'Grey's Anatomy': Ranking All 15 Multi-Part Episodes

15. Season 11, Episodes 22 and 23

Derek’s death got one episode. The aftermath got two hours. And not even two hours focused on him: Yeah, the episodes start off with Meredith telling everyone that Derek is dead, but it quickly devolves into a summary of what everyone else has been up to since McDreamy became McDead. Although most of the storylines loosely relate to Derek, Meredith — the one most affected by the loss — barely shows up. What could have been a raw episode of mourning was instead a tedious two hours that failed to focus on what viewers really wanted to see. —Ariana Bacle

14. Season 8, Episodes 1 and 2

Hey, remember that episode when Meredith was fired, there was a giant sinkhole in Seattle, and Meredith and Derek had to say a temporary goodbye to Zola? Me either. The only interesting story that sort of saved this two-parter involved Cristina making a decision about her unborn child. —Samantha Highfill

13. Season 10, Episodes 1 and 2

Like many of these two-parters, this episode focuses on mourning the death of one character — Heather Brooks — while desperately trying to save the life of another — Richard Webber. However, unlike some of the other two-parters, this one is severly lacking in stakes. Not only does it try to make us care about Brooks, but even the Richard stuff is lacking in dramatic weight. Plus, when you tack on the Callie-Arizona Sofia drama, things go from dramatic to frustrating. —Samantha Highfill

12. Season 12, Episodes 18 and 19

11. Season 12, Episodes 18 and 19 — Mitch Haaseth/ABC

Ben gets in trouble with Bailey (and everyone else) when he performs an emergency C-section on a patient, Gretchen, in a hallway during a hospital-wide lockdown. He has the chance to seek help from others when an elevator door opens, but he slices into her anyway. However misguided Ben might be, it's clear he has good intentions that don't warrant a two-hour debate. The entire situation is a throwback to the days when characters like Izzie would go rogue to save a life. This time, though, the case doesn't feel as ethically ambiguous and the stakes aren't as high (sorry, Gretch!). As a result, the story fails to feel worth a multi-part episode. —Ariana Bacle

11. Season 14, Episodes 1 and 2

KIM RAVER, MARTIN HENDERSON, ABIGAIL SPENCER, KEVIN MCKIDD — Richard Cartwright/ABC

Owen's sister — and Riggs' former girlfriend — is alive, and Grey's Anatomy celebrates by throwing her in a love triangle with Riggs and Grey. This isn't just any love triangle though: Meredith pushes Riggs to reunite with Megan (Abigail Spencer), while Megan encourages Riggs to stick with Grey, flipping the typical love triangle narrative on its head. This makes for some fun, old-school Grey's-style drama, along with a story line that ends in a surprise kiss between Owen and Teddy. It also goes old-school in some other, less thrilling ways: It's revealed Amelia has a brain tumor. Been there, done that. Pass. —Ariana Bacle

10. Season 5, Episodes 1 and 2

In good news, this episode is the introduction of Owen Hunt, and his first visit to Seattle Grace comes complete with an epic kiss. Also in good news, Bernadette Peters has a touching guest-starring role as she and her friends are in a car accident, which leads to some heartbreaking revelations and generally a solid patient storyline. The bad news? Cristina is impaled by an icycle and Izzie has her first Denny halluciation, otherwise known as the first step on the road to ghost sex. —Samantha Highfill

9. Season 6, Episodes 1 and 2

It is a truth universally acknowledged that funerals suck, and George’s is no exception. What sets it apart from the many other post-death Grey’s episodes is Izzie’s mid-burial laughter fit, one that inspires the rest of her friends to manically giggle about how crappy their lives can be. The episodes as a whole aren’t overwhelmingly memorable, but they have enough moments like these that properly pay tribute to George and acknowledge how ridiculously unfortunate life can get without being overly maudlin. —Ariana Bacle

8. Season 3, Episodes 22 and 23

No matter how you feel about Private Practice, the backdoor pilot worked on a number of levels. (And not just because of that Tim Daly kiss in the stairwell.) It gave viewers a chance to get to see another side of Addison. And in addition to that, this two-parter featured a number of key moments back home in Seattle. There was the George-Izzie elevator kiss, not to mention one of the show's most harrowing moments ever: Thatcher slapping Meredith after the death of his wife. If that didn't give you chills... —Samantha Highfill

