“Sympathy for the Parents” was the 19th episode of the sixth season of Grey’s Anatomy. And it’s taken this long for Grey’s writers to really clue viewers in on Alex Karev’s back story, to which we’ve only had glimpses thus far.
In the latest episode the writers fleshed out why he’s frequently a coarse jerk who doesn’t allow people to be close to him and why he holds his cards so close to his chest.
The episode began with Meredith walking into the bathroom while Alex was taking a shower. “I need you to be a girl for me,” Meredith said as she asked him to help her sort out a personal issue she was having with Derek.
“What’d he do?” Alex asked protectively as he stuck his head out of the shower, shampoo lather still on his hair. “Want me to kick his ass?”
He gamely listened to Meredith talk about the fact that McDreamy had raised the issue of having a baby. Alex treated Meredith kindly, like a sister. He even opened up to her, sharing with her the news that Izzie had sent him official divorce papers. This was Alex the nice, the caring, the protector. This was the Alex who cared for Jane Doe after the ferry accident, who picked up the sobbing Izzie from Denny’s deathbed and tenderly brushed her hair away from her face.
This provided a stark contrast to Alex the rude, the mean who treats others with disdain if not outright hostility. Why are there two Alexes? Enter his little brother Aaron, who was in need of a pro bono hernia operation, to finally provide us with answers.
Aaron was extremely loose-lipped, blabbing to Meredith, Bailey and Lexie all these stories about Alex, who heroically took care of his younger siblings when their parents couldn’t or wouldn’t, who was in 17 different foster homes during a five-year period because he’d become a hard kid to get along with, a direct result of his father’s abuse. Their mother, meanwhile, had mental health issues and Alex was the one who took care of everybody, even spent time in juvenile detention for stealing food when he was only 11 years old so that he could make sure his family ate.
Talk about hard luck stories.
Suddenly all the pieces came together: Alex shuts himself away in a protective cocoon so that he can go on with his life and pursue his medical career without making himself emotionally vulnerable and risk getting hurt again. He’s tough because he has to be. Not that this excuses his behavior, but at least now his actions seem more understandable.
Owen’s behavior is likewise understandable. Who wouldn’t feel off-kilter after enduring the horrors of war? It’s completely reasonable that he’d be haunted by what he saw and had to do during his time as an Army physician during the Iraq War, and that he’d suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. But that doesn’t make it any easier to watch him lash out at Cristina simply because she’s not familiar with the properties of a specific type of bullet. You can sympathize with Owen, who’s clearly in pain, but you just can’t excuse him repeatedly taking it all out on Cristina, shooting her death glares and humiliating her in the middle of surgery, then expecting her to be all girlfriend-like when he’s making her pasta.
Do the stories about Alex’s childhood make you more sympathetic toward his character? How long do you think Cristina will tolerate the way Owen treats her when he’s in his “dark place?”
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Apr 02, 2010 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
I always had a thing for Alex, felt that he was a teddy bear at heart..and hoped that someday his backstory would be told. We saw glimpses of his sweet self in the past, just like you said. Alex has always been my favorite, even though I swoon when McSteamy is on screen.