David Letterman on Monday, 09/17/01. With Dan Rather.
More emotional than any sitcom I’ve ever seen.
The score was a big part of it; I can’t hear it without crying. That score keens. The images were incredible; the long conversation in front of the polar bear tank, with those huge bears looking graceful, almost dancing, swimming down in front of them.
The look in Ray’s eyes as he realizes he has shot his best friend. The train pulling out, with her hand extended towards him. Snowflakes.
Yes, Buffy’s The Body. TNG’s The Inner Light, especially the last scene where Picard is playing the simple tune on the flute as the huge starship rumbles by.
Little things pop out at me, making me unexpectedly teary in the middle of adventure episodes. I remember an old “Simon and Simon”, where they were chasing their doubles. Rick gets shot because he can’t figure out if the person facing him is his brother or not, and as AJ comes to him and asks why he couldn’t shoot, he just whispers above the pain that he couldn’t take the risk. AJ then, gently, puts his forehead to his. A single moment, but you can see how much they love each other.
One from my childhood that kills me in retrospect: “It Takes a Thief”. Flowers from Alexander, where Laurie, who had been his control the first episode, tricks Al into helping her help a KGB agent with whom she has fallen in love. The KGB agent was setting her up, and she is killed right in front of Mundy. I remember the final scene, where he puts a single rose on her grave. Mind you, I was working on teen age hormones, and this was Senta Berger, but I was gone.
There are more. What can I say; I cry at TV often.
I almost forgot one of the best. Remember the MASH episode where Kelly is trying to get Hawkeye’s attention? There’s a part where she is nursing a dying soldier. He is no longer really aware of where he is and Kelly lets him think she’s his girl from home. They talk about the picnic they will go on and she holds his hand as he dies. This was one of the best acted scenes on MASH. It gets me evey time.
A couple Highlander episodes…I loved that series, but I haven’t seen it in a long time, so I don’t even really remember the specifics of the scenes…A few I can remember off the top of my head:
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Tessa (Duncan’s girlfriend at the time) is killed in a random mugging…no big boss guy Duncan has to save her from or anything, she’s just killed out of the blue. Poor Duncan…
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Charlie dies…can’t quite remember, but he gets shot up a bunch by some bad guys and dies after Duncan finally tells him he’s immortal and all…
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I can’t remember what exactly happened but there’s a scene where Duncan is off on his own and makes his own sword somewhere in Scotland and the “Dust in the Wind” song is playing, and I recall that being somewhat sad, heh…
Lots of other parts too, heh…Guess when you have a show about an immortal running around swordfighting, you’re going to be watching a lot of people die tragically. 
Some Fresh Prince episodes also got to me…I liked how the show was generally goofy but occasionally you’d get those really sad ones, like where Carlton buys a gun after Will gets shot and they’re in the hospital and junk…
- Tsugumo
Fitz’s death got me. And a couple of the flashbacked episodes where he appears after that. And the ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ riff with Tessa alive, but Ritchie and Mithos evil, and Joe all crippled and stuff. (And Fitz died even earlier. ^__^; )
the ally mcbeal episode when the little boy dying of cancer tries to sue god. i liked that concept. but it really got me when Ling broke down
And the first “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart after the attack. Christ. Seeing comedians break down gets me everytime.
damn damn damn
Now i’m crying in my cubicle, trying to talk on the phone.
I had forgotten about that, 100% forgotten- one of the few TV moments to ever crack the emotionless facade I had built myself in my youth. And damned if if doesn’t still jerk some tears.
I don’t know whether to thank you or kick you.
This is going way back, but it really got to me when I thought Jessica Tate, on the sitcom Soap, had died. As I recall, she was in the hospital, and the last thing you saw, on that last episode of the season, was her heart monitor flat-line. I cried and cried. It was the last show of the season, though, and at the beginning of the next season, they were able to re-start her heart.
The scene in Law and Order when Adam Schiff’s wife dies. We never see her face, but we see him holding her hand after he signs the termination(?) order.
