[QUOTE=WhyNot]
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!
[/QUOTE]
I can give you complete & sincere assurance that Edith wasn’t raped, BUT it was also a faith-shaking event - did Meathead or Gloria help her through that, too?
[QUOTE=Trunk]
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?
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, anyone who tried to rape Elaine would end up in a bodybag.
-Joe
[QUOTE=Trunk]
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?
[/QUOTE]
I know Jo was also almost raped on The Facts of Life - she went to a cottilion with one of Blair’s friends and he thought she would be easy. I also thought the one with Tootie at the bus station with the hooker was a pretty heavy episode.
I am going to put in the corny one - when Ross and Rachel broke up on Friends after fighting for all that time in her apartment. I thought it was very sad.
Also on Mad About You when Jaime and Paul are trying to sit through their baby’s crying and they are crouching outside the bedroom door holding each other and crying.
Lastyly, can I put in a vote for when Buffy’s mom dies on BTVS?
[QUOTE=Ethilrist]
That, and “as God is my witness I thought turkeys could fly,”
[/QUOTE]
I’ve seen this reference a couple of times before.
What’s it about?
*HeyHomie, who has never seen an episode of WKRP (because he’s a wee bit too young)
[QUOTE=Ethilrist]
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…
[/QUOTE]
I’ve never seen the show WKRP, and I’ve never heard this line before. But I googled it after seeing your reference, and just reading a description of the affair made me laugh pretty damn heartily.
Thanks for that. 
-FrL-
[QUOTE=Poysyn]
Also on Mad About You when Jaime and Paul are trying to sit through their baby’s crying and they are crouching outside the bedroom door holding each other and crying.
[/QUOTE]
I musta missed that one. I’ll have to try to catch it, since I have had a kid since last I watched Mad About You and I can imagine I would have more appreciation for their plight than I might have before.
I remember one episode where they were portrayed as though they had never met and fallen in love, and at the end of the episode, they pass each other on the street, and each gets a sort of freaked-out look of recognition on their face, and then they embrace spontaneously and its as though they had known each other all along after all.
Hard to explain, I guess, but anyway my wife and I were both ahem emotionally affected by this scene. Aw crap, I’m starting to feel “emotionally affected” just thinking about it now a few years later.
-FrL-
[QUOTE=HeyHomie]
I’ve seen this reference a couple of times before.
What’s it about?
*HeyHomie, who has never seen an episode of WKRP (because he’s a wee bit too young)
[/QUOTE]
I just looked it up on google. Apparently, in a Thanksgiving publicity stunt “gone terribly wrong,” they rented a helicopter and dumped live turkeys on people below. The people below were duly horrified. And later on the guy behind the stunt uttered the line in question.
I’ve sucked all the humor out of it of course. Sorry about that. No comedian me.
-FrL-
[QUOTE=Frylock]
I musta missed that one. I’ll have to try to catch it, since I have had a kid since last I watched Mad About You and I can imagine I would have more appreciation for their plight than I might have before.
I remember one episode where they were portrayed as though they had never met and fallen in love, and at the end of the episode, they pass each other on the street, and each gets a sort of freaked-out look of recognition on their face, and then they embrace spontaneously and its as though they had known each other all along after all.
Hard to explain, I guess, but anyway my wife and I were both ahem emotionally affected by this scene. Aw crap, I’m starting to feel “emotionally affected” just thinking about it now a few years later.
-FrL-
[/QUOTE]
[hijack]By the way my post contains an example perfectly illustrating the usefulness, yea, even the necessity, for a usage involving the plural third-person pronoun to refer a single individual. I thought for a good five seconds (:)) about how I might reword it and realized I need to just leave it be. Really, can you imagine “his/her” in its place in this case?
-FrL-[/hijack]
[QUOTE=HeyHomie]
I’ve seen this reference a couple of times before.
What’s it about?
*HeyHomie, who has never seen an episode of WKRP (because he’s a wee bit too young)
[/QUOTE]
Many consider it one of the funniest TV moments. I am one of those many.
It is 1978 and WKRP is a struggling radio station in Cincinnati. It recently changed format to Rock and Roll. They are having a promotion for Thanksgivings organized by the mostly bumbling Station Manager. Mr. Carlson.
The promotion is a live turkey give away and Les Nesman the bowtie wearing Newsman for the station is covering it.
