Totally off theme — but on second thought, not so much — Daddy Grey came into the hospital for care, thus providing our weekly dose of Father Issues and our quota of staffers'-family-member appearances. ''Should I go get Lexie?'' Meredith stammered upon first encountering her drunken paternal figure, who'd put his hand through some glass. Which is exactly what I'd ask if I were in her situation, too, but, no, she'd have to deal with him on her own. She got her (sorta) reward when he told her he thought she was a ''very impressive person.''

Derek was dealing with his moving-on issues, clearly — though he didn't know it yet — when he had an exchange with a suspiciously cute nurse in the OR about how she thinks the hospital is ''clique-y,'' just like high school. But then he was right back on a bench with Meredith afterward, telling her about how his patient, pencil-eye kid, was in a coma he probably wouldn't come out of. And Meredith was asking, ''Is it weird that I like my drunk dad more than my regular dad?'' When Derek said that was, in fact, weird, he showed us one thing: Whatever his high school issues, drunk people weren't part of them.

Gossip was the issue for George and Izzie. In fact, Izzie was standing about two feet away when she heard one intern gasp, ''Wow. O'Malley and Stevens are done. They didn't even last a week.'' Lexie, too, wasn't too keen on folks talking behind her back, particularly Alex telling Meredith their dad had come in drunk for treatment. ''So you run to Meredith? The one person in the world I ask you not to tell?'' I ask one thing of Lex from now on: Could you please say one line that doesn't involve your obsession with Meredith? Please?

Cristina was resisting being seen as a brownnoser, though I'm not sure why — since when did that bug her at all? And Izzie was resisting her general ''prom queen'' image, which the coma kid's best friend tried to throw in her face. ''I wasn't a prom queen,'' Izzie said. ''I was the girl in the cheap clothes who got pregnant.'' Hard to believe, but I'm actually like 8 percent closer to feeling sympathy for her again. Still 92 percent away from full-on sympathy, but we're getting there.

As we started to wrap things up, the nurse from OR 2 showed up again to smile beguilingly at Derek, Cristina got comfortable with basically being Hahn's bitch, and Lexie dropped the bomb on Meredith that Daddy says nice things to all the girls when he's tipsy: ''He probably came in and told you how wonderful you are.'' Ouch.

George snapped some sense back into our Dr. Mandy after watching her kowtow to D.B. Woodside: ''You know what he deserves? A long speech.'' Of course, she gave the speech to McDreamy instead, (wrongly) assuming he was a high school hottie. Good old Ronnie set her straight, though. ''In high school I was 110 pounds and I hadn't quite figured out hair product.'' McD without hair product is like...well, really, too terrifying to contemplate. Kinda like high school itself.

What we do clearly need to look out for now is this nurse chick, Rose. Once you get a name on Grey's Anatomy, and multiple audiences with Derek, you know you're in for something. Meredith and Derek may have left Joe's bar together once again, but don't count on that happening for much longer.

What do you think? Did you like Mandy? Do any of the other characters' backstories make you sympathize with them more or less? And would you also have preferred no narration with this episode?

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