Grey’s Anatomy finally saw new doctor Nico Kim make a move on Glasses, also known as Levi, in Thursday’s new episode, though the kiss did not mean a happy ending for the newest couple.
After weeks of back and forth between new orthopedic surgery fellow Nico (Alex Landi) and the surgical resident known as Glasses (Jake Borelli), Nico made a move while the doctors were on an elevator and shared their first kiss.
Videos by PopCulture.com
After the passionate moment, Glasses reveals to Nico that he had never kissed a guy before. The reveal presents a setback for Nico, who says that while he is very much attracted to him, he is not willing to deal with someone else’s coming out story.
Grey’s Anatomy showrunner Krista Vernoff revealed that the new same-sex relationship is only starting, despite the recent setback.
“They are not over by any stretch of the imagination,” Vernoff told The Hollywood Reporter. “[The rejection] was frustrating for me and it was frustrating for Levi. But I love where the story goes and you’ll see more of them in the midseason finale after we’re away from them for a week because the episode I directed is more of a centric-episode so the whole cast isn’t in it.”
She added: “Levi and Nico continue to play out; their storyline is not over.”
The new relationship, Vernoff revealed, came from the writer’s wish to have Borelli play a bigger role on the show after being introduced in season 14.
“Levi has fallen down physically in as many wildly funny ways as he can fall down and we need to him begin to rise as a surgeon or we need him to fail. One or the other, he has to evolve… As we were talking about it, I was thinking about a friend in college who was a clumsy, tripping over his own feet kind of guy for most of our freshmen year and then came out,” she said. “When he came out both to himself and to everyone else, he emerged as a confident, sexy, really evolved and appealing guy almost immediately because he had claimed and was living in his truth. That was a story I was really interested in seeing.
She added: “Coming out on television is often depicted as a shame spiral and my experience of it in life with friends has been the opposite; it’s an emerging of a person’s truth and deeper humanity. This character of Levi that Jake has created felt like the perfect place to tell that story.”
Could Nico and Levi become the next big love story? Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
