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'Grey's Anatomy': 16 Essential

Episodes to Celebrate the Show's
16th Anniversary
Here are the episodes which best
encapsulate the essence of 'Grey's
Anatomy' — what it has been, and what it
has become.
BY LAUREN THOMAN
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PUBLISHED MAR 27, 2021

Grey's Anatomy is well into its

seventeenth season of television, and the
juggernaut medical drama will celebrate its
Sweet 16 on March 27. Premiering in 2005,
the long-running series has been through
myriad changes over its 16 years on the air,
including the evolution of its themes and
plotlines, and the gradual rotation of most
of its cast, so that the faces now seen
each week on our TV screens are largely
not the same ones viewers met during the
show's Vrst season.

In the beginning, Grey's Anatomy was

mostly known for its focus on steamy (and
often illicit) romantic relationships, the
Vercely competitive atmosphere among
the doctors of Seattle Grace Hospital, and
how the “medical part of its genre
designation was really just a mechanism to
deliver the all-caps DRAMA. It was also
notable for the visible diversity of its cast
— especially for 2005 — which included
multiple people of color in prominent roles,
as well as an emphasis on making sure the
background actors were equally diverse,
something that was important to creator
Shonda Rhimes from the get-go.

Over time, though, as tends to happen,

Grey's Anatomy evolved into a show that
still resembles what it was in its youth, but
has grown and matured into something
that is different in many ways from what it
once was. As Grey's Anatomy comes of
age this year (and possibly approaches its
4nish line ?), it's worth looking back at the
moments and storylines that helped one of
the most in]uential shows of the 21st
Century explore and discover its own
identity. This list doesn’t necessarily
include the most popular or memorable
episodes (although some of those are in
here), but it does feature the ones which
best encapsulate the essence of Grey's
Anatomy — what it has been, and what it
has become.

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"A Hard Day's Night" (Season 1,

Episode 1)
Image via ABC

Grey's Anatomy no longer has much in

common with its pilot episode, which
centered around a group of eager young
surgical interns each hoping to distinguish
themselves on the Vrst day of their surgical
residency, but even though much has
changed since Meredith Grey Vrst entered
the halls of Seattle Grace Hospital in 2005,
"A Hard Day's Night" is still the entry point
to the show and as such, the Vrst
impression anyone ever got of what Grey's
Anatomy was all about. The episode
introduced viewers to Meredith Grey (Ellen
Pompeo), Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), Alex
Karev (Justin Chambers), Izzie Stevens
(Katherine Heigl), and George O'Malley
(T.R. Knight), the intern class who served
as the central characters for the show's
Vrst few seasons. It also established the
doctors tasked with teaching them,
including Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson)
and Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.),
both of whom are still on the show today,
and Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) —
quickly dubbed "McDreamy" — who would
go on to become the love of Meredith
Grey's life and half of one of TV's most
iconic couples.

The medical cases in the episode (a tricky

aneurysm, a disastrous appendectomy)
mostly serve to ground the doctors in the
world of the hospital, set up the idea of the
Seattle Grace team as creative problem
solvers with the ability to think outside the
box, and establish the reputation of the
attendings as surgical rockstars,
showcasing their quick intellect and
precise skills. The episode also laid
groundwork for the epic romance between
Meredith and Derek, introducing the pairing
as an impulsive one-night-stand that would
eventually grow into the beating heart of
the series. Ultimately, it's not the plot lines
from the pilot that proved central to the
identity of Grey's Anatomy, but the
relationships and dynamics between the
characters, which helped lay the
groundwork for everything that came after.

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"Raindrops Keep Falling on My

Head" (Season 2, Episode 1)
Image via ABC

Season 2 of Grey's Anatomy started with a

bang — or more accurately, a crash, as Joe
the bartender (Steven W. Bailey) collapses
early on from what turns out to be a sizable
aneurysm. Derek is conVdent he can
operate on it, but as a self-employed
business owner without health insurance,
Joe worries that the ridiculously expensive
procedure will ruin him. Unable to ignore
Joe's Vnancial concerns like some of his
more experienced peers, George goes
against the instruction of Richard Webber
and spends time looking into a Vnancial
loophole that will cover the cost of the
procedure. Eventually, he Vnds it, donating
Joe's body to science for the duration of
the procedure, during which time Joe will
be functionally dead. Joe lives, and is
relieved to learn upon awakening that
survival isn't going to bankrupt him after
all.

