Sometimes, a funny show will surprise you by getting serious and really delivering some dramatic chops. Indeed, it seems they can do it more effectively than dramatic shows, because you don’t see it coming. IT’s often the comedies that can make us cry.
Probably the most famous, and perhaps best executed, example was the episode of Sesame Street, “Goodbye Mr. Hooper,” that dealt with the death of the actor who played Mr. Hooper and by extension the character himself. Big Bird, who in his innocence doesn’t understand what death means, has to have it explained to him. The message is delivered straight and honestly, and we see Big Bird suffer from the various stages of grief. Frankly, it was awe-inspiring TV.
Just today I watched the episode of Scrubs, “My Screw Up,” in which Dr. Cox’s brother-in-law and best friend, Ben, dies. Throughout the episode he cannot accept what has happened and so pretends Ben is alive and that the event he must attend - Ben’s funeral - is really his son’s birthday party; only at the very end, when he is delivered to the funeral by J.D., does his fantasy vanish and his grief commence.
Of course, all fans of animated series remember “Jurassic Bark,” the episode of Futurama in which Fry tries to have his dead dog reanimated, only at the end to turn away from this decision, upon which the audience learns that Fry’s dog had waited in vain for him to come back for many years. Few can watch the episode without shedding a few tears.
I remember the episode of “WKRP in Cincinnati” that was about a Who concert in Cincinnati where eleven fans were killed in a rush for seats. The storyline was that the fictional radio station had been promoting the concert and the characters became aware of the tragedy during the show.
Since the Mother Simpson episode has been mentioned, I’ll add the “Maggie Makes Three” episode where at the end we see that Homer has covered up his “Don’t Forgot You’re Here Forever” plaque with pictures of Maggie so it reads “Do It For Her”. sniff
Scrubs does poignant very well. Michael J. Fox’s two episode arc last season was very very well done.
Tonight a Very Special Episode of…
I know the Cosby show did a few of these but I don’t clearly recall any of them. Although I never saw the episode, Nancy Reagan appeared on Different Strokes with a serious anti-drug message.
I remember the episode of Family Ties where a close friend of Alex’s dies, and he points out that his selfishness saved his life – he couldn’t be bothered to help his friend move (or something) and therefore wasn’t in the fatal car wreck.
Well… that episode is pretty comical to a lot of people. This is a friend who was never mentioned before on the show… never mentioned again… Why is Alex so distraught? And the whole episode was done as like a stage play. Its a weird one.
Not a comedy but an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 had a really emotional and poingant scene. The nerdy but becoming cool character played by I think Brian Austin Green had a friend who stayed nerdy and one summer went away to work on a ranch and came back all cowboy-ed out. This made him a bit of a joke at the school. Green’s character ends up going to his birthday party and witnesses his friend acidentally kill himself while playing cowboy with a revolver. Green’s character was a DJ at the school and ends up going on an on air tirade about how terrible and superficial it was that the school was making a big deal about his friend’s death because they could have cared less about him when he was alive.
The line “It doesn’t matter how you treat them when they’re gone, it matters how you treat them when they are here.” stuck with me. I think I was probably 11 or 12 when it was on.
Oddly enough, that one doesn’t do it for me, probably because I never owned a dog, and when I was a kid, we had so many cats, I was indoctrinated to accept that we were going to lose about one a year. But the Futurama episode that does get both me and Mr. Rilch is “The Sting”, in which Fry is supposedly dead, and Leela’s struggle to come to terms with this turns out to be her coma-induced hallucination. Actually, Mr. Rilch refused to watch it a second time, because it reminded him too strongly of the time I had a seizure and didn’t regain consciousness for over 24 hours.
There was an episode late in the run of That '70s Show, in which Hyde admitted to Jackie that he had cheated on her. For once, he dropped the wise-guy demeanor and was entirely serious and vulnerable…and she did not forgive him. Normally, I didn’t care much about the romantic musical-chairs on that show, mainly because somebody was always going to be hooked up with somebody, but that scene was highly realistic.
Push You Down, word on that episode of 90210.
Also, there was an episode of Roseanne, in which Jackie was unsure about her (very brief) marriage to Fred, the father of her baby. Roseanne suggested a romantic dinner at home, just the two of them, so they had one. Camera slowly…slowly…slowly dollies in on them as they exchange tidbits such as “Do you want some salt?..How was Andy today?” until Jackie puts her fork down and says, “I think it’s over, Fred.”
