New ‘Grey’s’ flirts with rival ‘House’

Well, now we know what the writers of “Grey’s Anatomy” were doing during the strike, when they weren’t walking the picket lines, of course. They were watching “House.”

Thursday night marked the first new episode of “Grey’s” in many, many months. Not content with beating a fellow medical drama out of the post-strike box by a few days -- the first new “House” airs Monday -- show runner Shonda Rhimes seems to be poking gentle fun at, and paying homage to, the strange powers of rivals at Fox.

First there was the residents’ contest, in which Meredith (Ellen Pompeo), Cristina (Sandra Oh), Alex (Justin Chambers) and Izzie (Katherine Heigl) earned points on things like number of sutures and surgeries scrubbed in on. It looked suspiciously like a competition Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) set up last season.

Meredith diagnosed a brain tumor by considering a patient’s hasty marriage on the rebound a symptom, while Izzie put a patient (Cheech Marin) with a sprained ankle through a battery of tests, including a spinal tap (she did stop short of the Housian favorite, the MRI). Meanwhile, Derek (Patrick Dempsey) and Mark (Eric Dane) had mildly flirtatious conversations on elevators, a la House and Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard).

If someone was walking around with a cane, though, I missed it.

It was pretty funny for those who follow both shows. Rhimes has a knack for lassoing the zeitgeist, whether it be her cast of many colors or her enthusiastic use of the Internet to connect with her viewers, so it’s not surprising that she would unabashedly grab the general trend toward media cross-pollination and inject it into her show.

Of course, “Grey’s” is not “House” and never pretended to be. The personal lives of the staff remain front and center, though everyone seems to be taking a bit of a breather from the pell-mell hook-up and breakup pattern that threatened the show last season.

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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com