Pajiba

damn you! You took my moment!

The entire final episode of Angel, down to the title "Will Not Fade Away" is my moment. And yes that definitely includes Illyria turning into Fred for Wes' last breaths. Good god that chokes me up just thinking about it.

I'm a complete and utter dork for this, but...the episode of Futurama with Fry's dog from the past that died while waiting for him outside the pizza parlor after he was frozen. I love Futurama and watch it almost every night...except for this episode. I cry every time and now just change the channel when it's on, so I don't cry again.

I know it's not a show that immediately brings to mind "heartbreaking," but the tail end of the season finale of 'Ugly Betty' kills me every time. You see Hilda, through a pair of auditorium doors (she's at her son's performance of 'West Side Story'), being told that her fiance was just killed, and she does that hoarse-sob "No!", while 'Somewhere' from WSS plays over the top, sung a capella by the little girl playing Maria.

It's really touching, and makes me tear up every time. Ana Oritz was surprisingly affecting.

wsapnin- you and i are of the same ilk. ailing people- no problem. an animal with a hangnail- i'm a puddle of tears.

I would have said The Body, but that's been taken, so my pick is the season 1 finale of The O.C., "The Ties that Bind."

I've watched tv that has affected me more deeply (SFU finale, Mrs. Landingham's death on the West Wing, Deadwood and VM's cancellations). But watching a full season of Ryan and the Cohens' relationships, particularly that of Sandy and Ryan, pulled me in from episode one. In the season finale, Ryan decides to leave his surrogate family and move back to Chino, devastating everyone, including myself. In what could be the Most Cheesy Montage Ever, Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah plays over clips of Seth sailing away, Ryan leaving, and most heart-breakingly, Kirsten entering the pool house where he lived and breaking into sobs over the loss of her not quite adopted son. Watching her in the arms of the brilliant Peter Gallagher as she cries to this day makes me weep as if someone were punching my dog in the face while burning my Buffy dvds.

Now I need to go home and re-watch "Frank sets Sweet Dee on Fire."

I will have to say that the saddest moment of TV for me was watching the final episode of Six Feet Under. God, what isn't heartbreaking about this episode? From the very roll of the opening theme song and the birth of Brenda's baby, Willow, you already know that you're in for an emotional roller coaster.
What really got me was the reality these characters were living, I had begun watching the shown on DVD's at the beginning of 2006, so by then the show was over. But that didn't stop me from watching every amazing and moving episode of Six Feet Under. Watching this show felt like I was watching my life ten years from now, and seeing what these characters did was just incredibly real to me. I could relate to (almost) every last thing some of the characters did. And it was the fact that these people were so near and dear to me that made the finale all the more excruciatingly painful.
I started the night by watching the final four episodes of Six Feet Under and watching as Nate sleeps with Maggie and dies before the show is even fully over, which to me was just so endearing and hard to get through my head. Then comes the funeral, which may have been the saddest funeral on the show. I have never been to a funeral(Gasp!) and watching these final episodes was like watching my best friend, my aunt or the guy at work I wanted to befriend but never did, just die. Tissues were used, tears were shed and my heart slowly deteriorated and fell apart as if it were torn to shreds then stuck back together with a glue stick. However, my heart truly fell apart when Claire is saying her final goodbyes and says this somewhat corny but bittersweet line to Ruth. "Thank you for giving me life." The perfect foreshadowing for the final six minutes that are about to unwind.
Next, we see Claire pulling out of the driveway, popping in a CD. Suddenly, my ears flood with the opening piano chords of "Breathe Me" by Sia.
And it is then and now that I realize that this is really the end.
As Claire drives along, we the viewer are exposed to bits that show what will happen in the near and later future. Me, the emotional wreck is just weeping, then suddenly, Ruth Fisher dies before my eyes.
I am now officially a blubbering mess.
I don't fully know why, but it is Ruth's death that first strikes a chord for me. Just how Nate and Nathanial are standing there, waiting for Ruth to join them, as if they had never left. And so, she goes. And one by one, the Fisher family and their loved ones pass away.
Some deaths were not as heart wrenching as others, I will admit. Kieth's death is very sad, considering he and his partner David through out the show were such a great couple. Rico's death too is tragic, but on an emotional level not the most melancholy, neither did Brenda's, but it was still hard to let them go. I think that tied with Ruth, the deaths that really evoked the most emotion were David watching boys playing football at a family picnic, then he sees Keith, looking as handsome as he did when they first met. And of course, the end where Claire is left all alone, lying in a bed with a nurse, her eyes blinded by Cataracts but more all seeing then ever. Up and down her walls, we see pictures of her family, friends and loved ones. So while she mad die after everyone else does, she still is near them. I personally feel that what makes her so unique is that Claire lives to be 100+ years old, and how she lives through each and every one of the blows the Fisher family takes. It ends with the car driving into the endless road and the screen fades to white.
I don't think there will really be anything that comes this close to home for me, because Six Feet Under is just the one show that I've seen that will haunt me, move me and help me appreciate life. So goodbye Six Feet Under, you will not be forgotten.

Since "The Body" has been taken already, I'll say the season 2 finale of Buffy, where she's just stabbed Angel and sent him to hell and then rides out of town on a bus. That song is probably what does it for me. I'm tearing up just hearing that song in my head!

"It was Arrested Development."

Mine would definitely have to be the finale of SFU. It broke my heart for so many reasons.
1) I had seen every single episode of the show, and I felt like I "knew" the characters, like they were part of my life.
2) The episode was absolutely perfect and beautiful. I would not have wanted it to end any other way.
3) I was going thru so many changes in my life at the time (had just moved to a new city, just taken the Bar Exam, was about to start my "real life" as an attorney) that I was just so shaken up by the end of something that had been there with me throughout my educational journey. SFU was always a show about change, and it felt so weird and empty to not have it around anymore.
4) I literally cried through the entire ending montage, and broke down in tears numerous times in the weeks that followed whenever I would think about it!

Mine was the series finale of Roseanne. I watched that damn show from beginning to end because it resonated with my own blue collar roots, and the character Becky was being the same teenage drama queen that I was at the time. After suffering through that god awful last season, we find out that Dan had actually died at the end of the previous season, from his heart attack. WTF?!? I was devastated. I have not watched a single episode of Roseanne since then, despite it's once heavy rotation in syndication.