I came in here to actually mention Scrubs, but you’ve all beaten me to it. Poignant is one of their ‘things’, and they are not shy about making this episode A Very Special Episode.
Once I started writing this post, I realised I couldn’t actually pick just one. The one I actually thought of was “My Philosophy,” the one where the entire cast breaks out into a musical number which is played over the death of a patient. Oddly touching. “My Drug Buddy” also sticks out, where JD finds out that his social worker girlfriend is the one lifting pills from the pharmacy.
Blackadder, in the trenches, ready to go for the big push. “Whatever your plan was Baldrick, it couldn’t have been worse than mine. After all who’d notice another madman round here?” Whistle, charge, slow motion, fade to poppy field.
Roseanne had a lot of really good ones. Dan coming to terms with his father and his mother’s mental illness was great, as was his reaction to Becky’s running off and getting married.
Also, in All in the Family, when Edith’s friend the drag queen (I don’t remember her name, maybe Brenda?) is murdered and Edith is too angry at God to go to church on Christmas. Meathead, the atheist, is the one who talks her back into it. It’s amazingly touching.
I was thinking All in the Family had many good ones. The Rape, Edith’s death, Archie and Meathead get trapped in the basement of the bar and get drunk and we learn that compared to Archie’s Pop, Archie is a sweetheart.
MAS*H had many, with Colonel Blake’s death being the biggest as to that point the show was still a Comedy and not a Dramedy.
Wait, Edith wasn’t *actually *raped, was she? I thought she fought back and burned the guy with something from the oven and got away after only threats. Not that it wasn’t a horrifying and effective ep, but please, for the love of my childhood, tell me Edith wasn’t actually raped!
The classic Diff’rent Strokes is with the bike shop owner who shows Dudley and Arnold the cartoons with the naked mice.
I think Natalie was also almost raped on Facts of Life, once. Could you imagine Seinfeld or having a “very special episode” where Elaine gets almost raped?
This was actually something they used several times in WKRP, to great effect: Mr. Carlson was generally portrayed as an ineffectual buffoon, but there were several times when he stepped up to the plate, showed some spine, and took on whoever was messing with his people. The other episode that comes to mind was the one where an evangelist wanted him to ban progressively less offensive music.
That, and “as God is my witness I thought turkeys could fly,” but I don’t think that’s quite what you’re looking for here…
In the Tornado episode, the Big Guy talks a 6 year old down to safety in the basement right before a Tornado apparently wipes out the house. This was a bit of a tearjerker. They would mix some serious things into many episodes. Les Nesman’s greatest moment was catching the game ending fly ball in a softball game between WKRP & WPIG.
The Big Guy helping Venus straighten out his record as an AWOL serviceman. This was still a major issue and somewhat common at the time. Even in the silly episode when Herb leaves his wife, there is a moment when the guys are all at Johnny’s apartment and watching a slide show of Herb’s car that show his family and he stops the projector leaving them in the dark. Someone calls for the lights and Herb asks them to be left off for a moment. Leaving it to the viewer to realize he is upset and probably teary at being separated from his family. Great Show WKRP.
MASH - “Dreams”, where the doctors and staff at the camp are doing surgury nonstop for 36 hours, AND having to make room for all the patients because they can’t get any ambulances to drive them to the rear area. Every time one of the doctors tries to get some sleep, they have some surreal dream (Winchester doing cheap parlor magic tricks to amuse the other doctors while a patient lies dying, Father Mulcahy dreams about being the pope and giving sermon to the medical staff, only to find the crucifix (now a soldier) dripping blood on his bible, etc.). Saw the episode a couple nights ago, and it had me weirded out all night.
Due South had a few episodes like this, the big ones that come to mind are the ones revolving around Don Zucco, an up-and-coming mob-boss and the school bully when Ray Vecchio was in school. The show is oftentimes rather silly, with Constable Fraser’s mountie antics taking the show, but in this episode, it was played about 95% serious. In “The Deal”, Ray tells Fraser a story about how when he was in school, he watched Zucco beat a kid’s face into the pavement with a basketball and did nothing to help, despite the kid looking to him as his only hope. Later on, Fraser is ambushed by Zucco’s men and beaten to a pulp, and at the end of the episode, Ray finds Zucco, beats him senseless, then goes home, unloads and puts away his gun, and goes to sleep, refusing to let fear of Zucco’s eventual retaliation haunt him.
