Ever find yourself improbably and inexplicably moved by a movie, tv show, or other entertainment outlet that otherwise doesn’t deserve anything your middle finger?
Tell us about it.
As the thread title suggests, my example is Gilligan’s Island. Ordinarily it’s only worth watching for a cheap laugh and ogling Dawn Wells, but one moment in one episode is actually touching. A hurricane is approaching the island, and the castaways discover that the only cave high enough to provide shelter is too small for all seven of them. They draw straws to decide who’ll be sacrificed to Poseidon. Gilligan, not wanting his friends to be endangered, cheats in reverse and goes out into the stormgets me; nor is it the Skipper deciding that he can’t leave his little buddy to die alone. No, it’s the moment the Professor politely excuses himself and goes out too–having decided that it’s completely idiotic to commit suicide that way but that he’d rather be a dead idiot than a live dastard. That’s the moment that always gets me.
I was going to say “X-Files” when Scully’s dad dies. I mean, I realize I have some Daddy issues, so I am not too surprised when a tender daddy-daughter moment reduces me to tears, but it’s still silly.
I’m watching it for the first time, and I was blown away by how well and how fast they make these characters so real, to the point you feel their grief.
I have just finished the second season.
On the topic of Daddy Issues, I also cry whenever Mulan comes home to her dad. “The greatest gift and honor is having you for a daughter.” The first time I watched it it just broke my heart. I would have given a leg for my dad to say anything like that to me.
:sniffle:
Not a TV show–and I started a thread about it at the time, too-- the IKEA commercial about the lamp. Yes, I felt sorry for the stupid lamp! Stupid string-pulling commercial.
P.S., I didn’t cry but, damn, I really, really felt sorry for the lamp.
For me, it’s the end of just about any episode of “Cold Case,” when they play the music and we see the dead people and the characters both then and now. Intellectually, I recognize the manipulation and the artifice, but it chokes me up every time.
Oh, almost every episode of Scrubs. I KNOW they’re going to manipulate my emotions, and I get all cranky and determined not to be moved…and I cry anyway. And I am NOT a cryer at television or movies.
The big one, of course, was Naked Gun 33 1/3, I think it was, as I’ve shared before. Full on sobbing, for pretty much the entire movie. In my defense, I *was *pregnant at the time. You know how those movies are deadly serious on the level of the characters’ understanding - Frank is completely earnest, only they’re of course hilarious on the viewer’s level? Well, somehow my psyche got stuck on the character level, and I was just horrified at the pain and humiliation all these people were going through.
You know that Smurfs episode where Smurfette has a pet mouse, and the mouse does something heroic or something, and then it dies?
I cried when I first saw it as a child. I cried when I saw it as an adult, years later. I saw it again recently and I’ll be damned, that stupid cartoon still makes me cry!
There’s this antidepressant commercial with the sad little oval that does the same thing to me. Oh, and the ranch dressing commercial with the guy in the dingy little apartment, who pours the dressing on his salad and imagines being with his family.
I was going to post that sometimes I’m so wishy-washy that even a commercial can get to me, and that’s definitely one of them.
For those unfamiliar, it can be viewed on YouTube, here. I dare you not to get at least a little choked up.
BTW, that ad won the top honor, the Grand Prix award, at the the 50th Annual Cannes Lions Advertising Festival in 2003, so take heart, Biggirl, we aren’t the only ones who were affected by that commercial. So there.
But the oval becomes happy! Don’t be sad for the oval! Everything works out all right for the oval. Didn’t you see that part?
I got choked up over the star-crossed love between Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer in Ladyhawke. In my defense, this has always been one of my great fears in life: that I’ll find myself seconds away from consummating an intimate relationship with Michelle Pfeiffer, and suddenly I’ll turn into a dog and then it’ll be illegal.
I’m not saying it ranks very highly on the list of my great fears in life, mind you.
I had never seen the lamp commercial, and the first thing that struck me was… I had that lamp! It sat on my desk every day when i was a kid, faithfully lighting my way… now I have to call my parents to find out where it went…
Every now and then, when I get hormonal, Hallmark commercials do me in. And, ok, Buffy reruns as well, sometimes.
On the few occassions I am at home during the day to watch “The Price Is Right”, I get really whupped up when the contestants win, especially at the end Showcase Showdown. “Good for You!” I yell, as their friends crowd around and celebrate, waving bye with the busty models in the final credit-rolling shots.
I am genuinely emotional and glad to see the contestants win. I don’t know why this is; it’s such a doofy show, but mesmerizing in it’s ability to give any modern day shopper a chance to have a Big Win. I don’t even like Bob Barker that much…love to see people happy about Winning, though.
the end of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: THE MOVIE!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: with the Second Coming of Sgt Pepper to raise Strawberry Fields from the dead.
And I think that having the cojones to admit this offsets the sheer patheticness of the answer.