I would have to pick a scene from the Office. I love that show, and it plays poignant just as well as it plays hilarious.

One of the sweetest moments of The Office came in season 3, when Pam had her first art show. She invited all of her co-workers, but attendance ended up being pretty abysmal. At the last minute Michael comes in apologizing that he is late, and instantly is mesmerized by Pam's drawings. He seems genuinely amazed that she drew them, and exhibits a child-like wonder and awe as he discovers each new picture. Then he pauses and says, "I am really proud of you," and you know he means it. It's one of the most honest pieces of acting I have ever seen, and Steve Carrell carries it out beautifully. It makes me cry every single time, and it makes me cry a lot. It makes me cry for sweet Pam, who is trying so hard but is still so unsure of herself. And it makes me cry for Michael, who is so lonely and so awkward, yet he has real emotion just like anyone else, and he genuinely cares for the people around him. This moment never fails to have me sitting in a puddle of my own tears.

Let me set the scene: It is 2004. I am a freshmen in high school. My friends and I are all very, very obsessed with Angel. We know that it's not good, per say, but it's addictive. The four of us would call each other between commercials (or, during the show, as was the case when Wesley and Fred finally got together, prompting my friend Meagan to squee as she dialed me) for minute-long intervals to discuss what had happened.

But then it got cancelled in a way that can be best described as "assy" and we all mourned. And then I decided that the four of us should get together to watch the finale. Now remember, we are all 15, so it's not like we could drive, and even convincing our parents to go out past 9 was a huge deal.

So we somehow got our parents to agree to the crazy scheme and I made "Angel Finale Brownies" (with blood-red frosting, 'cause that's how cool I was back then) and when nine PM rolled around, we squeezed onto the couch to watch the finale. Now, for those of you haven't seen this episode, to say that it's a little depressing is to say that "2001 a Space Odyssey" is a little slow-paced. By the end we were all on that couch sobbing and holding each other. It was one of the saddest nights of my TV-related life. Even though it could be argued that the show needed to end, Joss and company pulled the "Wild Bunch" that Buffy warned against back in the first Buffy episode. What a way for Joss to leave TV.

(God damn WB)

(As a side note @ Regan: "Doomsday" is a very close second. I rewatched it recently and felt completely wrecked all over again)

i second the episode of futurama where fry's dog waits for him. it always gets me and i also avoid it now to avoid the sad. futurama is my favorite cartoon because so many episodes have so much heart, they are clever and emotional and funny all at once.

in the 90's i was a huge NY Undercover fan, and the episode where Eddie dies...yeah i freaked out, you just can't tell me you saw that coming.

Reaching back to one moment that has stuck with me for over 12 years is the "Love's Labour Lost" episode from the first season of "ER" where Mark tried to save a mother and her baby. Heartbreaking stuff.

Well unfortunately, my scene has already been taken. But in the name of pity, my reasons, while similar, are a bit more specific.

The scene: the last 6 minutes of Six Feet Under beginning as Claire puts the CD in her car stereo. The music soars, I am weary. As she drives away and we watch each character meet their fate, I am reminded by my lover that he has never told me about this ending since it originally aired a year prior (I didn't have HBO then). He's been holding this inside for a year.

So Ruth passes. I thought this would be our blubbery moment considering his mother has been in a coma for the better part of a decade. But nothing.

There's a little remembered bit during the funeral, where Claire is visibly upset and lo, who is that just beyond the gravesite? Why, it's the only love she's ever had! And here is where Al breaks down in hysterics and mumbles, "this is it."

I'm now weeping.

You're likely wondering what the fuck I'm talking about. See, to the naked eye, I broke up a union. As Al has repeatedly told me (as has his jilted ex), this is not the case. Al left him after 10 years of one-sided acceptance (Al was a trophy wife basically). I came along at the end but was very reluctant out of both fear and causing a rift. We cautiously circled each other for months.

It was when Al summoned up his courage to leave his ex, and found me still waiting for him, after months of indecision on both our parts, that he knew we were in love. So when Claire spies that guy coming to the funeral, after they hadn't seen each other in so long, it's that moment of clarity, joy and relief that finally, your true self can emerge and your life can truly begin.

I will never forget the moment we watched this for the first time in his crappy midtown Manhattan excuse for an apartment. It was freezing out and we huddled on the couch until neither of us could prevent the onslaught of tears that we knew were coming.

We've been togther 2 1/2 years now. Short time for some, but a wealth of happiness for us.

Having said that, to a much much lesser impact, the cancellation of veronica mars made me want to punch the douche who thought cavemen was a good idea.

Deadwood: when Ellsworth is sitting in the mining camp chatting happily to his loyal little dog and Hearst's men come in and kill him. It says a lot about me that most of my heartbreak was for the little dog left behind as opposed to the nice man who was just murdered.

However, if I'm allowed a non-fiction heartbreaking TV moment, it would have to be waking up on November 8th 2000, turning on the TV and learning that George W. Bush was President of the U.S.

First of all: Christina, I am SO glad to know that I'm not the only person who can't watch that Futurama! I had the exact same reaction you did.

But, for most heart-breaking? Saul Tigh killing Ellen Tigh. No contest.

Just jumping to comment that I'm amazed that no-one has yet picked Flower's death on Meerkat Manor. I'm not a regular watcher but apparently half the world is traumatized and grieving.

24 spoilers ahead...(as I assume most of this thread is)

I'd have to go with the Season 5 murder of President Palmer followed immediately by the murders (well, one attempted) of Tony and Michelle. I was stunned...and saddened. =(

The season finale of Angel was sad, but the episode that made me cry was when Fred was first possessed Illyria (A Hole in the World). The part where she and Wes are just determining that they will finally be able to be together and they're walking down the hall with Lorne and Fred starts singing and Lorne just looks at her horrified, then she collapses. Tears, tears, tears...

The age of your readers is evident by the selections. I'll go back to 1971 and the made-for-TV movie Brian's Song, starring James Caan and Billy Dee Williams. This film was so well-received that it was later made available in theaters, something we'll never see again.

To understand the depth of the heartbreak in this movie, you need to understand both the historical significance and the role of men in our culture. Crying was for sissys. Period. Moreover, love was stated more in terms of providing and protecting than anything else.

So in the locker room, when Billy Dee Williams tells everybody of Brian Picolo's cancer, he says, with a shaken voice, "I love Brian Picolo," it's impossible not to weep.

