Yes you can say no. You
can say no when you’ve said yes all your life.
You deserve to live your
life. Live for yourself.
You only have one
life. You can do whatever it is you want for yourself.
There is nothing
wrong with living first for yourself.
For only when you are whole within yourself, and love yourself, can you fully love another.
For only when you are whole within yourself, and love yourself, can you fully love another.
Calzona Review 10x05 “I Bet It Stung”
Yes, Jessica Capshaw.
We breathed while watching this episode, and we tweeted like crazy after
watching, and even while watching.
This is what we could call a breakthrough episode for
Calzona for Season 10. It marks major
changes, major realizations, and major movements for Calzona.
Reminds me of the “big shift” Jessica tweeted about a while back.
Seeing that the episode begins with Callie and ends with Callie, it has a lot to do with Callie’s journey this season, and with new prospects for Arizona’s next steps.
Callie wakes up to a new morning, with mommy and domestic duties,
and we see how a typical day at Merder’s goes.
Surprises
Funniest and surprising scene #1 of the epi goes to Callie
giving Meredith an accidental smack on the lips, owing to their daily morning
routine. “Maybe we’re too good at this.”
HAHAHA, I couldn’t stop laughing.
Surprise #2,
Not
only Arizona is surprised, WE are even
more surprised when “adorable” intern Leah
Murphy chanced upon the chatting new buddies Apzona, and brought Arizona coffee, to get her ready for her
surgery with Derek!
I was not breathing when she handed the coffee over to
Arizona and had that ear-to-ear smile we usually see on cartoon characters.
What was going on? I didn't have anybody to ask, I was watching alone and I was in
panic, so of course, I had no choice but to tweet my feelings away.
SO! The hanging question from last episode was answered! Leah DID begin to develop a liking for
Arizona. We did have reason to be suspicious, that strange look was not for
nothing. Before we hyperventilate, we have to investigate what this is all
about…
Both Arizona and April were puzzled why Leah did such a
thing. They were so drunk that night, it was all a blur to them.
Az: What did i do?
April: Something nice, apparently. I didn't get a coffee.
Az: No, no, i think i
actually did something really really bad. I think I brought her back to my
apartment the night of the gala.
Arizona had a vague memory of Leah in her kitchen. And then
we learn snippets of the whole story later on—how they had that dance party,
the grilled cheese sandwiches, how Arizona said she was pretty……ugh! need I go
on? It’s painful enough to type this so I must quit this right here.//
Hey, these are all Calzona – trademark activities!
Why do we hear them do the same things? Every
Calzona fan has this one thought: Only Callie and Arizona have the EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS to dance parties and
sandwiches! No one can substitute any one for the other.
What the heck,
Arizona doesn’t even like sandwiches!
Okay, enough … Let's move on...
.
Apartment talk
Callie was obviously still angry at Arizona when Arizona
gave her the mortgage slips for the apartment.. Arizona even offered to move
out, and Callie dropped that painful:
"I don't wanna move in to the apartment that I shared
with my cheating wife." Whoa!
So, Callie is still angry. And doesn’t even want to move
back into the apartment. No interest in being reminded of the memories that
were shared in that apartment. My take on this, she wants to forget, she
doesn’t want to have anything to do with Arizona, nor the memories associated
with her. So she’s staying away.
Arizona knew better than to engage Callie. Still, we see her
just accepting all that Callie throws at her. Still sorryl. Still guilty.
Taking the blows that she thinks she deserves.
Callie’s stages of enlightenment
We can observe that with the progression of every Callie scene,
we see how her eureka moments, her epiphanies start to unravel.
First when she hungrily partakes of Owen’s Emma-made banana bread (yes, she was
too busy to have breakfast that morning).
That when she left
Arizona, she thought she could get back, dance again in her underwear, be
herself, but instead “rebounded to the mcdreamies”.
