I’m going to be a big nerd here and dissect all the foreshadowing in the first episode of season five of Grey’s Anatomy. I rewatched it today and I was just amazed at how many plot points and twists were hinted at or joked about in this episode. Shonda Rimes, the writer of Grey’s Anatomy, must have done this on purpose, but I would imagine that she did, as she has said before that she envisions the last episode of the season before she writes the first one.

Oh and I actually checked out her blog post on this episode- In it she says- “All the clues for this season are right there in this first episode. Nothing happens without a reason. Every line of dialogue has a point.”

I had great fun noticing all the “Oh man, that shows up later” moments. I’d suggest that other fans watch the episode again as well- let me know if you see anything I missed! : D

• Dreams: The title itself, “Dream a Little Dream of Me” refers to the dreams throughout the season- Izzy’s brain tumor hallucinations, Izzy’s dreaming up Meredith’s perfect wedding, and the dream/heaven sequence at the end of the season that leaves so many confused. Though dream/heaven sequences have been used in the past in the show, most distinctly when Meredith almost drowned at the ferryboat crash, I don’t think a season has used as many as there were in this one before.

• Main Characters Possibly Dying: Meredith dreams at the very beginning of the episode that Derek has died in a car accident. At the very end of the season it’s unclear whether Izzy is dead from a brain tumor or whether George is dead from saving a woman from the path of an oncoming bus.

• Meredith’s Mother’s continuing effect: The Chief commenting on how he’s been too easy on Meredith because she’s Ellis’s daughter. This becomes an important plot point later on.
• Loss of memory: The lady patient Izzy keeps an eye on who loses her memory every 30 seconds. Izzy later loses her long-term memory for a while.
• Alex as potential marriage material: Izzy commenting on the “good men” in the hospital, including Alex, while talking to Meredith about whether she could marry Derek. Izzy later marries Alex.
• Izzy in a Prom Dress: In Izzy’s dream, she goes up the elevator wearing the pink dress she wore the night Denny died before greeting him at the door. At the end of the season, the same thing happens, yet when the door opens, she sees George in an army uniform.
• Izzy and Denny: When Izzy sees Denny in the dream, he tells her she looks better than a bride. Denny later appears to Izzy, eventually revealed as a manifestation of her brain tumor. She becomes a bride later in the season.
• Lexie and Sloan: Sloan tells Lexie that George is an idiot if he doesn’t like her back. This hints at their future relationship. The fact that it takes him so long throughout the episode to admit that reflects the similar troubles he’ll have admitting to Derek that he’s dating her.
• MerDer Marriage: Derek jokes to Meredith that they should just get married instead of moving in together. He later does propose to her in an elevator and they get married….with a post-it note.
• Moving to Peds: This may be a stretch, but Rose tells Derek in this episode that she’s switching over to Peds (pediatrics) to avoid having the problems she’s had working as a scrub nurse with him, though as she said, she was a damn good scrub nurse where she was. Bailey later wrestles with her desire to switch over to Pedes despite her comfort with where she is.
• Doctors Working Together to Make Someone Walk Again: Here’s another one that might be a stretch- Hunt suggests freezing a man’s spine to try to preserve his ability to walk- Torres runs with it and Bailey helps her, along with the Chief. They’re delighted later that they’re able to make this man walk, despite Shepherd’s anger, doubt and disagreement. These same people later act to try to help Shepherd “walk” again, by working to pull him out of the woods. All his emotions are too much at this point though- leaving Meredith to pull him out.
• Killing People: When the Chief yells at Meredith, Derek defends her by saying that sometimes people die no matter what you do. Hunt says a similar thing to Christina- telling her that his mistakes have killed heroic people before. This ethical dilemma is later what drags Derek down for so long.
• Disappearing George: Although I doubt this was intended, George played very much a background role in this episode, with barely any mention of him. Lexie was really the central figure in the area he was mentioned, with Sloan as counterpart. This reflects George’s disappearance into the background all season until, in the last episode, he was unrecognizable to the people who knew him when he showed up in the ER as “John Doe.”
• Heroic Actions of Army Doctors: In the first episode, Major Hunt saves a man from a wreck by giving him a tracheotomy with a pen, something considered rather extraordinary. In the last episode, George, after enlisting in the army, steps in front of a bus to save a woman.
• “Reality, it’s so much more interesting than living happily ever after”: Meredith’s line at the very end of the episode forebodes great changes for the future- such as the fact that despite the seeming happy ending for Izzy, she might die, and despite George’s success as a resident later in the season, he might also die.