Like most other people my age, I saw that film in its original telecast, and the pain is still hard to deal with. Brian Picolo and Gayle Sayers had a special relationship, and in one of its finest moments, television captured it brilliantly.

I hope I don't bring anyone down with mine.

I am too young to have been able to watch MASH during its original run, but I'm certian I've seen every episode in syndication. When I was a VERY young child, both of my parents worked late into the night, and my sister and I would spend Fridays and Saturdays at our grandparents' house. My grandfather was a veteran of the Korean War, and he was addicted to MASH. We watched it every night that we were there, religiously. The episode when Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake leaves to go home to his family in America, only to die when his plane was shot down over the Japan Sea, still gets me to this day. I always feel like someone I know has died, and I still feel disbelief and anger every time that episode is on (Husband and I still watch MASH all the time). Just thinking about it has me choked up, and I'm sitting in a damn cubicle. My grandfather died two years and two weeks ago, which makes that show (even the music, oy the tears) - and that particular episode, more touching to me than ever.

Uh... "Friday Night Lights," anyone?

Man, I cannot watch a single episode of this show without crying. I cried in the pilot where Jason Street got paralyzed. I cried when the players took the field again, but all stopped by Jason's hospital room first. I cried when Matt Saracen's dad came and then had to go back to Iraq. I cry anytime there's an interaction between Matt and his sweet grandma. I cried when Coach found out that Tami was pregnant and he was just SO happy (Man, Kyle Chandler. The things you to do me. Really).

I could go on and on and on.

Oh, and I also loved the season premiere of "Ugly Betty," when they pull the ol' switcheroo on us and Santos is really dead.

One more moment made me cry: the series finale of Friends. I was sobbing like a little sissy bitch...because it was FINALLY over! I was so happy I wandered around my friends' apartment wondering how the hell these dorky people had managed to stay on the air for 10 years?!!!

Not being a hater here, but let's face it. The show always was pretty idiotic, but never more so than during the last 4 years (i.e. the damn marriages and the baby that disappeared and reappeared at will).

So when those credits finally rolled, these were tears of joy!

But then came Rules of Attraction and that dumb Brad Garrett show.

I see Hollywood has learned very little.

The most heartbreaking moment for me came when I fully realized that Amy Sherman-Palladino was never coming back to Gilmore Girls. I love that show with a passion that many on this site would equate to BSG, Firefly, and Veronica herself. I thought for sure that Amy would watch the beginning of the 6th season, see how much Rory and Lorelai needed her (not even mentioning how much the viewers needed her), and come running back to the CW and renegotiate. But that didn't happen. So repeatedly, week after week, I watched the slow, painful, excruciating death of a show that allowed me to laugh, cry, and the most difficult of all: bond with my mother. At least they cancelled Veronica Mars before it sank into complete crapitude. The same cannot be said for my beloved GG. And that hurts most of all.

Ok, I know I am going to get made fun of for this, but I think mine would have to be Ally McBeal, the episode where Gil Bellows dies and then Ally has to tell his wife, but decides to take the high road and tells her that his last words and thoughts were of her. I don't know why, because I wasn't a great fan of the show before or after that, but that episode, for some reason still sticks with me. God, I need a hobby

I'd have to say the series finale of Coupling (UK series). Steve is completely indifferent to the birth of his baby and then becomes an entirely different person when he looks in the baby's eyes. Can't help but tear-up.

And yes, that Futurama with the dog makes me cry too. Also the episode with the bee sting (I won't spoil it for anyone).

Also, any show that plays the "Over the Rainbow" song, the one with the ukelele. It makes my heart break.

For me, hands down, the season two finale of Buffy. It was the end of my senior year of high school, and I happened to be in one of those incredibly high-school-ly high school romances, where we both felt like the other person was our "soulmate" (hee!). I was highly emotional about everything at the time, and I cried for maybe an hour after watching THAT scene (for those not in the know, or for those who have forgotten, Buffy has to send Angel to hell, even though his soul has been restored). Then I watched it 5 more times, crying more every time. Sarah McLachan's Full of Grace???!!!! COME ON! That song alone is enough to make me a little teary. The scene really didn't have any parallel to my life, but in my overwrought, 17-year old, hopeless romantic state, I felt like it did...

Oh, and I also forgot to mention episodes of "The Simpsons" and "The Office" that made me cry:

1. The one about how Marge and Homer met and Artie Ziff tries to take advantage of Marge at the prom and she slaps him and drives home on her own and sees Homer at the side of the road and picks him up and when they get to his house, he looks all sad and she asks why and he says, "Because when we stop, I'm going to want to hug you. And then I'm going to want to kiss you. And then I'm never going to want to let go. [fade to present time] And I never have." WAAAAAH!!!!
2. The one about how Maggie was born and before she was born Homer was finally out of debt so he quit working at the SNPP and got his dream job at Barney's Bowl-o-Rama only to have to beg for his SNPP job back because Marge was pregnant and Mr. Burns puts a sign in his workspace that says, "Don't Forget: You're Here Forever" and Homer covers it with pictures of Maggie so that it says, "Do It For Her." *SOB!!*
3. The one where Homer is reunited with his mom, who's on the run from the FBI.
4. The episode of "The Office" on Halloween where Michael has to fire someone and he ends up firing Devin and Devin hates him and the camera crew follows Michael home where he's just sitting on the couch feeling miserable, but when kids come trick-or-treating, he's nice and cheerful for their sakes.
5. "Office Olympics," where Michael ends up signing for a condo that he really doesn't want and when he gets back to work at the end of the day, they have a gold medal waiting for him and he's standing on the box and he's crying and smiling as they all congratulate him on his home purchase.

I love that both of these shows are funny, but manage to bring some poignancy in every once in a while.

The season two finale of Veronica Mars (and no I'm not trying to elicit extra points by going with something VM related) From the moment that Beaver blows up the plane, from Veronica telling Logan "He Killed my dad, he killed the kids on the bus, he raped me!", to finding Mac on the floor of the hotel room naked and asking "why?", to Veronica waking up in the morning and thinking her dad was cooking eggs for her when Logan was the only on there...it's a heartbreaking 5 minutes. Of course it gets a bit happier but I was devastated when I thought they had killed Keith Mars...

and poor Veronica I thought I had boy problems try thinking you were raped by your first love because you were accidentally (through a series of events) given drugs by the second man you loved. Then find out you had consensual (even though she has no memory of it) sex with your first love but he never talked mentioned it because he thought he was sleeping with his sister. Then to top if off ohh btw you were raped before all that happened by Beaver who left her with a lovely parting gift, which a whole court room of people find out about. ...which ends up being one of the reasons the man who killed your best friend gets out of jail.