The storyline with George and Joe is a

notable one in the history of Grey's
Anatomy for a couple of reasons. Although
neither character is around anymore, the
episode was an early example of the show
highlighting the high cost of healthcare in
the U.S., which would turn out to be an
ongoing theme of the series. While Grey's
Anatomy has always been more about the
medicine than the Vnances, it has regularly
worked to remind viewers that healthcare
in the U.S. is not free, and important
decisions about people's health are often
in]uenced more by their wallets than
science. Additionally, George bucking his
boss and mentor in order to follow his own
moral compass would also prove to be a
central tenet of the series, with many other
characters following in his ethical
footsteps in the years to come.

"Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" also

makes the list for another reason — the
Vrst utterance of what would become
Meredith and Cristina's iconic phrase,
"You're my person." The original context is
Cristina designating Meredith as her
emergency contact on the paperwork for
an abortion clinic (although the pregnancy
would turn out to be ectopic, requiring
emergency surgery). Considering Cristina's
private nature, she hasn't wanted to tell
anyone what she's going through, but since
she's required to tell someone, Meredith is
the one she decides she can trust with her
sensitive story.

"You're my person" would go on to become

one of Grey's Anatomy's most memorable
phrases, coming back repeatedly not just
to describe Meredith and Cristina's
friendship, but other important
relationships on the show as well. It also
infused popular culture, used to describe a
connection somewhere between a best
friend or even a soulmate — someone who
innately gets you, will always be in your
corner, and on whom you can rely above all
others.

"Bring the Pain" (Season 2, Episode

5)
Image via ABC

Likely best known for being the episode

where George performs open-heart surgery
in an elevator, "Bring the Pain" deVnitely
features one of Grey's Anatomy's more
memorable and unorthodox medical
procedures. Yet while it's true that both
memorable elevator experiences and risky
operations would become bold Vbers
running through the fabric of Grey's
Anatomy, "Bring the Pain" makes the list
largely for a single scene, and it has
nothing to do with medicine. After working
for most of the episode to convince both
herself and Derek that she's not
emotionally invested in whether Derek
decides to divorce Addison (Kate Walsh),
Meredith eventually realizes that she's
lying.

Cornering Derek after performing a surgery,

Meredith confesses that she's in love with
him and wants him to leave Addison for
her. This is the episode of one of Grey's
Anatomy's most famous speeches (in a
series known for speeches and grand
gestures), which culminates in Meredith's
heartfelt plea to "pick me. Choose me.
Love me."

Of course, as even the most casual of

Grey's Anatomy watchers know, while
Derek and Meredith continue to go through
their ups and downs following this episode,
they do ultimately choose to be together,
and their relationship continues to
strengthen until Derek's eventual death
many years later. It's an important moment
that helped deVne Grey's Anatomy's
position that love is a choice, and often a
hard one, which is ultimately about more
than simple chemistry and affection, but
about vulnerability and trust and both
communicating and meeting the needs of
the other person. Ironically, it's a high bar
that most of Grey's Anatomy's power
couples wind up failing to meet, which we'll
get to in a minute.

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"It's the End of the World," "As We

Know It" (Season 2, Episodes 16-
17)
Image via ABC

The two-part bomb-in-a-body arc that

began with a man who accidentally shot
himself with a homemade bazooka and
ended with Kyle Chandler's Bomb Squad
Guy exploding into pink mist all over
Meredith is probably still one of the most
well-known Grey's Anatomy storylines, and
for good reason. Not only are both
episodes fraught with tension and
powerful performances from recognizable
guest stars (in addition to Chandler,
Christina Ricci also makes an appearance
as a traumatized paramedic), but they also
serve the function of helping establish
Meredith Grey's low-key death wish, which
becomes a recurring theme for the show.

