Narnia. She returns to find the woman coding and Lexie standing around flailing her arms wildly. They rush the woman into surgery.

Meanwhile, child advocate George convinces the Chief and Hahn that little Duncan's fears would be alleviated if only he could tour an OR before his procedure. Fear of the unknown can only be banished by the knowing. Paging Dr. Torres.

George dresses Duncan up in some precious over-sized scrubs and escorts him into this surgery.

Cool! I had a fun, gay uncle and we never did anything as awesome as that.

George grabs Duncan and whisks him over to the correct OR, where things are boring and everyone's faces are intact. Ho hum. Duncan no longer fears surgery and furthermore, would like to go back to the first OR. Maybe this kid isn't so bad after all.