That scene on the roof was just simply a cumulation of two seasons and it was painful to watch her struggle through all that and try to fathom that the a-hole just killed her father.

I share the tears with the folks who spoke of M*A*S*H, West Wing, and Six Feet Under, but the single episode of any show that actually had me sobbing almost uncontrollably was an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, of all things.

The episode is called "The Visitor" and it recounts a tragic warp core accident (naturally) that traps Sisko in some sort of space/time warp. He manages to pop in on his son Jeremy for a few minutes or a few hours, every few years. Jeremy spends his whole life trying to resolve the problem, trying to keep his father with him, etc etc.

I can barely even think back on it without clouding over. Truth is, I saw it just shortly after losing my Mom unexpectedly and much too young, and the twin ideas of (a) somehow being able to see her again, even just for a few minutes and (b) somehow being able to go back in time and save her ... snif!

Four of them...and admittedly I was mostly inspired by answers above, so I don't deserve to win. Nevertheless...

1) The last episode of The Wonder Years. That final monologue when we find out that Kevin's father, Jack, passed away two years later while we see the family enjoying one last Fourth of July together really hit me in the heart. Their relationship had been strained that entire episode, and it was one of my favorite dynamics on the show as a whole. Truly Dan Lauria portrayed one of the best TV dads in history.

2) 24 - I wouldn't have even thought of this, but someone mentioned 24 above. It's a silly action show with a completely regrettable sixth season. I mainly watch it to see Jack Bauer achieve new levels of badass-itude. But the hidden strength of the show is its quieter moments between the main characters that pop up every once in a while.

The one that put a huge lump in my throat was the conversation between Jack and Kim when it looked as if he were going to blow up with the nuclear bomb that he was taking on a plane into the desert. The show had just reached a farcical low with Kim's run-in with the cougar, but - wow - when they're both on the verge of tears and saying goodbye and talking about Jack's dead wife/Kim's dead mother, it kills me.

3) Again, inspired by above. The Simpsons - "Lisa's Wedding." This is my all-time favorite episode. It's a terribly underrated glimpse into the future of the family and Lisa's almost-marriage to a British intellectual. In the end, he forces her to choose between her family (particularly gauche Homer) and him, and despite their flaws, Lisa would never surrender her ties to her family.

After the fortuneteller's vision ends, young Lisa is reunited with Homer, and as they walk off into the sunset together, Lisa revels in hearing about Homer and his very simple yet wonderfully human pleasures that he loves sharing with his daughter. Glassy eyes for me everytime.

4) Of course, the other Simpsons episode that has a similar effect on me is "Lisa's First Word." To his frustration, Homer just couldn't get respect from Bart and Lisa, her first word being "Homer," largely thanks to Bart's influence. At the end we have Elizabeth Taylor giving us Maggie's first word.

I'll let it speak for itself...

Homer: The sooner kids talk, the sooner they talk back.
[tucks Maggie in]
I hope you never say a word.
[leaves and shuts the door]
Maggie: [taking her pacifier out] Daddy.

Again, glassy eyes for me everytime.

I'd have to say the last couple of scenes from the series finale of Quantum Leap. Sam is out on the bench talking to the bartender/God. He starts crying as he tells God he is tired. And God tells him he's not only not done leaping, but the leaps will become longer and harder. He asks Sam what he wants and Sam says "I want to go home, but I can't". And then he goes and saves Al's marriage. Absolutely heartbreaking, every time I watch it.

My heartbreaking TV story is what I missed on American TV when I spent 4 years living in Europe (2 years in Amsterdam and 2 in London). I started reading Pajiba while I was over there and I read about both Arrested Development and Firefly but they came and went while we were living overseas. I now have both of them on DVD so I'm catching up, but I can't bring myself to watch the last couple episodes of AD because I like having them to look forward to watching still.

On the flip side, I got to see some great British TV (but plenty of crappy stuff as well--don't let them act like they're all The Office and Doctor Who over there--they're reality shows are just as bad or worse as the American stuff).

Gosh guys, now I'm super depressed.

My moment, sadly, is from Gilmore girls.
Even though this isn't the "shameful" or "guilty pleasure" diversion, here we go...

In Season 5, Rory begins to realize her true potential as a heart breaker, a life ruiner, and an all around home wrecker. The season picks up where her and Dean left off, in her bed, her having just lost her virginity.

As the story unfolds, Rory takes off to Europe just to spite her mother (one of the many reasons I hate her). Upon her return, Emily, her grandmother has decided to throw a party for her to meet some Yale friends that all turn out to be guys because Emily doesn't believe that Rory should be galavanting around with Dean, who's married and stuck in Stars Hollow for the rest of his life.

As Dean shows up at Emily and Richard's estate to pick up Rory for their date, he in his distressed denim and flannel shirt, sheepishly standing against is faded blue pick up truck, and her in her black cocktail gown with her diamond tiara, drunk as a skunk, he sees the girl she has become is different than the girl he fell in love with. With tears in his eyes he asks her why he is there, and above all, why he broke up his marriage for someone that already left him for bigger and better things.

She, being the oblivious drunk that she is, stammers on about her love and her devotion to her small town roots. Dean leaves and we see she's just never been able to grow into the bitch tree with long, ungrateful branches frought with leaves of false entitlement that she really is, stumbling home out of her limo, to a mother that doesn't recognize her.

And so I wept.

Cheers series finale -- it was already a sad but great ending to an iconic TV show, with Sam closing the bar only to have a customer try to come in right after. Sam says, "Sorry, we're closed," which was perfect since the show was ending.

But the true heartbreaker was a gesture to regular viewers who had followed the show during its early years. As Sam finished up, he straightened the Geronimo photo hanging over the bar as a final goodbye to former cast regular Coach, who had died in real life during the show's run. The actor who played Coach, Nicholas Collisanti (sp?), had kept the photo in his dressing room, and they hung the photo on the set as an ongoing tribute. [*large gulp*]

I absolutely loved Coach and thought he was one of the funniest supporting characters to ever appear on a television show. That final, subtle gesture was a gut-wrenching finish to my favorite comedy up to that time, a show full of priceless, easy-to-miss bits running along under the main gags. I still get misty whenever I see that episode aired.