Live Turkeys begin fall out of the sky from a helicopter and plummet to their death. Cars are being hit, people are screaming and running in panic and this is all off camera as Les Nesman covers the event in classic Hindenberg coverage. “Oh the Humanity”.
The final scene is Mr. Carlson saying the most famous line from the show. “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
Jim {Side Note, WKRP is considered one of the few shows to have never “Jumped the Shark”}
[QUOTE=Poysyn]
Lastyly, can I put in a vote for when Buffy’s mom dies on BTVS?
[/QUOTE]
Buffy Vampire Slayer was not exactly a comedy. Vamps, demons & humans regularly bit the dust. (Heh, she said “dust”!) There was drama galore, tragic love, etc.
But I agree that “The Body” (the episode you mentioned) went against the grain. Joyce’s death was natural & very real. According to Joss’s DVD commentary, that was his intention.
You forgot Les’s best line:
“They’re hitting the ground like bags of wet cement!”
[QUOTE=Bridget Burke]
Buffy Vampire Slayer was not exactly a comedy. Vamps, demons & humans regularly bit the dust. (Heh, she said “dust”!) There was drama galore, tragic love, etc.
But I agree that “The Body” (the episode you mentioned) went against the grain. Joyce’s death was natural & very real. According to Joss’s DVD commentary, that was his intention.
[/QUOTE]
Right. The shockingness of “The Body” was because it wasn’t fanciful camp or melodrama or farce, the way the rest of the series was. It was very, very naturalistic, with ambient sound and lots of moments when nothing really happened, just like life. I’ve always said that the worst part about coming home to find your mother dead on the couch is that life doesn’t stop. The sun still shines, the kids next door still laugh and play, someone’s got to clean up the vomit and people say stupid things because they don’t know what to say and there’s no more fruit punch ever. Chilling.
[QUOTE=Poysyn]
Also on Mad About You when Jaime and Paul are trying to sit through their baby’s crying and they are crouching outside the bedroom door holding each other and crying.
[/QUOTE]
This one is also technologically interesting in that it is one shot, Jamie and Paul sitting on the floor, for the whole thing. No cuts, no fades, no changes in camera angles. Basically they had to shoot that scene in one shot from beginning to end.
[QUOTE=Carl Corey]
You forgot Les’s best line:
“They’re hitting the ground like bags of wet cement!”
[/QUOTE]
Plus his bewildered description of the turkeys’ … counterattack.
One of the reasons I loved Seinfeld so much is that they vowed never to attempt an assault on our heartstrings. And no hugging!
[QUOTE=Frylock]
I remember one episode where they were portrayed as though they had never met and fallen in love, and at the end of the episode, they pass each other on the street, and each gets a sort of freaked-out look of recognition on their face, and then they embrace spontaneously and its as though they had known each other all along after all.
[/QUOTE]
Despite watching the show for several years, this is the only episode I really remember (well, this, and the one where they went on vacation and pretended to be other people). I cried like a little bitch, by the way.
I’m going to go with Sports Night’s “The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee.” For some reason, when Isaac gives that editorial at the end, I cannot keep my eyes dry.
[QUOTE=The Dumbest Guy in the Room]
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.
One of the best series finales ever.
[/QUOTE]
You beat me to it, that’s why I came into this thread - I guess it only hits so hard to us Brits but … watched this episode in a dark packed “TV room” in halls at uni. the impact was doubled because we’d all shared the laughter up until that point.
Another good Scrubs episode: “My Old Lady” from the first season, with the wonderful Kathryn Joosten.
I remember thinking, “Hey, this is a sitcom. It was funny a few minutes ago and now I’m tearing up! Not fair!”
All in the Family is one of the few shows that did it right at least to my recollection. I don’t think anyone mentioned the episode where the swaztika is painted on Archies door. Typical episode until the end where the guy from the JDL is blow up in his car.
Also the episode where Edith dies, it never occured to Archie because he was supposed to go first.
[QUOTE=Poysyn]
Also on Mad About You when Jaime and Paul are trying to sit through their baby’s crying and they are crouching outside the bedroom door holding each other and crying.
[/QUOTE]
My wife saw this one and just described its ending to me. The baby finally stops crying, and the couple celebrate for a few moments, saying something like “Finally, she knows we’re not going to come to her!”
Then Jaime stops celebrating and repeats herself, this time sadly, “She knows I’m not going to come to her.”
Then everybody’s all sad. Fade to black.
Damn, that’s damn straight exactly how the inner tension over “cry-it-out” feels!
Is this series on DVD?
-FrL-