Is Dead Denny finally gone from ‘Grey's’?

Ghost of a chance: Dead Denny got angrier and angrier at Izzie as she tried to convince him to go away and leave her alone. Gradually, it emerged that Denny had unfinished business with her, and that “I’m here for you” didn’t mean “I am here and I love you,” so much as it meant “I have come to fetch you and deliver you to the Graveyard Of TV Characters Played By Aspiring Movie Actors.” Izzie isn’t dead yet, but she finally realized what many of us have known for weeks, which is that only a severe medical problem would cause a previously sane woman to suddenly start believing she is having sex with the dead. (You didn’t think he was a real ghost, did you?)

Talk about private practice: There’s no nice way to put it — while enjoying some illicit closet sex with Lexie, Mark "McSteamy" Sloan suffered a “penile fracture.” Cue lots of stupid slapstick while the interns speculated wildly about who “broke” Sloan. Just before Lexie was about to be busted (er, but not the same way Sloan was), Sadie jumped on the grenade by “confessing” that she was the one responsible for his injury, thanks to her “twist and shout” move. There really aren’t enough quotation marks to handle this storyline.

Crime and punishment: You’ll recall that when we last saw Eric Stoltz as Dunn, the death-row serial killer who was ready to give his life (and liver) a few days early to save Bailey’s young patient, Meredith had given him advice on how to induce his own brain death. He ended up with just a very severe injury, which Meredith tried to avoid calling McDreamy in to treat, lest he prevent the patient from dying. (It appears that the injuries he caused to his own head raised no suspicions.) Naturally, Derek found out and was furious, and Dunn backpedaled anyway. He was taken to surgery, where Bailey, wrung out from watching her patient fail, told Derek to let Dunn die so they could get the organs. Derek, fortunately, called upon his limitless reserve of obnoxious sanctimony and shamed her into backing down. So Dunn was saved, and Meredith did him the favor of witnessing his eventual execution. So … happy ending?

Whew! That was close!: Of course, Dunn’s death meant big trouble for Bailey’s patient, who was ultimately in his death throes when the Chief miraculously convinced the wife of a donor ex machina to part with her husband’s magically matched innards. So all was well, and the show successfully chickened out of a dilemma on which it wasted three weeks, by allowing Meredith and Bailey to have their ethical cake and eat it too. Only Dunn, it seems, has seen his last slice.

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Linda Holmes is a writer in Washington, D.C.