Okay, so, the episode of MASH where Henry Blake dies. The final episode of MASH.

Pretty much anything that Joss Whedon has ever written where he's trying to be sad. Because seriously, that man could coax a tear out of a dead miser's corpse. He's that talented. I could list all the episodes of Buffy and Angel that got me scene for scene, and even the episodes of Roseanne that he wrote for because they were sad too, but I'll spare you.

The first time that I ever seriously, seriously freaked out over any show was when I was eleven and the chick who babysat by kid brother got me crazy-addicted to General Hospital. Yeah. A soap. Sue me. Anyway, the story line was actually pretty cutting edge for it's time--Stone has AIDS.

To give you back story, Stone was a character who was originally introduced as a street kid, he got taken in by a gangster (I know, but it's a soap) and he was Sonny's (the gangster's) runner. He fell in love with Mac Scorpio's daughter (Mac was the police commissioner at the time I want to say so they were rocking the Romeo and Juliet vibe) and the two were having all kinds of unprotected sex like teenagers do.

Anyway, it comes out that Stone has AIDS because he was a street kid, I think it was intimated that he did drugs but I was eleven so I don't remember. His whole downward spiral (complete with scenes like that asshole rich kid AJ thinking he could get AIDS from Stone's sweat and freaking out at the gym, and some random soccer mom telling Stone he was going to hell because it was a gay person's disease at a WALK FOR AWARENESS for god's sake) were really heartwrenching.

General Hospital also has a yearly Nurses' Ball honoring Stone that raises money for AIDS awareness now (in the show).

But I digress. The scene I'm talking about was when he finally died. He'd gone blind a few episodes back and he was all kinds of guilty about Robin because everybody kind of new she was HIV positive by that point. So, he's in his bed, hooked up to all kinds of machines. They've spent the entire hour having this really long, heartfelt conversation about love and what happens when you die. Some of his other close friends are in teh other room and everybody's all choked up. Robin's sitting at the window, the sun's pouring in...when all of a sudden the camera goes fuzzy, then slowly into focus, Stone murmurs "I can see you" and smiles beatifically... then dies. Everybody's crying. Cue theme music.

Seriously, I was so upset I didn't go to school the next day. It was like my brother died. My mother thought I'd gone crazy for getting so worked up and threatened to call a shrink.

Anyway, that storyline was important too because it was the first time on a daytime soap that a major character was diagnosed with AIDS and then the show showed the natural progression of the disease while still showing him as a real person.

Oh, and unlike the rest of you guys--I can't just go pick up a season whatever DVD because it was a freaking soap and I never taped it. I can only live with the memory.

despite not even making my top 5 for favorite television shows, my most heartbreaking television moment would have to be from "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" season 5 finale, "The Gift" and also the beginning of season 6 "Bargaining" part 1 and 2...mostly 2 when she arrives back at the place where she sacrificed herself. oh my god, so many tears.

As a kid, the episode of Fresh Prince in which Will's father returns briefly, promises to take Will with him on his truck route, and then leaves without him. When it's just Will and Uncle Phil in the living room, Will coming to terms with his anger and sadness, building to the point where he screams "...and there ain't a DAMN thing he could EVER teach about how to love my kid!" and then quietly, "How come he don't want me, Uncle Phil?" And big bear embrace from Uncle Phil. Aaaand dust particles in my eye.

As an adult, and far more affecting to me, was the close of the 5th season of The Shield. That entire season was so fantastically layered, and each layer so thoroughly engrossing, that I could never predict or anticipate where it was going with the finale. I hung on every last word spoken by Forest Whitaker's Kavanaugh, the battle of wits between him and Vic, Vic's struggle to protect himself, his crew, and Lemansky in particular. I pitied Lemansky's hopeless situation, but fully expected Vic to resolve it. But somewhere around the point of a half an hour remaining, I was startled to realize Shane's agenda. It hit me like a truck. I literally began pleading with my TV, begging for it not to show me what I was expecting. It mattered not. After a season's worth of rallying to protect his partner, after FIVE seasons of brotherhood on the Strike Team, Shane rolls up to Lem's car, makes some small talk, and casually drops a masked grenade into his lap. Smoke clears to reveal Lem clinging to his last breath, unrecognizable. Shane stands 20 feet away, weeping, apologizing.

Totally. Unequivocally. Wrecked.

My favorite ones have been named: Henry Blake's death in MASH, Brian's Song,Bobby Simone's death in NYPD Blue. I especially felt Kim Delaney's speech as Bobby was dying (paraphrased) "you'll see your parents in Heaven, you'll see your first wife(he had been a widow),you'll see our baby(they had had a miscarriage). Also loved the series finale of the Mary Tyler Moore show. Such pathos and humor!

I know it's not cool, but I have cried at several episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I dissolve into a blubbering mess of tears whenever there's a sick or dead baby on TV, so when Addison has to go in and tell the happy young couple that their baby has died in the womb, and the woman has to give birth to it anyway and then holds the dead baby in her arms...oh man. I'm crying right now. It's just. so. sad. I know a woman who actually had to do that and I just can't imagine what that must feel like. Ok and I'm actually weeping thinking about it. Thanks for starting this thread, Jesus Christ.

Also, on Scrubs when Zach Braff is told that his baby was miscarried (even though it turns out not to be true) I just lose it. And that SFU episode that starts with the SIDS death? And the parents don't want to say goodbye because he just got there? I was inconsolable. Babies shouldn't die, damn it!

I'm not even a parent yet. I bet I'll be ten times worse when I have my own babies to worry about.

Man, I am so glad I'm not the only person that cires at Simpson episodes. The one with Homer's mom gets me too. And the one where Homer gives up an air conditioner to buy Lisa a saxophone, or when he enters her in a beauty contest because he thinks she's beautiful and she's insecure.....

1. Season finale of the West Wing. I think it was Season Three, when CJ was getting death threats, and she had a body guard assigned to her. Being CJ, she of course resists him and has many sassy arguments with him that ultimately result in flirting. The best/worst CJ/Simon moment is when she loses the bet and has to tell him something she likes about him, and says "I like that you're taller than me. It makes me feel feminine". Later Simon is released from duty as her guard and agrees to go on a date with her, goes to pick up flowers and gets caught in a convenience store hold up. It's so contrived but so beautiful and moving. When CJ gets the word that he's been killed in this pointless death (that still redeems him as a hero for trying to save the cashier) and she wanders off in her gown with Hallelujah playing I completly lost it.

