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“Grey’s Anatomy” returned to screens Thursday, Sept. 30 for yet another season premiere. After a grueling depiction of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on hospital staff in Season 17, Season 18 returns with a relatively anti-climactic look at the future of Grey Sloan’s doctors a year later.

The episode opens with a disclaimer about the show’s post-pandemic setting and reminds the audience to learn more about vaccination. However, following this disclaimer, the episode then catapults into an alternative world free of the COVID-19 virus — which is a welcome change. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) wakes up from a dream where she faces a surgical board filled with routine surgeries and the disapproval of her dead mother, an overused theme throughout the show. She struggles to live up to the expectation of miraculously surviving COVID, not unlike her previous anxieties about living up to her mother’s surgical legacy. The plot thickens, however, when her trip to Minnesota to discuss a research library dedicated to her mother turns into a job offer that could make her the face of the cure for Parkinson’s.

Meredith’s sister, Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone), is in another relationship where she and her partner have differing views. In prior seasons, her boyfriend Owen Hunt, (Kevin Mckidd) wanted kids and she didn’t; now, new love interest Link (Chris Carmac) wants to get married and Amelia doesn’t. What differs this time, however, is her attitude: She’s now giving herself the freedom to let the relationship fail. A wide range of post-pandemic relationships are depicted in this episode, from Amelia and Link’s rocky situation to Maggie (Kelly McCreary) and Winston’s (Anthony Hill) newlywed flirtations and Owen and Teddy (Kim Raver)’s wedding. The wedding is a drawn out resolution of years of back-and-forth between the two trauma surgeons, and the dramatic bicycle crash during the ceremony simply creates confusion and sets up the potential bad omen of a priest dying on their O.R. table. The riders argue about the crash and merely provide rhetoric on the “quiet hatred” that can develop within a marriage, in clear support of Amelia’s perspective on the issue but in contrast to the two newlywed couples present by the end of the episode.

Other glimpses into post-pandemic life include its effect on the mental health of children, a topic examined through Dr. Cormac Hayes (Richard Flood)'s son Austin (Jayden Haynes-Starr), who is experiencing panic attacks. The show touches on many challenges children faces during the pandemic, including the breakdown of their established social circles and the atrophy of valuable social skills typically practiced while working on homework, grabbing lunch, or participating in clubs with others. Though most teens likely wouldn’t approve of the show’s proposed solution of having a parent invite another parent and their children over for dinner, its discussion of the pandemic’s effects on youth and mental health as a whole is important in making sure people see their struggles represented in media and feel comfortable working to overcome them.

Another storyline this episode revolved around the senior staff’s interviews with candidates for several vacant positions, including the job of Head of Plastics and of General Surgeon. Dr. Michelle Lin (Lynn Chen), a candidate of interest for the plastics job, straightforwardly describes Grey Sloan’s physician shortage when confronted about her lack of experience. She mentions the physician shortage affecting not only Grey Sloan, but hospitals across the nation due to deaths and resignations of hospital staff. Hospitals have moved out of the public sphere of interest as the pandemic progressed, yet they are dealing with issues just as important as the ones they were facing last March. The moral toll of working through the most dangerous stage of the pandemic and losing patients without the ability to save them or let them say goodbye to their families has been experienced by healthcare workers across the nation.The skillful acknowledgment here of that challenge draws some much-needed attention to the resources accessible to healthcare workers who are still dealing with the impact of these challenges.

This is not Grey’s Anatomy’s finest season premiere, but it is an important one when considering the broader context of discussing what a post-pandemic world might look like. It acknowledges important challenges that various people in healthcare and their loved ones are facing, but provides little in the character development of its stars, instead rehashing overused conflicts. The remainder of Season 18 has some potential to develop its storylines and deepen its characters, but might unfortunately focus more on resolving the issues presented in this episode than wrapping up the show’s broader story arcs.