It's not so much that Meredith wants to die

as that she often reacts to dangerous
situations by inserting herself into them —
in this episode, by literally inserting her
hand into a patient's chest in order to hold
the bomb in place. It helps deVne her
worldview of herself as a sacriVcial savior,
who will always throw her body on the
bomb (again, literally in this case) if she
believes it will save others. Yet the
episodes also argue that Meredith's life is
itself valuable, not just in how she can help
others, but solely because she is a person
with inherent worth.

As the central character for whom the

show is named, Meredith's worldview is
arguably also that of Grey's Anatomy itself,
which constantly has its characters risking
their health and careers for the good of
others, sometimes with destructive
repercussions, while also working to
remind viewers that those characters are
still human beings with their own value
outside of their medical expertise.

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"17 Seconds" (Season 2, Episode

25)
Image via ABC

Izzie's love story with the doomed Denny

Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) provided
one of Grey's Anatomy's most memorable
love stories, despite its short duration, but
the part of their star-crossed journey that
was most deVning to the show itself was
the episode in which Izzie takes it upon
herself to steal Denny a heart by cutting his
LVAD wire. Early in the episode, Denny is
notiVed that he's Vnally been matched with
a donor heart, but when that organ proves
nonviable, Dr. Burke (Isaiah Washington)
winds up competing with a rival surgeon
for the other available match. In order to
move Denny to a higher priority status on
the transplant list and therefore make him
eligible to claim the heart, Izzie destroys
the device keeping him alive, conVdent that
once Burke performs the transplant
operation, Denny will be Vne and her
actions will be justiVed.

Of course, this being Grey's Anatomy,

everything with this plan goes wrong in a
tremendously dramatic fashion (which is
itself a deVning feature of the show), with
Burke getting shot in the parking lot before
he can assess Denny's status and claim
the heart. But it's not really Denny's fate
that helped contribute to the developing
identity of Grey's Anatomy, but Izzie's
actions. Unlike George's attempts to Vnd
an outside-the-box legal solution to Joe's
Vnancial problems earlier in the season,
Izzie violates both the law and her oath as
a doctor in order to get Denny his heart. It
won't be the last time that doctors on
Grey's Anatomy literally operate outside the
law, trusting their own sense of right and
wrong above all else, but this was an
episode that characterized the show as
one that believes that rules and boundaries
exist for a reason — though sometimes,
even if there are severe consequences,
those rules are worth breaking.

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"Now or Never" (Season 5, Episode

24)
Image via ABC

Most of the plot of the Vfth season Vnale

of Grey's Anatomy isn't particularly
memorable, outside of three things: the
near-death of Izzie Stevens, the post-it note
marriage of Meredith and Derek, and the
actual throwing-under-a-bus of George
O'Malley. Throughout Season 5, Izzie
battled with an aggressive form of
melanoma, which gave her only a slim
chance of surviving. In "Now or Never,"
Izzie has survived her risky brain surgery,
but has awakened without the ability to
form new short-term memories.
Meanwhile, George — after being
noticeably sidelined for most of the season
— decided to depart the hospital to join the
army, and while he takes the day off, his
friends spend the episode organizing an
intervention to convince him to change his
mind.

In the Vnal moments of the episode, Izzie

crashes shortly after triumphantly
regaining her memories, and Meredith
realizes that the disVgured John Doe she's
been treating for the whole episode is
actually George, who got hit and dragged
by a bus off-screen after heroically pushing
a stranger to safety. The episode ends with
Izzie's team ignoring her Do Not
Resuscitate order and attempting to revive
her, while George's team heads into
surgery.

At the beginning of Season 6, of course, we

learn that George has died and Izzie has
survived, although she doesn't remain on
the show for much longer after recovering
from her illness. While Grey's Anatomy
]irted with death among its main cast in
earlier episodes, and killed off some
notable guest stars, "Now or Never" was
the Vrst time the series committed to
killing one of its own, even if we didn't Vnd
out until the following season. It was a
pivotal moment in the series,
communicating that no one is safe, not
even original cast members who were at
one point among the central characters on
the show.

Meanwhile, before Meredith has her awful

realization about who her John Doe really
is, she and Derek spend the episode
searching for a window of time to go get
ogcially married. Eventually, due to their
busy schedules, they give up and decide to