It’s amazing to think that a single throwaway line could have such a major impact years down the road. Yet, one Reddit post pointed out how Grey’s Anatomy, with its decades-long run, managed to take a moment of contention between two main characters and turn it into a major plot device in later seasons. This quick line came from Alex Karev, a beloved Grey’s character.
During Season 8, Karev and Arizona Robbins were performing corrective surgery on Zola, the young girl who Meredith and Derek hoped to adopt. Due to some decisions Karev made that could have potentially compromised their adoption of Zola, Arizona was understandably annoyed at his lack of professionalism. In response, Karev shot back with a comment, and though fans may not realize, that quote paid off 4 years later when Arizona sought custody of her and Callie’s daughter, Sofia.
Zola’s Health Caused Alex Karev To Make An Important & Life-Changing Point
In Season 8, Episode 5, Zola, who was still an infant at this point, had just been brought back to the hospital due to complications with her shunt. Realizing that it was kinked and could cause more serious complications if left unaddressed, Karev was left in the difficult position of deciding whether to tell Meredith and Derek, who hoped to adopt Zola, where she was. This decision may seem like an easy one to make, but after a mishap on Meredith’s part, the couple’s adoption of Zola was very much up in the air. It all came down to them respecting the rules that the adoption agency had laid down and maintaining a certain distance from Zola.
By this point, though, both Meredith and Derek considered themselves Zola’s parents and had an instinctual protectiveness of her. Learning that his future daughter’s shunt needed to be fixed, and since he was the one who put it in her in the first place, Derek demanded to know where Zola was so that he could go and perform the surgery himself. In his mind, he couldn’t trust anyone else with the job. Not because it was impossible, but because Zola was his daughter and he was terrified that someone would get it wrong. He pushed Karev to tell him where she was being monitored so he could attend to her, despite both Robbins and Hunt both being there and making it clear that Karev should not.
Yet, Karev did it anyway. He sympathized with his friends, understanding how painful it must be to be forced to keep a healthy distance for Zola’s sake. He thought that, even if they weren’t legally Zola’s parents, the bond was already established and that they should have the right to at least visit her regardless. Arizona heavily disagreed with this line of thought, and she ended up taking the lead on the surgery to correct Zola’s shunt. She believed that Karev had endangered Meredith and Derek’s chances of adopting Zola by almost allowing them to try and interfere in her medical wellbeing because of their attachment to her.
Alex Karev Gave Arizona a Wake Up Call
It was during the surgery to help Zola that Karev let his feelings be known. He thought it was unfair that his friends were kept away from their child, and he knew that Arizona, his mentor and also another good friend, thought his decision was foolish. Though she said nothing, it was obvious she was annoyed at him for what he had done. He could see her side of things, but he also recognized that Arizona was looking at this from the perspective of a doctor and not as an ordinary person. Or, for that matter, a parent, which brought the scene to perhaps one of the most important scenes in Grey’s Anatomy, yet easily one of the most overlooked.
In this Grey’s Anatomy quote, Karev asked Arizona how she would have felt if this had happened to her daughter, Sofia. Arizona and Callie were raising Sofia together, but at the time, Sofia’s legal documents only named her biological parents, Callie Torres and Mark Sloan. Arizona was the girl’s mother, but any right to care for her only existed because of Callie and Mark. When it came down to it, there was no legal documentation stating that Arizona was a viable guardian for Sofia if something ever happened to Callie or Mark. If say, Sofia got sick and neither of her biological parents were around to give consent, then Arizona would be barred from even seeing Sofia.
Karev only said the last part out loud but it clearly struck something inside Arizona as she contemplated how tenuous her place in Sofia’s life was. She knew that neither Callie nor Mark would bar her from Sofia, but she had also been through quite a number of disasters and knew life was unpredictable. If the worst happened, then Arizona needed to be prepared, and the best way to do that was to be a legal part of Sofia’s life. So, following Zola’s successful surgery, Arizona approached Callie to begin the process of making herself a legal guardian for Sofia.
One Line Gave Arizona a Chance in Court
Even though Karev said this to “win” the conversation, he unintentionally gave Arizona a fighting chance during Callie and Arizona’s custody battle in Season 12. Years after the argument and Arizona’s acquisition of legal joint custody, she and Callie had divorced due to irreconcilable differences. Sofia would spend time with each of them separately, and for a time, it seemed that peace was maintained in the small family. That is, until Callie wanted to move to New York to follow her new girlfriend, Penny. This would mean taking Sofia along with her, leaving Arizona with no one.
Unable to tolerate this, the two began a fierce custody battle that all but destroyed what was left of their goodwill towards one another. Yet, the fact remains that had Karev not mentioned how Arizona’s lack of documentation put her at risk of losing Sofia, then she wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on in court. While it is highly likely Arizona would have sought to be named a guardian at some point or other in the intervening years, it is thanks to Karev that she had the chance to fight for her daughter at all.
Of course, Karev’s advice was based on the premise that if something happened to Sofia, Arizona had the right to go and see her. Never once could he have imagined the brutal court proceedings that saw the two former lovers go at each other over their own child. It was one of the most painful storylines in Grey’s Anatomy, but thanks to Karev, Arizona got custody of Sofia and managed to even make amends with Callie to a certain degree. While Karev’s line ultimately enabled a fight between mothers, it brought a satisfying ending to their story.
