Last episode of Land of the Lost in season one. The main characters get home by replacing themselves with…themselves from another point in time. Kind of a cheat but still…
Far Out Space Nuts: I can’t remember the circumstances, but the nuts go back in time and can avoid the mistake that “Lunched” them into space in the first place. I think they go through with it anyway cause they miss their alien sidekick/buddy.
Obscure enough?? I did say the LAST place.
Not a TV show, but there’s a nice moment between Shaun and his stepfather Phil in Shaun of the Dead.
Shortly before Phil succumbs to his zombie bite.
LAST place is pushing it, but I was not expected to get emotional watching The Expanse on Syfy. I was…unsuccessfully chocking back tears when: (I’ll close the major spoiler from season 2)
Miller actually finds Julie Mao and talks to her. And chooses to stay with her as they crash into Venus, killing them both. Despite never having met, it was like a love relationship he had with her as he learned more about her. It was a huge shock to me, who hasn’t read the books. And a masterful piece of TV making.
Never mind!
Futurama, in the episodes “Luck of the Fryrish” and “Jurassic Bark”.
The end of Blackadder Goes Forth:
The most memorable and touching bit of TV ever made. All the more so as the whole show was about Blackadder getting out of sticky situations with mockery, cinicism and good luck, so it was completely unexpected.
Not a TV show, but there was that moment in Guardians of the Galaxy, when a CGI-animated talking raccoon was crying over the death of his good buddy, the walking, talking, CGI-animated tree.
I’d heard about that bit of course, but not seen it.
Yeah, that was brilliant.
The current show Dr. Ken is a sitcom starring Ken Jeong (The Hangover, Community) that is sort of based on his life. If you’re familiar with Jeong you wouldn’t be surprised if I told you the show is just a straight-up comedy and kinda cheesy at that.
But there was an episode that touched on the topic of his wife’s cancer scare and it was quite serious. His IRL wife is a cancer survivor. There have also been a couple things about gay marriage that have been serious.
The ending of “Mighty Max,” season 1, episode 19, “The Magnificent Seven.” (1993)
“…maybe I’ll come back as a butterfly!”
“Half-hour toy commercial” indeed.
There was an episode of Lost in Space – “The Questing Beast” – where Hans Conried played a knight who had been chasing a pink dragon all over the universe trying to kill her. At a the end of the episode, he discovers it’s all been a game; he spent his chasing the dragon who actually loved being chased. He was depressed, feeling his life had been useless. But the dragon – who clearly is fond of him – goads him into resuming the chase. It was actually quite touching, and overcame the fact that the dragon looked like something made up for a high school play.
The “I Remember You” and “Simon & Marcy” episodes of Adventure Time.
The Bernie Mac Show. The Vanessa was having trouble getting along and heard from her mother who promised to meet her. She snuck away, sure that her mother was coming to save her. Didn’t expect to cry during Bernie Mac.
Cheers, when Coach was telling his daughter she was beautiful just like her mother, and that what made her mother beautiful is that she never realized she was beautiful.
Again, not the LAST place that this would be expected but Uncle Iroh’s segment on Tales of Ba Sing Se is such a gut punch.
The very first episode of “Sliders”, which is about a group of people who got caught sliding between alternate timelines without being able to find their way home. The very first episode, they wind up in what they think is an alternate San Francisco (which is where they came from), and the main character, Quinn, goes home and opens the front gate. Now, all of his life, the front gate has squeaked, but this time it didn’t, so he assumed they were in the wrong timeline, and he went back to travel again to a different timeline trying to find his way home. But it turned out that his mother had finally gotten around to getting the gate fixed, and he really was home, and just didn’t know it.
And so the show ran for several years as they tried to get back home.
How about the episode of Cheers when Carla has a one-night encounter with an academic associate of Frasier: Carla gets pregnant and the professor asks her to marry him, even offering to take financial responsibility for her other kids. Carla turns him down, and says that it’s because she has a particular idea of the man she wants to be marry.
Carla describes her ideal, allegedly fictional dream man to the father-to-be. While she never actually says his name, it becomes obvious that Carla is actually describing Sam. And it becomes clear that she is secretly in love with him.
From the first episode of The Cosby Show:
Theo: You’re a doctor and Mom’s a lawyer, and you’re both successful in everything and that’s great! But maybe I was born to be a regular person and have a regular life. If you weren’t a doctor, I wouldn’t love you less, because you’re my dad. So rather than feeling disappointed because I’m not like you, maybe you should accept who I am and love me anyway, because I’m your son.
Prepare for touching father-son moment.
Cliff: Theo…
that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life! No wonder you get D’s in everything! You’re afraid to try because you’re afraid your brain is going to explode and it’s going to ooze out of your ears. Now I’m telling you, you are going to try as hard as you can. And you’re going to do it because I said so. I am your father. I brought you into this world, and I’ll take you out!
About year after my Dad passed away I watched Lisa’s Wedding and the very end where Lisa and Homer walk off into the Sunset made me just start crying. I couldn’t help it.
A few years later I was randomly flipping channels and Superman The Movie was on. One of the scenes between Clark and his dad (Jonathan Kent not Jor-El) just made me lose it again. It wasn’t even the scene where his father dies. Just them bonding.
Oh my gosh, yes. +100
Learning this about Ice King changed how I saw him in every subsequent episode.