If you haven't already doubled down to binge a season or two of HBO's The Pitt, then this might be your sign. Now that the show's second season has swept this year's Emmy Nominations, we really think it should be added to your HBOMax queue. Yes, there are plenty of great medical drama TV shows out there in the world, but none that seem to come close to the pace, the injuries are gore galore, and the tension with Langdon and Robby is so thick you could cut it with a scalpel. But even the Emmy jury thinks the juice is worth the squeeze.

Here are our pick of the best and most exhilarating episodes of The Pitt's first two seasons. (And yes, *spoilers* are ahead.)

1. Season 1, Episode 1 (7am to 8am)

It feels obvious to start with the pilot, but it's hard to go past this one. Within minutes you're dropped into one of Pittsburgh's busiest emergency departments, where there's already more patients than doctors can reasonably handle and the shift has barely begun. It gets straight into the core of what immediately sets the series apart – its heart-pounding, real-time format. From the jump, every decision feels urgent and every delay feels consequential. It's stressful in the best possible way, introducing Dr. Robby and the team while making one thing abundantly clear: nobody is getting an easy day at work.

2. Season 1, Episode 12 (6pm to 7pm)

By hour twelve, the emergency department is still in the thick of the mass casualty event, with patients continuing to arrive and supplies beginning to run low. As the watcher, it's the prep work for the mass casualty event that is fascinating. It’s an emergency, it feels and looks like chaos, but the team is surprisingly coordinated under pressure – like a military running a drill. Robby and his team are forced to make constant triage decisions as every member of the department takes on more responsibility. Mohan continues to step up under pressure, Abbott donates blood while treating a patient, and Mel does the same to save one of her own. Despite the chaos, the staff continue working together, making this one of the season's most intense and emotionally charged episodes.

3. Season 1, Episode 13 (7pm to 8pm)

Few season finales feel as earned as this one. After spending an entire day alongside these characters, the final hour lands with a gut-punch of emotional weight. That moment – you know the one – was coming for Robby all season. We could feel it coming, and yet it still hit hard to see him like that. It's the episode that likely won Noah Wyle his Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series last year, too.

There's no neat bow tying everything together  – though it is nice to see them all sharing a drink in the park at the end of a wild day (or season). It kind of felt like getting off shift as the watcher, too. Obviously, relationships have changed, decisions have consequences and everyone leaves the hospital carrying something different than when they walked in.

4. Season 2, Episode 5 (11am to 12pm)

This is one of those episodes where everything changes in an instant. What begins as a relatively ordinary morning takes a terrifying turn when Louie — one of the department's most beloved patients — suddenly crashes. Dr. Robby has literally just walked into the room carrying him a beer when the alarms sound, forcing both him and Langdon to immediately drop everything and begin trying to save his life. It's an incredibly tense sequence that also marks an important turning point for the pair. Whatever tension exists between them is forgotten the second a patient's life is on the line, making this one of the season's most gripping hours. There was also something so heart warming about seeing Joy risking Mohan’s ire to help out the Hispanic family with cheaper payment options. Or seeing Santos dodge bodily fluids with the one-liner: “There is no ‘we’ in disimpaction.”

5. Season 2, Episode 7 (1pm to 2pm)

If you were wondering how season 2 was going to up the ante from a mass casualty event in the first season, this was the episode that gave us that adrenaline rush. A hospital-wide computer outage feel just as stressful as any medical emergency. After hackers target nearby hospitals, Robby makes the call to shut down the entire hospital system before patient records can be compromised, forcing the emergency department to function completely offline. Suddenly everyone is photographing whiteboards, scribbling notes by hand and trying to keep the department running without any of the technology they've come to rely on. As if that wasn't enough, Langdon finally attempts to make amends with Robby, only to realise some damage can't be undone overnight. It's a brilliantly chaotic episode.

6. Season 2, Episode 14 (8pm to 9pm)

Sections of this episode has been widely circulated on social media, and for good reason. Here, we finally discover some the reasons behind the somewhat strange behaviour of Dr. Al-Hashimi; why she has a fixation for precision and is insisting on a second attending. Dr. Robby also confides in Duke the core reason for his sabbatical and some of his own personal struggles. But the scene in particular that made waves across social media was the moment Dr. Robby berates two EMTs for incorrectly placing EKG leads on a patient with large breasts. It's a vital moment that shows how women can receive inferior medical care due to a fundamental misunderstanding of or reluctance around treating the female body.