2. The episode of The Office where Pam helps Jim and Karen with her apartment search, and it seems at first like she's okay with helping them only we find her later in a hall crying. Dwight comes over to her and says "Who did this to you?".

Oh god -I almost forgot! The last episode of Cowboy Bebop. Spike finally finds his lost love Julia and she gets shot shortly afterwards, and he just goes crazy and basically goes on a suicide mission to get Vicious. Julia's death and the final scene kill me.

The series finale of Alias. Hands down. Despite the fact that seasons three, four, and five were a mess (some more so than others), that they gave complete personality overhauls to some characters (Irina), and the Rambaldi endgame ended up being immortality (lame), I still nearly cried when I saw the goodbye message "Thank you for the last five years" or something to that effect.

I was in seventh grade when it premiered, and I remember seeing the teaser commercials for it and thinking "This is going to be my show." I watched the pilot that fall, and did not miss an original airing of an episode during its entire run. The ABC monkeys gave me and the rest of the Alias fans a hell of a run around, but I managed to never miss an episode. Once a week I got to go into this fantastically complicated universe and watch characters that I truly cared about, and it was pretty awesome. That show consumed over one hundred hours of my life, but I do not regret it at all.

I have to agree with all the tears for "The Body," especially because Buffy was the first TV show I absolutely fell in love with, but--good God--Doctor Who's "Doomsday" broke me. I knew it was coming and put off watching it for TWO MONTHS because I knew I couldn't handle it. When I finally did see it, I was wracked with sobs and dreamed about death and separation for the next three nights. Seriously.

Paul - That Fresh Prince moment is my heartbreaker too! Although I still love every episode of the show, primarily out of nostalgic attachment, that one has always stood out for me... To quote a certain Pajiba staffer, I was (at least temporarily) Will Smith's bitch.

The Freaks and Geeks finale, unrequited peanut-butter spoiling turbo combo, Disco and Dragons. Nick watches Lindsay walk away and there's no big "I love you" stupid trite finale moment, just nothing and he's got that stupid disco outfit on. And while watching it, you know there's no more episodes and that makes it extra sad, Firefly Messenger style.

Oof.
Or Bill as the Bionic Woman.

A lot of my favorites have been mentioned, but this . . . well, my dorkitude, let me show you it.

I've watched Lost from the first episode, largely because I'm a Dominic Monaghan fan and I was thrilled when he was cast on the show. I've stuck through it despite the frustrations with the story and the slow pace and the long breaks . . . and then came the season 3 finale.

Charlie, DM's character, had sort-of known all season he might die--visions of the future from Desmond, y'see--and he makes the deliberate choice to put himself into a situation where he probably will die, and basically prepares for it in the episodes leading up to the finale . . . and dammit I can't even type it without tearing up.

Suffice to say Charlie sacrificed himself to give the others a better chance to escape the island, and while I tivo'd the episode I've yet to rewatch it because it's just too much.

And part of the reason why it hit me so hard--not just because my favorite character died and my favorite actor was leaving the show--is because I'd played Charlie in a roleplay game ever since the first episode was broadcast, and I'd already decided if they did kill him off in the show I'd kill him off in the game, and saying goodbye to my own inner Charlie was one of the hardest things I've ever done in the name of entertainment.

I have to go with the episode of ER as Carter reads the letter from Mark. It's completely manipulative, but it broke me completely. ER was the thing that my mom and I did together on Thursday nights, and we both cried like crazy when Carter read the last section from Elizabeth informing everyone that Mark ha died. Watching it all these years later still gets me.

I also have to mention the Buffy episode The Body. Anya and Willow's interaction sums up the human attempt to understand death better than anything else I've ever seen.

This scene in Babylon 5 made me cry like a baby. A hungry, angry baby.

A little background: Kosh is what we know as an angel- a being of pure light, a guardian and mentor for mankind, and in particular Captain Sheridan. Yet he is deeply flawed, and has, as he admits himself, been standing in the way of what is right. And now he won't be any more, because the destructive, chaos-loving shadows are about to literally tear him apart.

I loved Kosh. I loved his snazzy encounter suit, his cryptic utterances, his ass-kicking powers, the awe he inspired in other characters, and especially the sinister undertones of that effect. So to see him appear to Sheridan as a mere human, and to admit his weakness, even as he bravely awaits his brutal demise, well, it evoked a feeling in me analagous to that of having a tiny violinist sneak down my trachea and play the world's saddest music on the tendons of my heart valves*.

Even now, I don't think I could talk about it aloud without bawling. In fact, I think I'll have to slip back into lurkage now in order to pour myself a drink and have a little weep.

*which I may have invented. My knowledge of human anatomy is abysmal.

AnnArrogance- My Jack Russell wants to send you a hug...don't be sad! ((( HUG ))) Arf arf arf!

1) The West Wing's 'Election Day' episode. It was the episode that aired after the magnificent John Spencer died. The show was forced to write out the character of Leo, who had been the rock, the foundation holding this show together. To lose him not only meant losing one of the greatest television actors of recent years, but it also hit me that my favorite show (EVER) was ending. I cried, so hard and for so long after the episode aired my parents thought I was going through a depression. It was heartbreaking.

2) Also from West Wing--'The Two Cathedrals'. From that incredible moment with Martin Sheen railing against God, to the final scenes playing against Dire Straits' 'Brothers in Arms', that entire episode gave me chills.

I miss that show.

The Doctor Who season finale of season three had me crying and near sobbing when The Master dies. Which is strange because he killed almost all the humans on Earth and used a paradox machine to force the humans from the future to feed off the humans from their past and essentially was crazy and disgusting and the opposite of everything good The Doctor is.

And yet, when The Doctor held The Master and begged him to regenerate, to fix himself... begged him to not leave him alone again. Pleaded that he would not be the last of the Time Lords and granted forgiveness for all the horrible things The Master had done.... I was a mess. And not just because of how much pain The Doctor was in, although that was a large part of it. It was the thought of being so utterly alone (as both The Doctor and The Master were) and imploring the other to be or stay. It was the thought of being that alone again. It was the inability to save and the unwillingness to accept the forgiveness offered. It was a combination of many things, not the least of which was the simple desire that things had worked out differently.

