There was an episode of **Baby Daddy **last season that went surprisingly serious and thoughtful: Bonnie, the mother of the titular baby daddy and another son finally stood up to her own mother, calling her out for having repeatedly said that her grandsons were mistakes that ruined Bonnie’s life, and refusing to let her say the same thing about her son’s baby girl.
The final episode of Quantum Leap was rather touching…and dark.
A very good episode of Happy Days (believe it or not) where Fonzie finds a letter from the father that abandoned him. That part wasn’t that moving but the part where Mr. Cunningham basically doesn’t give into sentimentality and rips Fonzie’s Dad for leaving is actually very well done.
What about Dead Like Me, when Rube got to see his daughter the day she was scheduled to die?
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 5, the end of episode 15, where Buffy’s mother dies, and episode 16, where Buffy and her family deal with it.
And the music was Bill Withers–“Ain’t no Sunshine When She’s Gone.” My missus and I are binging Bernie Mac as we speak. Many more touching moments than you would think. An excellent show, holds up well; improves with age.
“All in the Family” I don’t remember a lot of touching moments involving Archie (usually Edith and/or the others), but when he and Mike get locked in the storage room in Archie’s Bar, and the “shoe-booty” story unfolds, I had trouble keeping the eyes dry.
From a long time ago, The Beverly Hillbillies episode “Jed Cuts the Family Tree” (S01E26), the head of the Mayflower-descendants society discovers that the Clampetts may be the last “lost” descendants from the Mayflower. All Jed has to do is confirm that the name written in a old bible, Ezekial, is his great-grandfather’s name, and they’ll be famous. He says “Sorry, his name was Jeremiah” and everyone leaves, disappointed. Granny turns to him and says, “Jed, you know full-well that you great-grandfather was Ezekial.” Jed says, “I know that, but why would we want to have all that fame?”, being happy with what they have.
I don’t know why this has stuck with me all these years, but it was a nice non-comedic moment in an otherwise silly show.
Another AITF one has Archie and Edith in bed. Edith tries to rekindle some intimacy with Archie, but he abjectly says that they best not start something he can’t finish. After they turn with their backs to each other, there’s shots of each of them, with anguish on their faces.
In an Odd Couple episode, Felix’s daughter Edna runs away to follow her idol, the elfish Paul Williams. Felix hunts her down at a club where she’s waitressing (and where Williams is performing). At the end of his set and people have left, he plays a song for Edna as she’s cleaning up (including the nifty line “let’s order up a cup of tolerance for two”). When he finishes the song, he informs the smitten Edna that his father wrote it (who’s sitting at one of the tables).
We can be heroes, which is a comedy starring Chris Lilley about the quest to find the Australian of the Year. Brilliantly funny stuff.
One character, Pat Mullins, wanted to roll to the Centre of Australia as a charity fund-raiser. Won’t spoil it but what happened to her was so sad, yet so well handled within the context of the different characters in essentially a broad dark comedy.
Another All in the Family moment: When Edith’s transsexual friend Beverly LaSalle gets murdered and she gives up her faith. She is sitting on the porch in the freezing cold losing her faith and agnostic Mike comes out and tells her that Beverly would not want her to grieve that way.
The John Larroquette Show (recounted to the best of my recollection)
John runs a bus terminal, and actress Liz Torres plays Mahalia, his secretary. In previous years, Liz was quite a hot number, but by the time of the show, and how most people would probably recognize her, she has gained a substantial amount of weight.
In one episode, Mahalia finds out that a photographer is threatening to release some nude photos she had taken in her younger more foolish days. He is demanding a payment for the negatives and prints or everyone will see her naughty photos.
But being a secretary at a small bus terminal, she doesn’t have the money.
At the end of the episode, John saves the day by getting a hold of the photos and giving them to Mahalia, saving her from the embarrassment and humiliation she would suffer.
She thanks him, then casually asks him if he took a look at the photos when he got them. He told her that he did.
Mahalia then softly says to him “I was quite beautiful back then, wasn’t I ?”
He responds, “Yes, you were very pretty,” then holds for a beat, “But you didn’t become beautiful until later.”
Damn, that was a great line. As crazy and funny as most of that show was, it had some great writing and performances.
Last season of Grimm, “Blood Magic”.
Okay, this one is major unexpected: the show It’s Like, You Know…, which is currently on a few people’s lists in the “what little-known short-lived show did you like?” thread. There was an episode where, off and on, the characters were sort of tossing around the question, “What’s the saddest thing you ever heard?”
At the end, one of the characters says, “I know. I know the saddest thing you ever heard.” “What?” “When Linda McCartney died, and Paul said, ‘I’ve just lost my best friend.’” They all silently nodded in agreement, and fade to black.
Aint no sunshine works all the time…so easy to sing whether or not you get all the words, just go on and on with Aint no sunshine when shes gone, make the noise, its a great time/beat
The shoe booty episode is my most memorable.
Big Bang Theory, when Sheldon is cleaning out Howard and Bernadette’s closet and finds an opened letter from Howard’s father.
Sheldon reads it and since Howard doesn’t want to know what it says, they all tell him a different story about the contents of the letter, one of which is true. It was very sweet.
The final scene of Brendan Fraser’s final episode on Scrubs.
I don’t want to spoil it, but I watched it the final Sunday of Spring Break of my first year in law school, where I’d spent all week in the library working on a semester-long project. Numerous power-outages, missing books, etc., had me beat down, so when that episode finished, I was a bawling mess.
And then a friend called from 150 miles away and since I was unable to speak coherently and I was crying so hard into the phone, he offered to drive to me and see what was wrong. I told him to hold on, I hung up, composed myself, and explained to him that I was crying over a tv show.
He still doesn’t let me forget it.
^ Good call! That was a powerhouse.
Yeah.
But for maximum value you had to have seen Fraser’s previous episodes. Which are fabu.
Agree, Jurrasic Bark on Futurama was the ultimate, if you’ve ever shared your life with a canine companion.
Gilligan destroys the bush of mind-reading seeds.
San Junipero in Black Mirror. All these depressing sci-fi horror stories, then this touching episode.
The Office when Michael proposes to Holly.
Also, not a TV show but a movie, the end of Terminator 2.