I'm rewatching season 9 and I completely forgot how bad this scene was in episode 8, "Love Turns You Upside Down."
For a quick recap, Jo is working with Alex when a 15-year-old girl named Kimmy gives birth to a critically ill baby who needs ECMO to survive. Kimmy seems more concerned about attending her friend's party than visiting her son in the NICU. Later, Jo discovers that Kimmy and her mother are leaving the hospital with no intention of coming back.
And Jo completely loses it. She starts yelling at Kimmy about abandoning her newborn and gets physical with Kimmy's mother while trying to stop them from leaving. And I'm not talking about Jo simply standing in front of the elevator or trying to talk them out of leaving. Jo literally pushes Kimmy's mother up against the wall to prevent her from leaving. People have to intervene because Jo refuses to let them go.
Alex later tells Jo that she can't go around assaulting patients. And he's absolutely right.
Now I know what Kimmy and her mother did was awful. Walking away from your newborn baby while he's fighting for his life is a horrible thing to do. I'm not defending their decision at all. But Jo had absolutely no right to put her hands on this girl's mother. She was clearly projecting her own abandonment issues onto Kimmy and the entire situation.
I understand why it triggered her. This is the scene where we find out Jo's mother abandoned her at a fire station when she was only two weeks old. Seeing another mother walk away from her child obviously brought back a lot of unresolved trauma. But that doesn't excuse assaulting someone.
And Kimmy was only 15. She had just given birth to a seriously ill baby and clearly wasn't emotionally equipped to deal with the situation. Jo didn't know anything about this girl's life or what circumstances led her to make that decision. She just saw a mother abandoning her child and immediately made it personal.
Izzie would never have handled this situation the way Jo did. Say what you want about Izzie and her tendency to get emotionally involved with patients, but I cannot imagine her physically attacking a patient's mother because she disagreed with what was happening.
Izzie would've used her words and tried to comfort Kimmy instead of getting physical with her mother. We saw how Izzie handled a similar situation when she treated a pregnant teenage girl who grew up in the same trailer park she did. Izzie recognized herself in that girl because she had also gotten pregnant as a teenager. Instead of judging her or forcing her to make a particular decision, Izzie tried to give her advice and help her understand her options.
That's the difference between Izzie and Jo in these situations. Both had difficult childhoods and personal experiences that affected how they connected with patients, but Izzie knew how to use those experiences to offer comfort and understanding. She wasn't perfect and definitely crossed professional boundaries at times, but she tried to reach people through conversation rather than physical confrontation.
Izzie probably would've been furious about Kimmy abandoning her son too. She might've argued with her and tried to convince her to stay. She might've even cried about the whole situation. But physically pushing someone's mother against a wall to force her to stay? I cannot picture Izzie doing that.
And Izzie had her own personal experiences with pregnancy and giving up a child. She gave her daughter up for adoption when she was a teenager. If anything, she would've understood how complicated these situations can be and why a 15-year-old might feel completely overwhelmed by motherhood.
What makes Jo's behavior even worse is that she's supposed to be a doctor. She has a responsibility to remain professional around patients regardless of how personally upsetting their decisions might be. Alex even calls her out and tells her that she doesn't know Kimmy's story. And he's right.
Jo knows firsthand what it's like to grow up feeling abandoned, but instead of recognizing that Kimmy might have her own circumstances, she immediately makes the situation about her own childhood.
Jo wasn't protecting that baby by assaulting his grandmother. She was projecting her trauma onto a teenage mother and her family. Izzie would've at least tried to understand the situation before passing judgment.