It is a very relatable moment. But, imagine having the ability to time-travel but be unable to change any of the outcomes of the bad in your (or a loved one's) life. And now I am crying again.

Most Painful Memory? yeah, that's easy. So, there I am, watching southpark. My 17 year old sister is watching it with me. We are laughing up a storm. Then, one of the characters mentions the Clit. Now, I'm laughing, but I am the only one... my sister, who is a senior in public school and, I reiterate, is 17, turns to me and asks... "what's the clit?" Did I mention she is my only sister, and baby sister? Some things you dont' ask a family member...cuz I had a minor heart attack right there. and that is my most painful TV memory... To this day I can't watch SouthPark without getting really nervous.

I saw one mention of this, just skimmed through so there might be another. Anyway, two for you now:

'The Message' from Firefly. When Tracey is dying and talking to Mal? When they play his message again? The very ending, where they deliver the body? I cried. I sat here in my chair and bawled.

I recently bought the entire series of OZ on DVD. Early birthday present to myself. I'm about midway through S3 (episode U.S Male). Anyway, possibly the most heartbreaking ep for me so far is the season finale for S2. One, Keller betraying Beecher. That was sniffle-inducing (it also induced quite a few comments of 'Keller, you cocksucker'; since watching this show, I've started swearing even more than usual). Two, Alvarez scooping out the hack's eyes (Rivera, was it?), hiding in Mukada's office, and screaming when they threw him in solitary. The screaming just broke my heart, it really did. Kirk Acevedo did a really great job with that; of course it helps that Alvarez is in my Top 6 (joined by Beecher, Keller, Vern Schillinger, Ryan O'Reily, and Hill; yes, I like Hill).

Heartbreaking moment #1: Gilmore Girls, end of season six -- Lorelai breaks off her engagement with Luke and sleeps with Christopher. The double heartbreak that a) it was sad to watch and b) one of my favorite TV shows had essentially killed itself. I was angry and heartbroken. I still watched season 7, but I glowered through the first half. I was so mad. I thought I could never trust another show again. But the thing is, like all heartbreaks, you find a new love. For my quirky family drama, I now have "Brothers and Sisters." Shut up, I love it. Rachel Griffiths fucking rules.

Heartbreaking moment #2: This little scene Freaks and Geeks:
Neil: Shut up! You don't even have a father!
Bill Haverchuck: I DO have a father! I talked to him three months ago!

And Bill's voice cracking at the end! Shit.

So yeah, lots of people here mentioned their Buffy moments, the Body or my personal fave, when Oz and Willow break up, or SFU, or West Wing.

But I had to think back to that one moment that predated them all - one that spoke to me of adult compromise, of attempting to do right versus attempting to be cool, a moment of paint and regret and cutting off a limb so the body could life.

Of course, I'm talking about the time that they kicked Puck out of the Real World.

It never happened this way before. For three seasons, no one really knew what they had on their hands. This was before the producers started to follow rule of "just get them all drunk". This was back when they actually got people of interest. And this was, in the heady days of the early Clinton administration, the relationship that got America talking. That is the dynamic between Pedro and Puck.

The thing was - Both were pure. One was full of hope and good will and a desire to save the world. The other was an angry, immature devil, bent on destruction and chaos. But they both were pure. Both sexy. Both lovable, in their own way. We all admired Pedro. But, in our secret harts, we all wanted to be Puck.

However, Puck was a bastard. That was clear from day one. But he was an attractive bastard, so we tried to love him. Was he just hurt, and lashing out? Did he just need a hug? Or did he really hate the world so much that he had to destroy everything in front of him, including a beautiful dying man who spent every day as if it was his last, because it just might be?

Finally, the house could no longer put up with this conflict, and more importantly, Pedro could no longer. He threatened to leave, because the house was a toxic environment. But Judd, good Judd, liberal Judd, Judd the worshiped Pam from afar, Judd who loved her so much that the only thing he could think to do for her birthday was FLY HER BOYFRIEND OUT TO SEE HER -

Judd said no. You're not going anywhere. And he got the entire house together. Conservative Rachel. Laid back cool Mohammad. Naive Cory. And the serene, beautiful Pam. And one by one - they all voted him out.

But it didn't end there. They called him. And via speaker phone, they begged him to come home. So they could talk to him face to face. It was breaking their hearts, what they had to do. They all still loved him, even if they could no longer live with him. But the angry Puck, crown prince of Bike Messengers, demanded to know of his fate via speaker phone. And they told him.

They cried. But it was the right thing. And as Puck philosophized on how no one can really change anyone, and he'll always be the same angry punk no matter how many hugs he gets, we were shown shots of him biking gracefully along the San Francisco Streets, under the early morning haze of the Bay Area. And as "It's Over Now", a now long-forgotten song from the indie-fueled early '90's played, we all got a little sadder. A little older.

I guess it's over now.
I think we've seen the end.
When our common dream.
Faltered in the between.
Though I've tried so hard to make it real.
It doesn't matter now.
I guess it never did.

and it's alright alright alright with me.
and it's alright if that's how you want it to be.

-Cause and Effect

Oh, and another scene that should be mentioned here: In the faux-documentary episode of MASH, Father Mulcahy tells the interviewer in his particular, silent manner that on cold days, a MASH surgeon will warm his hands in the steam rising out of an operative incision. It almost makes me cry, and it almost makes me sick.

Since a lot of moments that came to mind have already been mentioned, I will say that episode of Homicide: Life On the Street with the guy stuck in between the subway train and the landing. That whole damn episode just kills me every time and both Andre Braugher and Vincent D'Onofrio were spectacular.

sorry, but i just remembered one more that really affected me. you have to promise not to laugh, but it was an episode of Magnum P.I. where Magnum had to tread water for a day and he had these flashbacks from his childhood and of his father, and, of course, his father's death. i first saw this episode with my dad when it aired originally (this show was a father-and-son thing for me and my dad) and my father got really choked up but i guess i was too young to understand it at the time. now however, the father-and-son relationship shown in the episode hits a little closer to home.

Man I jumped on this comment diversion way too late. Eveything that has ever choked me up seems to have been taken.

