Can Alex Turn Pac North Around on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’? (POLL)

Meredith Jacobs November 1, 2019, 12:30 pm

James Pickens Jr. and Justin Chambers in Grey's Anatomy

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 16, Episode 6 of Grey’s Anatomy, “Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard.”]

“Nothing’s scarier than my real life,” Alex (Justin Chambers) tells Jo (Camilla Luddington) in the Halloween episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Sure, he’s talking about the investors he has to convince to give more money to Pac North, but it also applies to everything going on at that hospital.

“That place has nowhere to go but up,” she tells him, and she’s right. But first, it would throw a bit more dirt on its own grave. There had been the guy they thought was dead in the waiting room. There was the escaped psych patient who was caught before he could change into scrubs. There’s the lack of qualified medical personnel. Alex basically just recruits any of his former colleagues who step into the hospital to leap in (on a temporary or permanent basis) because he has no one else.

And it just gets worse as Alex shows the investors around. The doctor screaming “oh, God, no, no, no!” when a patient starts bleeding and the fact that they almost kill an ICU full of patients with bad blood from the medical fridge are the least of his concerns. He’s supposed to be showing off the new research wing under construction, only he finds out it’s being built on top of a mass grave.

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“This was once apparently a mental hospital and once people died and nobody came for them…” Alex explains to Richard (James Pickens, Jr.). Everything about Pac North just gets more and more ridiculous with each episode they spend there.

But somehow, Alex manages to impress the investors with his ability to handle chaos (possibly the only necessary skill to run Pac North) and secure the funds. He’s come a long way to be the right person for the job, and we see he’s managed to take every problem in stride.

Still, he has a long way to go to actually turn the “house of horrors,” as Jo describes his new workplace, into a legitimate hospital. He is taking the right steps, though it’s going to take more than just poaching his coworkers from Grey Sloan; he can’t hope that more of them get fed up with restraining orders or coworkers or fired.

(ABC/Kelsey McNeal)

The real question may be if Alex is going to stick around there on a permanent basis himself. You have to assume that at some point, Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) will be back at work, and if she gets her job back, why wouldn’t Alex and Richard? And why would they choose to stay at Pac North, even if they manage to turn it around into a respectable hospital by then? Sure, they’re helping people, but could you really see Alex, Richard, Owen (Kevin McKidd), and who knows who else there going into next season?

Vote in the poll and sound off with your thoughts on Pac North in the comments below.

Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC