Actually, Edith did not die until All in the Family became Archie Bunker’s Place. This was one of the saddest episodes of any TV show I have seen. Another sad All in the Family is called Edith’s Christmas Story where Edith thinks that she might have breast cancer and dose not want to spoil Christmas so she keeps it to herself. When Archie finds out he rushes to the hospital and sees Edith in a bed and thinks that it is too late.
Also, yet another All in the Family that I find very sad, is * Edith’s 50th Birthday*. It is a two part episode, where Edith is attacked and almost raped on her 50th birthday.
Although I didn’t cry whan I saw any of these episodes, they are very sad. I did come close to tears when Edith died.
Why do all these bad things have to happen to Edith?
Star Trek TOS, at the end of The Menagerie Part II where we see the “restored” Capt. Pike walking hand-in-hand with Vina, then cut to Kirk with a smile on his face and really, really, weepy music. This never fails to make me squirt.
Honorable mentions: Edith Keeler must die; the death of Mirimani; Zarabeth helping Spock & McCoy escape knowing that she will be stuck in the ice age all alone; Shahna’s tearful farewell to Kirk, saying that she will look to the stars.
Agreed - I think the line that most summed this up in her rant was ‘It’s so…MORTAL’ (or something to that effect).
And as to causing death as a demon - It’s not really the same thing to kill someone you don’t know, and have some reason (if a vague, irrational) reason to hate (or cause them to cease to exist) as to have someone you know, and are close to die for some incomprehensible reason.
What episode of my favorite show hasn’t brought me to tears? I regularly tear up watching t.v., even if it’s not my favorite show. I cry at sappy commercials. I cry during the news. And Emergency Vets always kills me.
I cried really hard during the episode of Mad About You after they had the baby and were trying to get her to sleep through the night. They were told by their doctor or somebody to just let the baby cry or she wouldn’t ever learn how to get to sleep on her own. The whole episode is filmed looking down the hall at the bedroom door, and Paul and Jamie are mostly sitting outside the door talking and listening to the baby cry. It’s killing them not to go in and comfort her and they discuss all the times in Mabel’s life when they’re going to have to let her grow up and learn things on her own, etc.
Seeing how hard that was for them was really heart-wrenching and made me think about parenting.
But she was human before she became a demon. Did no one she knew die during that time? I mean, I can understand her being frustrated at death, but to be completely clueless about the nature of death? That’s just silly.
I just felt this was a case where all the strings were obvious. To me, this was sledgehammer-quality, dammit-I-want-an-Emmy, Serious Episode death at its worst. Obviously I am in a minority, so it didn’t do a bad job, for most people.
Mine was the episode of Spin City where Michael J Fox left. Got to me for some reason. I grew up with MJ (Back to the Future is still one of my favorite movies, and who can forget Alex P Keaton) and knowing that he was not only leaving the show, but was doing so because of a nasty degenerative disease, made it even worse. My wife and I both lost it watching that.
And Star Trek:TNG where MCCoy tours the new Enterprise with Data… Just plain sad…
I don’t usually cry for tv shows. (Movies are another story and another thread.) There was one, though, I think it was the premier for “911”. Newlywed couple on there way to their honeymoon. Auto accident which ends with a huge beam crushing the car. They are both trapped under it, the wife, (I think) is unconscious, the husband is awake and alert. The rescue team soon figure out that the beam has essentially cut him in two and the pressure of it is the only thing keeping him alive. The wife, not hurt by the beam, has a head wound/brain damage and is fading fast. Over the course of the show, (one hour, I think), we get to know the husband and through him, the wife, all their history, their plans, everything. Plus his family gets there and he gets to say goodbye. Meanwhile the police have “hot wired” a crane from a construction site to lift the beam. A priest gives the husband the last rites, then they lift the beam in slow motion, the husband dies, they cut the wife out of the car in seconds and trundle her into the waiting ambulance. I cried like a little girl. If it had been me, I’d have insisted that I be the one to give the word to lift the beam.
Homicide Life on the Streets: When Frank Pembleton steps out onto the steps of the police building in full dress uniform to salute the passing casket of Frank Crosetti, I bawl, every single time I see it.
ER: So many ER episodes have made me cry, including the aforementioned Love’s Labor Lost, the Alan Rosenberg episode and when Lucy Knight dies. But I also can’t help but cry in an episode with Danny Rappaport as the victim of a chemical burn. He is slowly but surely dying, and has just hours, and asks Carol to get a letter and his bank account information to his daughter who he hasn’t seen in many years. Carol goes to his ex-wife’s apartment and the woman rebuffs Carol and doesn’t care that Rappaport is dying and won’t let their daughter go to say goodbye. That broke my heart.