Seems she was starting to voice out her
pent-up feelings. Maybe she had realized that even if things were smooth though busy at MerDer's, this is not what she had envisioned herself to be in.
Callie’s epiphany #2
happens when she meets donor
sister of the hang glider patient (who was in remission from plastic anemia)
and proactively said she wanted to be ready if ever her sister will need a kidney donor.
This woman's “what’s mine is hers” mentality struck Callie. A "spare
parts sister." That her parents only had her to save her sister’s life. And she wanted to know if she had to prepare
herself for an organ donation.
This started to open Callie's mind about her own condition. This
person, after all had an existence devoted to another human being. Her destiny
was to live for her sister.
She articulated this realization in the O.R, with Owen and April, when Owen called her attention when she couldn’t say no to Mer's scheduled princess tea party, even if she had a surgery.
“Oh my God, you're right! I need to get a life. Maybe I
should kick Arizona out and move back in my place”
Quick to defend Arizona was new loyal friend April, whose blooming friendship many of us in the fandom really appreciate, who
tried to dissuade Callie from kicking Arizona out: that Az needs the elevator,
that it’s perfect that it's right across the hospital, and it's already retrofitted for ”handicapped
access”.
But April’s campaign was to no avail.
Take note. In that mortgage slips scene, Callie did not want to move back in and get
flooded with those memories with Arizona. Gradually though, with all these happening, she may have been starting to
ask herself, why is she giving herself a hard time, staying with her daughter at a friend’s
place, while her cheater wife is enjoying her apartment. She had always been
giving to her wife, she was not the one who cheated, why did she have to be the
one out of the apartment?
Epiphany number 3 was the clincher for Callie. In that moment when Callie was giving advice to donor
younger sister, it seemed like she was talking to herself: “You don’t need to
be spare parts of your sister anymore”
Donor sister: “Can I do that? Can I say No?”
Callie: Yes you can say no. It’s your life, you should ride
that bike get on that cruise, get a boyfriend, dance in your underwear. You can say no!
Donor sis: I can say no
Callie : Feels good right?
Donor sis: I can say no!
Both: You can say Noooo!
Again, she mentions “dance in your underwear.” It signifies
a very important time in her life when she danced in that basement during her
early days at SGH. A time when she owned herself.
This scene was so powerful, it can empower any viewer, as it has done to this viewer right here.
It was a wonderful reckoning—and an important moment of liberation,
as conclusion to Meredith’s narration which goes:
"What if your
focus slips? what if you can't be all in'? Are you left w/ nothing at all?
Maybe you just need to find a different path ..What if you can't give a hundred
percent? Maybe you just have to go back to the beginning and start all over
again."
This scene with sister donor was her personal freedom moment. They both
realized how important it is to live for themselves. To put themselves first,
for a change. They have offered their lives enough for the people they love,
it’s about time they think of themselves for a change,
And with this
liberation, decisions had to be made.
This seemed to have led Callie to assess all that has happened since
then and made a brave decision. She was not shy to point this all out to Arizona, whom she
confronted at the bar, and asked her to move out.
" I need to stop taking care`of other
people.I took care of you for a year. Picked you off the bathroom floor,took your
abuse..You're not sick anymore. You're just someone who cheated. And..you did
that to yourself, so I'm sorry I need my life back. I need ‘me’ back.”
I would be lying if I say that I did not hurt for Arizona when Callie said these honest words. I guess it is a necessary pain that we have to go through. We have to try to take the emotion out of it, because we are watching one of them take her first step to healing.
Arizona again, accepted Callie's words. Still consistent in her remorse.
Painful as it may sound, kicking Arizona out and telling her she’s a cheater and she’s not sick anymore, was still a part of Callie's process of re-claiming her personal freedom and self-reaffirmation.
We will just have to focus for now, on how these things made Callie realize that it’s about time she cease
living her life being solely of service to the
person she loves most.
