Grey's Anatomy writer Pete Nowalk, who penned last night's episode, have posted some thoughts on "An Honest Mistake" on the show's official writers' blog.

Here are some excerpts, with a link to the full column below ...

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When you’re writing an episode about God-like doctors it helps to have God-like actors playing them. Which is pretty much what happens every week on Grey’s Anatomy.

Sometimes though you get an extra dose of God, or as was the case in this episode, many extra doses. Kate Walsh visiting from Private Practice? Check.

Jennifer Westfeldt and Ben Shenkman playing a husband and wife suffering through round after round of nailbiting surgery? Double check. A certain Oscar-winning actress who is as close to God as one can get in Hollywood? Yup, I’m talking about Faye Dunaway.

Faye Dunaway who was in some movies called Bonnie & Clyde, Chinatown, and Network. Faye Dunaway who was nominated for three Academy Awards. Faye Dunaway who was kind enough to lend her genius to Grey’s Anatomy and, by doing so, make me one giddy writer.

I guess you could say my adoration of Faye is not so different from the way patients come to feel about their doctors. When you allow someone to cut into you and poke around in your very delicate, very fine-tuned insides you have to trust they’re an extra special breed of human.

It’s like what Addison told Derek Shepherd in last week’s episode - that she needed him to be a God in order to trust him to save her brother’s life. And Derek, as usual, was up to the task. Even better, as Mark Sloan told him this week, he looks good doing it.

The dude’s a God, no doubt about it.

Now at this point I imagine some of you are about to yell at your computer. Or me. Something in the vein of “THEN WHY THE HELL DID YOU LET HIM CUT OUT THAT WOMAN’S FRONTAL LOBE AND MURDER HER?!! YOU’RE THE MURDERER. A DEREK SHEPHERD MURDERER!!”

Or maybe that’s just what I yelled at myself when we were breaking this story in the Grey's Anatomy writers’ room. A lot of the writers felt the same way. We were nervous to have Derek make a mistake that could possibly be attributed to a patient’s death.

But after much discussion - and real life research with real life surgeons - we agreed that this was a story we had to tell. Doctors, like the rest of us, mess up.

Follow the link to continue reading Pete's blog ...

Steve Marsi is the Managing Editor of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Google+ or email him here.