The doctor flips the switch, the monitor goes beep beep beep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep and Adam lets out this tiny little whimper that just breaks my heart.
Many episodes of The Wonder Years, either because i related to Kevin or because i wished I could… the ep with the girl he meets on the trip, and “Happy Together” played… that made me cry. And the last ep… and the one with Kevin and Winnnie dancing with other people to “Crimson and Clover”… i was such a big fan when it was on Nick at Nite… my memories are tied up with that show. I want a girl like Winnie…
The episode of The Simpsons that I think is the most truly touching is the Thanksgiving episode, where Bart and Lisa meet on the roof at the end.
But the all time most tear-inducing TV show is, without a doubt, My So Called Life. Oh, poor Brian Krakow.
You know Danica McKeller is on The West Wing, now, don’t you? She’s plays Will Bailey’s (half? step?) sister and writes jokes for political speeches.
Her hair is shorter, but she looks exactly the same otherwise.
“Sleeping in Light” from Babylon 5 made me leak a few tears, but it was another episode that made me bawl, “Passing Through Gethsemane”. Brother Edward is lying there dying, all beaten up, and he looks up at his superior and says"I always wanted to know if I’d have the courage to stay in the garden of Gethsemane. Well, now I know Theo, now I know"
Two that REALLY get me…
[ul]
[li]The second to last Tonight Show with Johnny Carson where Bette Midler was the last guest, the songs she sang and the song she ad-libbed with Johnny and her last song One For The Road…damn, gets me every time…[/li]
[li]The episode of Moonlighting, Blonde on Blonde, where David is finally convinced to tell Maddy of his love for her. He runs to her house in the rain, pounds on the door, yelling at Maddy to answer the door, so he can tell her the news, when another man answers the door (played by Mark Harmon). The music in this scene is David Sanborn and Al Jarreau with the classic Since I Fell For You. I bought the Moonlighting Soundtrack for this song. It’s probably the finest rendition of that song available, and the scene with that music really tore me up.[/li][/ul]
The last episode of MAS*H. I get choked up thinking about it and I refuse to watch it again.
How about Jurassic Bark, the one where they find Fry’s fossilized dog, and are about to clone him? Fry finds out the dog lived to be 15 (Fry was frozen when the dog was 3), and decides not to clone him, as the dog lived a full life, and must’ve forgotten all about him.
We then see that the dog not only tried to rescue Fry from his frozen state, but faithfully waited for Fry to return, laying on the sidewalk in front of the pizza parlor where he worked for twelve years, until the poor dog died WAAAH!
I was just going to mention that. And that sappy song they play doesn’t help none, either. And Mr. Panucci trying to give the dog food, and the place falling apart around him but still the dog stays in one spot. My GF and I watched it, and I didn’t cry (yoiu know, being a manly man and all) but I was certainly ready to, and she was bawling everywhere.
Another episode of Futurama that almost got me and got my GF was the one where Leela finds her parents. At the end she cries in her parents arms and it does this montage with little times when her parents gave her birthday presents, or tucked her in when sleeping, always making sure not to be seen. Kinda sad in that happy way.
Ooh oh! I thought of another Futurama! It’s less sad, but it’s “Time Keeps on Slipping.” Time jumps cause the universe to skip ahead days or weeks at a time, without anyone remembering what they did in that tme. Fry ends up at a wedding with Leela. She insists he tricked her. At the end, we see that fry moved the stars in some galaxy to spell out ‘I love you.’ Then Leela uses a black hole device to stop the time skips and the stars get sucked in. Fry screams out, and when Leela asks what’s wrong, he just calmy says, “nothing.”
I feel so bad for that guy! Will that one-eyed freak ever acknowledge his love? (Probably not, since the series is over.)
Anyone else tearing up just reading about all these moments?!
Ben’s birth on Friends, the montage at the end of Seinfeld, Michael J. Fox leaving Spin City, Henry Blake’s death on MAS*H…