Ever since that 1st day of realization at Mer’s hospital room during the
premiere, while holding baby Bailey. Even then, she already had that inkling about a craving for change.
She felt something had to give, something had to change but
still could not quite pinpoint what that was. All she could say then was that she danced in her underwear.
Donor sister was instrumental in making Callie realize this, and triggered
her into reclaiming what was hers.. Reclaiming her apartment, reclaiming her
own self, that she has so unselfishly
given to her loved one, that it left her empty.
She was too giving, that she
lost herself.
I’m liking how the
writing has carefully tied all this up. Very happy. They are presenting this so
far as cohesive. For we could not really fathom how Callie could possibly give
all of herself during the healing period of Az ‘s leg in S9. It was all too much for one person to bear,
what with Az’s verbal abuse, and all.
Callie was like a martyr then, and it
seemed too idealistic.
Now it’s all becoming real. And with this liberation, comes
the brave decision. She asked Arizona to move out, and bluntly told her how the
cheating is Arizona’s own fault. She
does not have anything to do with that, neither should she feel guilty about
it.
It was a new freedom that was both necessary and long overdue.
Leah
Then we tackle the Leah part. Leah as far as I was concerned last ep, was a
non-issue. But since we are being led to backtrack peeks into what transpired
during that drunken night, and Leah saying her reason for her attraction as “finally somebody gets
me,” I'm curious what this will lead to.
Grilled cheese sandwiches, the dance party reek so much of similarity to what Calzona used to enjoy during their early days. Calzona
shippers feel slighted by this. Yes, we are selfish enough not to share such
special moments that we deem purely exclusive to our babies.
Dance party is something special for Calzona, It was one of
their most enjoyable moments. And to hear Leah speak of having similar moments with
Az, even if Az was drunk, feels like they are stealing something very precious to
Calzona.
I wonder if these are not random. Are the writers again
playing with our emotions? They know we’d be hurt.
“Lets go back to the part where you said I was pretty”
Oh, so Arizona said this? She doesn’t remember it, she was
drunk. As far as we’re concerned, it was nothing and Arizona is not the least bit interested.
“You told me to scrub in.The night of the gala. At your
house,remember?The night was so fun.Don't worry,I wont tell anyone”
In fairness to Leah, she has become a starry eyed intern
beginning to have a crush on Az. Call it infatuation, or mild
adoration or hero worship or whatever. She better be careful because it
wouldn’t be a wise move.
Not just because she risks the ire of the Calzona fandom brick battalion,
but because this is a marriage newly broken, in queue at the repair shop.
Instead of being supportive of the efforts to repair the
broken couple, she is letting herself go with her petty crush, for a fleeting
moment of artificial love.
She’s a medical intern, she has brains and I say this in the
most unbiased way,, as sage advice to Leah: why look for a cheap thrill when
you can find love or whatever elsewhere. Look for someone with more potential.
Arizona
is obviously reeling from a broken relationship, why swoop in and be contented
with crumbs? Why not just be supportive to Callie and Arizona instead?
I guess this Leah angle was a spicy twist that the Greys
writers wanted us to be angry or nervous about. And guess what, it’s
working. More than anything, it has made
us angry because we are possessive of the exclusivity of our most beloved Calzona.
Rather than trying to read Leah’s psyche and trying to control it, I would rather not. Leah will do
whatever the writers will write her to do.
So let’s just ride with whatever Leah does.
What we do not want to happen is for Arizona to fall for her
at this point. At their last scene at the bar, she was just not interested.
She is vulnerable right now. Also, we don't know how the added element of PTSD works. So any extra attention, any good
gesture, may just hit her fragile heart and she might get carried away, when all
she is trying to do is focus on getting Callie back.
We don’t want to second guess the writers. It's their job to make us more involved as
ever. They want us to be that passionate about these characters. The more angry we are, the more invested we
are,the more emotion we have about this whole thing, the better for them.
So all we do is wait and hope and try to be strong.
