The 10 Best Grey's Anatomy Episodes of All Time

It's easy to hit snooze between a season's premiere and finale, but this understated episode offers a rich fountain of character development. We see Izzie acting on a kind heart and sneaking out supplies to help an undocumented immigrant, Meredith trusting her intuition and saving a baby's life, and Burke defending his credentials to be chief, only to be called out for his arrogance. We also see the interns also forming a bond over their utter cluelessness, touching on the vulnerability and intimacy at the heart of the show. Even Meredith opens up to her new friends, despite her spiel about maintaining boundaries. This episode doesn't quite emotionally wreck us as many Grey’s Anatomy episodes do, but it definitely deserves recognition for featuring nuanced character development.

"Into You Like a Train" begins with an inebriated Meredith, who believes that Derek has jilted her after her dramatic confession of love. (He was late, much to Meredith's chagrin.) The interns return to the hospital for duty after a massive train crash, which results in two strangers being impaled on a pole together. Bonnie, half of the injured pair, brings a lighthearted energy to the episode, despite her ultimately tragic fate. This episode's skillful marriage of humor and tragedy makes for a robust emotional experience.

"As We Know It" will forever go down in the Grey’s Anatomy fandom as the bomb episode, not in that it was awesome (which it was) but in that there was literally a bomb inside someone. In this episode, sweet, self-sacrificing, dark, and twisted Meredith sticks her hand into a patient's open chest cavity that contains a homemade explosive. Mer survives, but not without first racking our nerves to the tune of Anna Nalick's affected "Breathe." Sadly, bomb squad guy (played by guest star Kyle Chandler) doesn't survive, but he appears in a later episode. At the end of the episode, Derek reminds Meredith about the time when they last kiss. Ugh. This episode rightfully earned writer Shonda Rhimes an Emmy nomination.

In all onesty, season two is such a sad season. At the beginning of the finale episode, the interns stand together as a united front and each and every one of them take the blame for cutting Denny Duquette's LVAD wire. And Denny's fine . . . until he isn't, because you never know who is safe on this show. Denny dies and Izzie lays helplessly next to him until Alex carries her away, Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" playing softly in the background as Izzie confesses to cutting the wire, Meredith looks longingly at Derek, and Cristina holds Burke's injured hand. We aren't joking when we say that this might be one of the saddest scenes in television history.

While tending to a ferry accident, Meredith trips and sinks in the water. The attendings frantically do everything to save her, and our beloved heroine enters a surreal dream state where she interacts with ghosts from her past, including Denny Duquette, Dylan the bomb squad guy, her dog Doc, and Bonnie, the girl from the train crash episode. "Some Kind of Miracle" tastefully digs into Meredith's dark, suicidal feelings throughout the third season. She must literally confront her feelings about death as Denny presses her. She envisions her mother telling her that she's anything but ordinary before she comes back to life. So Mer fights. We never expected Meredith to die, given that she's the main character, but that doesn't take away the emotional punch of the episode.

Meredith Grey is not a girl who needs affirmation from a man, but nothing will stop us from swooning when Derek Shepherd finally does right by her with a romantic elevator proposal where he pins up up all their cases together. Though lighthearted in that respect, the episode also tackles a serious and complicated conversation about PTSD when Owen unknowingly chokes Cristina in his sleep. Sandra Oh gives a wonderful performance that earned her an Emmy nomination for this episode.

We commend you if you survived through this roller coaster ride. Toeing the line between sweet and tragic, this episode begins with a cancer-stricken Izzie slowly losing her memory after brain surgery. Then things get a little lighter when Meredith and Derek confirm their love with a Post-It note wedding. Pretty cute, right? Then, a horribly disfigured George spells out 0-0-7 on Meredith’s palm and your heart dropped into your stomach. The episode ends in shambles for the surgeons when Izzie and George flatline. In a vision, Izzie wears the prom dress that she wore the night Denny died and gets on an elevator with George, who's in a US Army uniform. And we, the viewers, ugly-cry as Greg Laswell's "Off I Go" drowns out our tears.

Even for Grey’s Anatomy's standards, this intense episode is bound to send even the toughest viewer into a puddle of panicky tears. It extracts the strongest performances from Ellen Pompeo and Sandra Oh, whose characters witness their significant others on the brink of death. Gary Clark, a man grieving his wife's death, comes into the hospital with a gun. After killing a few of the doctors, he shoots Derek in the chest. Though only a resident, Cristina decides to perform surgery on Derek. Everything is fine (which, in Shondaland, is code for "nothing will be fine") until Gary comes up and points a gun to her head. Meredith asks to be shot because she's Lexie's sister, Derek's wife, and Richard's closest thing to a daughter. The one good thing that comes out of this heart-shattering episode was the (temporary) reunion of Callie and Arizona, who decide that life is just too short to stay mad at each other. Side note: Before tearing out our hearts on NBC's This Is Us, Mandy Moore also guest-starred as Dr. Bailey's patient in this episode.

No Grey’s Anatomy season finale is ever calm, so of course this episode features a mall explosion on top of Cristina ruining us with her mushy goodbyes (she's even giving out hugs, for crying out loud). Sandra Oh gives one last hurrah as the edgy, complicated, blunt, always fearless Cristina Yang, who's waiting for one last thing to feel finished before she jet sets to Switzerland. It turns out that that one last thing is dancing it out with Meredith to Tegan and Sara's "Where Does the Good Go." Before leaving for real, Cristina gives Meredith a much-needed talking to about Derek, uttering the infamous lines, "He is not the sun. You are."

Meredith Grey’s life is one long series of unfortunate events. Not long after losing her husband, Meredith is attacked by a patient in a fugue seizure state. Directed by the one and only Denzel Washington, this episode explores Meredith's perspective as a patient, one so terribly fragile and mangled that she can only frustratingly observe her surroundings after temporarily losing the ability to hear and speak. Creatively conjured and executed, the episode is literally half silent. As she heals, Mer observes the drama that behooves her friends. We get a tender moment at the end of the episode when Meredith bravely forgives the man who hurt her so badly. Side note: Richard serenading a cantankerous and healing Meredith with "My Girl" alone makes this episode a worthwhile watch.