I love the great variety of responses. It’s great when we can mention very emotional moments and humorous moments in the same thread.
The old drama series “Iron Horse” (mid-sixties) was a Western about, well, you can guess what it was about. Fairly standard fare, but in one episode, the bad guy smashed one character’s hands with an iron hammer. It still gives me the heebie-jeebies.
After that, we stopped watching it.
Well, for me the greatest TV moments revolve around the space program in one way or another, so you could probably count me as another one who gives the moon landing first place.
But how about moments that are truly gone, either because they were live only, or have been pulled from syndication? I saw Louise Lasser’s on-air near-breakdown while she was hosting Saturday Night Live in the late 70’s. She had recently been busted for cocaine, and kept ranting about it in a more or less circular fashion. SNL producer Lorne Michaels has seen to it that that episode doesn’t exist in publicly available tapes or DVD’s, and that it’s never shown in syndication. But it would appear that on air night he was unable to get the delayed broadcast on the West Coast pre-empted.
Though I suspect he fervently wished he could.
Watching the Towers collapse for the first time, knowing there were still all those people inside.
The first moon landing.
And, for the lighter side…
“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
In lighter vein…
A few weeks back, when David Letterman got a gash in his finger stitched up at his desk, with the “Will It Float?” models assisting, dressed as nurses, naturally.
On the Conan show, when Triumph the Insult Comic Dog visited the nerds in line for Star Wars, and the first visit he made to the Westminister Dog Show (though now he just recycles the same jokes every year).
The Daily Show’s riff on Bush’s “Fool me once…” misspeakment.
On Seinfeld, Kramer’s “I’m out!” during The Contest.
More recently, on the increasingly unfunny “Friends”, the scene where Ross is playing “Celebrate Good Times” on the bagpipes and Phoebe is “singing” along.
That’s odd, since they landed on Sunday afternoon (East Coast time) and the walk was Sunday evening. I had just graduated from high school, (it was July 20, obviously) and I had a party in my basement for it. In the US, at least, Nixon made the next Monday a holiday to celebrate.
Were you in the US at the time?
For me
Kennedy’s funeral.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the attempted coup in Russia.
The Moon landing, and also the Apollo 8 Christmas Eve broadcast.
For fiction, it was when it was announced that Henry Blake died on MASH, at the end of MacLean Stevenson’s last show. My understanding is that Gary Burghoff was handed the lines at the last minute, and none of the actors knew about it until it was being filmed. Very moving and very shocking.
You must have your dates off.
Nope. July 20, 1969 - my brother’s 9th birthday. And the walk must have been at night, because I remember being allowed to stay up late to watch it. (I was five.)
Maybe you are thinking of a different moon walk?
The "Good Times " episode when the family is home after the funeral of James Sr. Florida shows no emotion during the show until the end when shes cleaning house and as she starts to put away the punch bowle, she realizes her husband is dead and she will never see him again…“DAMN…DAMN …DAMN!”
I get misty eyed just thinking about it.
This page gives the day as Sunday, July 20, 1969:
Perhaps Bosda is thinking of the launch?
He actually said, when relaying conflicting reports on whether press secretary Jim Brady was dead or alive, “Let’s get it nailed down, somebody! Let’s find out!”
Yep, found a clip all right but it’s not complete. It cuts out right when Who calls.
Ooh, rolandgunslinger, I had forgotten about that one. For all of its “dy-no-mite!” goofiness, that show kept it real on a lot of levels.
“I’m out!” and The Finale
I was sleeping at a friend’s house the morning of 9/11/01, I was glued to Dan Rather and the SDMB all day until I went to work.
J.T. Snow’s HR in 2000. (Damn you, Agbayani!)
Rich Aurilia striking out to end Game 6 last year.
(And I remember the OP’s “Testicles” line quite well. Proops pronouced it “Test-i-CLEEZ” to fit it with the characters and stood with him legs proudly apart. He’s a riot live, too.)
The Louise Lasser show was among several SNL episodes shown on E! channel on Nov. 21, 2002.
My favorite funny tv moment was the last episode of the second Bob Newhart show (the one in Vermont) where at the end he wakes up with Emily his wife from the first show and tells her he just had the strangest dream.
The whole Kennedy thing drove me crazy as a kid. I just didn’t get how important it was. The assasination happened on my birthday and my party was cancelled (and we only got a party every other year because of too many kids and not enough money). Then my mother made us watch the whole funeral with all the drapes closed and it was super weather outside. We all wanted to go out but got yelled at if we even peeked out the window because we had to observe this “national tragedy” At the time I was just totally resentful, then really guilty when I got older and finally “got it”
9/11’s hard to beat really.
For Ausrtralian TV viewers -
Mike Willisee, host of A Current affair tying up the telephone lines to a house under siege so he could interview the hostages and their captors (Therefore making it impossible for the police negociators to contact them)
The very same Mike Willisee apparently drunk on air.
Fictional - The moment when Leyland and Sara Palmer find out their daughter has died on Twin Peaks.
The dirtying of a spoon on Falwty Towers. I can still hear it hit Manuel’s teeth.
Frontline, the current affairs show satire doing it’s own take on the Willisee Siege. Especially the final moment.