Is there hope for Calzona with this new twist? Leah having an interest in Arizona and Callie experiencing her own personal liberation?
These both truly signify the big shift that Jessica tweeted about.
Callie is coming into her own. A personal homecoming. Back
to the beginning because it may lead her back to the right direction. And it liberates her in a
euphoric reasonable kind of way, as she lets herself loose, and dances in her
underwear without a care in the world.
It's a new beginning for her. We see her in that last Callie moment. She is back in her apartment and has just tucked Sofia into bed, and begins to dance that dance of freedom.
Why underwear? I t was a dance of liberation. She’s doing what she wants right at that moment, for her, and only for her. This time, she puts herself first. This is her first step to healing, and first step to wholeness.
The dance brought out Sara’s sexiness in a way that we have always dreamed of. That dance was more than we expected. So this was the very brave thing she did that she tweeted about, and we love it!
Jessica continues to play meek and remorseful Arizona in her own charming way and is still as fine as could be. So fine. For these two, there’s no such word as lackadaisical or
unconvincing.
For all of us viewers, they are not Sara and Jessica anymore.
This S10, they are Callie and Arizona in the truest sense. Some of us
cannot even distinguish the actors from the characters. That’s how amazing
their acting has been especially this season.
I wonder what they did over summer hiatus, but what they're bringing
to us with each episode is nothing short of the best.
Thoughts on Calzona Future
Future of Calzona with all these, since it is a big shift, we see major changes, arising from this moment of liberating
enlightenment, and I feel we will see even more.
As we have said time and again, they are on track with the
healing that each has to go through.
Arizona has to heal, but does not know it yet.
Callie too, needs to heal on her own. The cheating and all, may have happened for a
reason, after all. Maybe it was bound to happen, for her to have her own
reboot.
She has been exhausted, with all the changes that past year.
Drained, and instead of being thanked, she was cheated on. It was too much for
any person , so we understand her anger.
You do good to a person and this is what you get in return,
it’s silly to vie for martyrdom.
The episode begins with Callie, and ends with Callie.
It begins with her duty-laden, other-centered day, focused
on the well being of other people, and it ends with her focusing on herself.
More than anything, it is a reawakening. Of getting herself
back, whom she lost along the way.
A homecoming
to the better part of her old self. Paving the way for a
new beginning.
Postscript:
Callie
The donor sister girl donated her kidney to her sister
anyway, even after she and Callie did that "You can say No" scene.
This leads me to ask in my mind, would Callie
do the same?
She has already realized she has to love herself first.
She’s lost herself, she can love again when she’s whole. And can love in an even better way.
The intent was there. They both knew what should be done to
uphold themselves, but in the end, I predict Callie will go the same way
as donor sister.
In thought, they know what they should do. Let loose, let
their hair down, live their life for themselves and not for anyone else. Not
bound by any constraints.
But then in the end, they end up still being there for the
people they love. Because giving and being kind to the person that they love,
is even more liberating, and is a freedom in itself.
WE all are born for something. We are born to love. Born
into our family. Born to be with the people we now have, to love and take care of them Still, it's our choice.
Arizona
Arizona after being
kicked out, has been asked by Leah to stay at her place (we don’t know if Az
did agree to that). I’m panicking about this.
If ever Leah becomes a person who
becomes an object of interest for Az, I truly hope it will just be for the
reason of leading Calzona to talk, have
realizations, and forge a step toward being closer and understanding each
other better.
One in, Callie is on her way to healing herself. We now wait for Arizona to begin her own
healing process too.
“You can decide to
live for another. You can decide to live for yourself.
It’s your choice.
It doesn’t matter what
choice you make.
Should you decide to
live for another, that is still YOU making that choice.
As long as YOU make
that choice, you say yes, or you say no, that’s okay.
You can say no to
other people, and say yes to yourself
The question is,
does saying no to other people mean you say
yes to yourself?”
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