The last one is embarrassing, but here goes: I also cry during the episode of Designing Women in which Jean Smart’s character Charlene has her baby. The episode features the late Beah Richards as a 100+ year old woman who is on the maternity ward of the hospital because she wants to be near the babies when she dies. She tells stories of her life to the other 3 women and their assorted friends, and the sad part is that she outlived her entire family, including all of her children. Dixie Carter & Annie Potts are there, holding her hand, as she dies while the song “Somewhere Out There” plays in the background. It’s schmaltzy to the utmost, but it breaks me every time.
I was just coming to this thread to write about that exact episode (no really, I’m serious)! I cry like a baby everytime I catch it. Plus they dig the knife in a little deeper by implying that Charlene’s baby was born the exact moment the old woman died. Plus, it takes place on New Years Eve/Day!!
On another Roseanne note, I’m also remembering the series finale (thank god they ended that show, it was really getting foolish). Hell, the last episode was better than the entire last two seasons! At the very end, you find that none of the events after Dan’s heart attack/Darlene’s wedding really happened (like winning the lottery and totally changing the entire interior of their house); but Darlene having her baby was real, I think) and the events that were on the show were really just part of a autobiographical book Roseanne Conner was writing. It shows a shot of Rosie writing down in the basement, writing that book like she always wanted to. We find out that Dan had actually died from his heart attack. It was pretty sad–at least I thought so.
maybe not actual tears but there are certainly episodes that have moved me.
Some MASH episodes, yeah, and some Star Trek.
How about the episode of Alien Nation when Francisco is pregnant, and he and Sykes are out on a case then he goes into labor… Sykes helps deliver the baby. When Francisco says, “it needs the warmth of two bodies”, Sykes takes off his shirt and lies down on the pavement with him with the baby in between.
In addition to Buffy “The Body,” the B5 finale and a couple of the others mentioned, three episodes of Designing Women always choke me up. There’s an episode where a 24 year old friend of the women is dying of AIDS and he asks them to plan his funeral. The episode when Mary Jo gets mugged. The scene where she’s describing the encounter in the parking garage gets me every time. And the one where Charlene’s cousin is the victim of spousal abuse.
Oh, and the one where Charlene gives birth gets me sometimes too. I’m such a sucker soetimes.
Yeah All in the Family was great for those kind of moments especially when you saw through to the big softy Archie really was.
I remember the episode where Gloria had decided not to raise their son with any religion, and Archie actually stole him to try and get one done quick but of course the priest wouldn’t do that. So there is this little scene with Archie in the church just looking up into sky, “Hello God. This is my grandson.” Gets me every time with the look of love on Archie’s face.
Now, I’ve always been a big sci-fi geek, but nothing has ever drawn me in like this show. Over three seasons, the characters have been extraordinarily well developed. So when bad stuff happens to them, I’ve been know to shed a few tears.
Spoilers below if you haven’t seen the episodes (they’re playing them from the beginning Mon-Thurs at 8 on Sci-fi, so it’s not too late!)…
In the episode “Infinite Possibilities, Part 2: Icarus Abides,” I knew that this copy of Crichton wasn’t going to make it. It had been set up so well: the victory over Scorpius’ probe, the romance–finally–with Aeryn, that the only dramatically feasible thing to do was kill him off. The conflict that would result when Aeryn was reunited with his clone would just make for good plot. My wife and I had been saying for weeks that he would die somehow, but we help out hope until the very end. We bawled.
And then there was Aeryn’s death in “Die Me, Dichotomy,” where John, under Scorpius’ control, knocks her prowler out of the sky, just after they finally figure out that they are in love with one another. We figured that she wasn’t dead for good, but it was a very poignant and tragic moment.
Of course, Zhaan’s death in “Self Inflicted Wounds, Part 2: Wait For The Wheel” was rough on us. We knew that Virginia Hey was leaving the show, but we didn’t want to believe that it meant her character would die. Since Zhaan had been ill for some time previous, and they were so close to a cure, we hoped that she would get healed, and then leave to do her own thing somewhere. But her heroic sacrifice was well in keeping with the character’s nature.
Point 1 - she’s been a demon for over a millenium - do you think you’d keep your mortal perspective if you spent 1000 years giving humans about the same amount of consideration you or I would give to an enemy in a video game?
Point 2 - if she were mature enough to actually understand death, she wouldn’t have become a Vengance Demon to begin with.