Meredith, Bailey, Derek, and Richard -- each for their own reasons -- decide to work on Thanksgiving while everyone else takes the day off. Izzie cooks a spectacular Thanksgiving dinner for everyone -- except that no one really shows up. After Cristina bails to head back to the hospital to help with some holiday related surgeries, Izzie and Burke wind up preparing the dinner by themselves for Joe and his boyfriend. George is spending the day with his blue collar brothers & father, working through major issues with them.

  The hunting trip is not without incident, though, the father does get accidentally shot in the butt, so George winds up back at the hospital as well, where he runs into Meredith and Cristina. Meredith has been working all day with Derek on the case of a coma patient that is able to be revived after many, many years. His family had already moved on, and it's not as good of news as Meredith and Derek would've hoped. And they have even worse news yet for the patient -- he's a medical miracle that they were able to revive him, but he's got a bad brain aneurism that could still kill him at any moment. Meredith finds Alex in the hospital, too, and he confides in her that he's studying to retake his medical boards. Meredith has a nice moment of semi-closure with Derek over Addison before heading home with Alex for Thanksgiving dinner, but Meredith doesn't go in. She goes back to the bar, where she seems open to the idea of meeting a new guy. She lets a guy buy her a drink, but only after finding out that he's not a doctor.