Sunday night’s _Grey’s Anatomy_ was an excellent episode but I think the last few seconds caused some confusion among careful watchers, and that confusion has more to do with problemtic editing (or direction) than acting. The ratings-boosting episode showed a World War II weapons enthusiast coming to the hospital with unexploded home-made ammunition in his chest. An inexperienced paramedic stuck her hand into the chest to stop the bleeding and, in the final moments of the episode, upset and panicked, removed her hand and ran from the room, while everyone else dropped to the ground, afraid of an explosion. Meredith, standing by the paramedic’s side, instinctively put her hand into the chest cavity as Hannah removed hers, stabilizing (theoretically) the round and continuing to plug the wound, saving the man’s life, at least temporarily.

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The problem, and the reason why I think many people are debating Meredith’s action, comes down to about eight frames (a quarter of a second) in that final scene. As Hannah removes her hand, at the bottom left of the frame we see Meredith’s gloved hand slipping in simultaneously to take its place. This leads one to believe that she took the action instincitvely and just might have saved everyone’s lives. This is borne through by the last few cuts, showing Meredith, calmly but almost unbelievingly staring down at the body and whispering over and over, “what did I do?” However, the scene immediately following the hand placement shows Meredith’s arm being thrown out of the way as Hannah removes her hand and retreats, and then arcing back down towards the body, thus leading to the belief that Meredith stuck her hand into the chest cavity after the shell had been jostled, thus stupidly putting herself further into harms way or, perhaps, having a death wish. Now, either way, the action took place in less than half a second, so I’m not sure that in general this would drastically change someone’s thought process, but the ambiguity of how it was shot and edited does lead to some deserved confusion about what precisely was taking place, how Meredith reacted, and the degree of foolishness of her action.