I don’t like to cry at T.V. shows. It makes me feel stupid getting so emotional about make-believe people and I always feel manipulated after. Still, a good drama can get my throat tight and if it’s really good, actual sobs will escape. ER did this to me twice: When Dr. Benton’s nephew died and when Kelly Martin’s character got killed. I cried rivers over those two. NOVA’s Why The Towers Fell had me in tears for nearly two hours.
ut sit-coms never, ever make me sob---- until last night. Watching Vanessa’s mother break her heart on Bernie Mac just about had me drowning in tears. Perhaps because it reminded me so much of waiting for my father to show up after he called and said he would take me out, and then tripping over that liquor bottle on the way to my grandmother’s house.
A situation-comedy made me bawl. That’s it-- send me to the Home for the Mawkish and Maudlin.
I opened this thread just to say that last night’s Bernie Mac actually made me cry. It wasn’t Vanessa’s waiting for her mother, it was Bernie’s (well done) distress that he had never told his “uncle” how he felt before it was too late.
The first episode of Archie Bunker’s Place, after Edith has died. Archie has asked friends to clear all of Edith’s stuff out of the house so that he won’t be surrounded by painful reminders of her. They get everything…except…her slipper under the bed. The scene where Archie finds that slipper, cradles it and breaks down…
I’ll not admit to crying, but that scene could put a lump in your throat.
I’ve shed tears for a few episodes of Friends. When Ross and Rachel broke up, when Chandler and Monica got engaged and when Joey told Rachel he was in love with her all come to mind. Sheesh - I think I may be a little too obsessed with this show!
Good God, I cry at sitcoms, dramas, documentaries, commercials…
Designing Women always gets me. Especially when Charlene has her dream about giving birth and Dolly Parton is in it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m a dork.
I got choked up during Bernie Mac last night. I’ll admit it.
I’ve also been choked up over Friends and even The Simpsons.
I was surprised when I got teary during a recent episode of Grounded for Life, which I regard as an amusing way to kill time before Bernie Mac but that I doubt I would watch if it moved to a different time.
Ashton Kutchter (spelling?) of That 70s Show guest-starred as a wild, crazy cousin. The episode took place during his funeral and concerned the family’s attempts to give him a send-off he would have wanted. Even though it’s a comedy, the writers and actors did a really good job of showing someone who had died and would be missed. I can’t think of any other sitcom that’s done that so well.
“Sometimes, when the doctors cut into a patient, and it’s cold outside - like it is this morning - steam rises up out of the body. And sometimes, the doctor will warm himself over the open wound. How can you see something like this, and not be changed.”
I was going to say MASH too, specificly the last one where Hawkeye was describing the woman who smothered her baby to save the rest of the group. Damn that was some heavy, heavy shit!
Being a hairy-chested he-man, I never cry. But I do remember one episode, many years ago, of (this is embarrassing) Laverne and Shirley, in which one of them (didn’t watch it enough to learn to distinguish them) thought she was pregnant. The two doofus guys (don’t remember their names) flipped a coin to decide who would offer to marry her, to give the kid a father.
When the guy made the offer, he explained that they had flipped for it. She smiled sympathetically and said, “Oh, and you lost.” The guy looked confused, and said, “No–I won.” I still get a little lump in my throat about that one. Turned out she wasn’t pregnant after all, I think.
The only sitcoms that I specifically remember coming close to tears over were Bernie Mac the other night and a couple episodes of MASH*. I know there must be more but I can’t for the life of me think of any at the moment.
I’ll second that. Well, I didn’t cry, of course - being a guy and all.
There was also a very touching WY episode… the problem is, the details escape me. IIRC, they had been to a funeral, and Kevin and his father were driving back. They’re talking about life, dying, that osrt of thing. The final shot it the family car disappearing into the mist on a country road, driving away from the camera.
I tried a search, but I can’t find the episode. Or I’m not sure yet.
The end of the final episode of BlackAdder goes Forth (set in World War 1), when the characters are waiting in their trench to go “over the top”, where they will undoubtedly all be killed. Especially the redemption of Captain Darling, who has been a grade A shit all through the series, but finally displays some backbone when he realises he has to go too (“Wanted to make it through…go home…marry Doris…”)
Whisles blow, “Good luck, everyone”, they all clamber up, shots ring out, the action freezes, the characters disappear to leave only the landscape, and it all fades to sepia.