7. Season 8, Episodes 23 and 24

There are cliffhangers, and then there’s the way Grey’s ended season 8: Meredith, Derek, Arizona, Mark, Lexie, and Cristina’s plane crashes, leaving all of them stranded (and Lexie, well, we all remember what happened to Lexie). Owen, the chief at the time, doesn’t even realize they’re all missing until the final few minutes of the episode, meaning that viewers had to wait over four months to find out everyone’s fates. Things are less dire back at the hospital though, and those scenes end up unnecessarily distracting from a plotline that could easily take up the entire two hours all by itself. —Ariana Bacle

6. Season 4, Episodes 16 and 17

These days, patient storylines tend to be fairly forgettable, but back in Grey’s Anatomy’s early days, those very storylines were often the episode highlights. Take, for example, Jurnee Smollett-Bell’s guest role as a young woman who just wants to have sex with her boyfriend (both have tumors) before they head into their risky surgeries. Their sweet and doomed relationship combined with Meredith’s iconic house of candles speech to Derek and Rebecca’s act of self-harm make this an episode with the perfect ratio of uplifting to straight-up traumatic — in other words, it’s Grey’s at its messy best. —Ariana Bacle

5. Season 5, Episodes 23 and 24

As Izzie debates whether to undergo brain surgery, George finds himself contemplating life in the Army. But it turns out, George doesn't need to be a soldier to be a hero. And after a tragic bus accident, both George and Izzie find themselves fighting for their lives. Only, it takes an entire hour of television for the docs to realize that John Doe is in fact George. And in the moment that Meredith makes the connection, we get the two words that will forever haunt every Grey's fan: "It's George." Cue "Off I Go" playing and grab some tissues. —Samantha Highfill

4. Season 3, Episodes 15, 16 and 17

Depending on how you look at it, Meredith has either really bad luck or really good luck. In these episodes, she gets accidentally knocked into the water while she’s tending to victims of a ferry crash and, as a result, nearly drowns before Derek pulls her out from the freezing water. Sure, it’s clear from the beginning that Grey’s Anatomy isn’t going to kill off its title character, but that doesn’t make the half-episode she spends missing underwater any less jarring thanks to multiple limbo-set sequences guest-starring Dylan (a.k.a. the bomb guy, a.k.a. Kyle Chandler), Denny, Doc the dog, and, eventually, Ellis. Yes, Ellis dies while Meredith is almost dying. In lighter but still significant developments, this is also where Cristina reveals that she's marrying Burke and where Alex meets Rebecca. Combined, these three episodes are almost as long as another boat-centric epic, Titanic — and they somehow pack even more heartwrenching (and occasionally heartwarming) drama into the three hours than that 1997 drama. —Ariana Bacle

3. Season 6, Episodes 23 and 24

Six years in, Grey's fans seemed to agree on one thing: The show was not at its best. Gone were the days of LVAD wires and bomb episodes. Now, we were surrounded by new faces thanks to a merger that did not go over well with fans, to say the least. So as season 6 came to a close, the show decided to give itself a bit of a clean slate and eliminate a few of those new faces. And in doing so, it once again proved that dramatic greatness was still within its grasp. In a chilling two hours, the hospital faced a gunman — a man whose wife had died at the hospital earlier in the season. In those two hours, every one of our heroes was a victim. Watching the drama unfold, it felt like time stopped. And by the end of it, our faith in the show was restored. —Samantha Highfill

2. Season 2, Episodes 26 and 27

This is the episode when Izzie cuts the LVAD wire. It’s the episode when Denny finally gets his new heart and dies soon after. It’s the one whn Burke gets shot, and when he discovers a new tremor in his hand post-surgery. It’s when Finn puts Doc to sleep, when Finn tells Meredith he has plans — plans! — and when Meredith ends up slipping out of “prom” to have steamy sex with Derek in an empty hospital room. Any one of these storylines would elevate an episode above the rest, but combining them into one pair of episodes makes for a couple hours of impressive and consistently captivating chaos that proves just how great Grey’s can be when it goes all in on the drama. —Ariana Bacle

1. Season 2, Episodes 16 and 17

Grey's Anatomy's first two-parter is not only its best, but it's arguably the show's best hours ever. What starts as nothing more than a "feeling" that Meredith has that she "might die today" becomes a hospital event when a man is admitted with live ammunition in his chest. And to make matters worse, Meredith ends up being the person with her hand on the ammunition, keeping the entire place from blowing up. Tack on Bailey going into labor, Derek operating on Tucker, Richard's heart attack, and Kyle Chandler as the bomb squad leader, and you've got drama at its finest. By the time the two hours are over, "vajayjay" has been introduced into the English vocabulary, and you'll never be able to listen to Anna Nalick's "Breathe" the same way again. And that's not even mentioning the Derek-Meredith stuff. —Samantha Highfill

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