It's nice to see so many Buffy, Angel and Firefly fans. Everyone sad moment from that show seems to have been mentioned at least a couple of times already. The same goes for West Wing and ER. There were tons of moments from those two shows that totally got me all of which seem to have been mentioned.

One thing that really got me recently was The War. The Ken Burns documentary they just ran. It had so many moments that really got to me but I have to say the one that got me the most was when they interviewed family members of a soldier named Babe Ciarlo who was in Italy. Throughout the whole episode they would talk about letters that they got from him and how their mother would sit on the patio everyday to wait for a letter from him and would light up eveytime they came. You can totally see the writing the wall but at the end when they talk about getting the telegram telling them that he was KIA. It totally got to me. It was so sad.

Hill Street Blues . . . Sgt. Esterhaus

Guh, forgot about that one; I was in high school and far too cool to cry, so I had to take leave of the fam for a few minutes for some alone time. Was anyone else, um, aroused by Esterhaus's sexy girlfriend, the early 40's redhead? I was about 15, so I was wildly attracted to just about anything female, but Barbara Babcock may have been my first older woman fantasy.

Ah, I remember seeing an episode of TAXI when Christopher Lloyd's character is remembering his dead father, who left him a tape. I was young enough that is was probably the first time I'd heard "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" and I'll probably always think of that moment when I hear it...

My oldest sister was the one to get me into Veronica Mars, desperate for me to love better shows than Smallville. (Don't judge!) She brought the first season home one summer and we watched the entire thing in the span of a week or two. The moment that really broke my heart was the scene where you first get a look inside of the Echoll's family, after the bum fighting fiasco. Logan is looking in his father's closet, picking out a belt and I was naive enough to ask, cautiously, "What's he doing?" My sister told me to keep watching and I knew what was going to happen. That one moment was disturbing enough to me that I was depressed for the next couple of days.

I wasn't really allowed to watch much tv when I was younger (I know! The horror!) but when I was a junior in high school I made honor roll and was allowed to pick one show to watch every week. I chose Party of Five because...well because I was a junior in high schoo, you know?

So there's an episode I think it's at the end of season 2, where Charlie and Kirsten are supposed to get married, but it's called off at the last minute. I just hadn't ever seen TV that moved me so much. I think my parents seriously reconsidered their decision to allow me this one show given how much I cried that night.

There's another episode, where Julia and Justin have broken up, and she crawls through his bedroom window to tell him that she doesn't know how to live without him. Very melodramatic, but I watched it at an age where that kind of unbridled, hurdling ahead at the speed of light kind of emotion made total sense to me, and that scene just made my heart feel like it was about to shatter into a billion pieces.

So there. That was quite embarrassing and now I'm a bit mopey.

Sicne soemoen already wrote an essay on the end of Six feet under....

Battlestar Galactica: Col. Tigh, probaly the most battle hardend, raging alchoholic, XO in a universe far far waya or right around the corner is forced to kill his wife for making a deal with the enemy to save his life. While Elen Tigh was unfaithful, they were had finally worked through their issues and and become the type of coupling that marrige idealizes wife. But in this this case love and justice were not compatible and the old man of the sea (in space)decides that if she has to die for her treachery then he will be the one to kill her.

If something brings Col. Tigh to cry... I feel that even a real Cylon like Cheney would feel his eyes moisten.

Oz, season six. Two episodes. The first is when they thought Cyril would be executed and Ryan is saying good-bye to him, and everyone in Em-City is pounding on the walls...and then he is saved. The second is when he really is executed and Ryan is walking around the meditation maze... Both episodes kill me, but the one where he doesn't actually die is the more depressing one.

I never watched ER on original airing. However, I have watched the re-runs since. The episode where Mark Greene dies kills me every time. He was such a great character from the show.

At the end, when his daughter finally has enough
decency to think of him and tells him how she remembers all the good times from her childhood, It's heartbreaking to me. Then, they play that wonderful version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It was almost hopeful, yet crushing.

Greene gets to see visions of all those he loves while that breathtaking music plays. You see Elizabeth and their child and all the folks at the ER. Then Greene leaves the vision through the ER and all the lights go out.

Just thinking about it makes me tear up a little.

PS- That Futurama episode with Fry's dog was just on the other day. I kept telling people how sad that episode makes me.

Mine comes from an episode of the "The Wonder Years" that aired when I was about 9. The student's at Kevin's school are going to walk out to protest the Vietnam War. But the administration gets wind of the walk out and preemptively tells the students that they will be suspended if they participate. Now, keep in mind that I'm 9 and a little-goody-two-shoes. I love school. I'm good at school. And a suspension will go on my "Permanent Record." But Vietnam was wrong. And people need to stand up for their beliefs, especially when they are being ignored by TPTB.

My 9-year-old self bawled for an hour over this, despite my mother alternately trying to reassure me that 1-my permanent record wasn't worth not standing up for my beliefs and 2-enough other students would walk out, so the message would be heard.

I cry over television all the time, but nothing upset me more than that. Ever. My mother still brings it up. And I kinda love my 9 year-old-self for getting so worked up over a hypothetical situation.

just as an aside...

how the f**k will they decide who wins the damn prize?!

Mine is heartbreak-by-proxy. My daughter, Emma, is four years old and loves Winnie The Pooh. A couple months ago, I walked into the room while she was in the middle of watching "Piglet's Big Movie," which is, for the most part, a crappy repackaging of lousy Winnie The Pooh cartoons which involved Piglet. It's all tied together by the other characters in the movie as they ponder over the ways in which Piglet, who's missing for some reason, has made a big difference in their lives.

Okay, I walked into the room and there was my daughter with teary eyes. I asked her what was wrong, and she started sobbing. Piglet went away, she told me, and all his friends were thinking of him and worrying about him and they all loved him so much. By now she could hardly talk because she was crying so hard.

Well, you can imagine how I reacted to this. I cried my eyes out, too, over my sweet little girl who cares so much about the sadness and worries of a bunch of cartoon characters that she's reduced to a puddle of tears. And I cried over the fact that, like me, my mother, my grandmother, and who knows how many generations before me, she can be moved to tears by the plight of another. I felt a thread run from them, through me, to her, and I cried over that tie.

And then I deleted that blasted movie from the DVR for making my baby cry!

does korean tv count? does anyone here watch kdramas? because some of those are SOUL-crushing! everytime i watch the final episode of autumn in my heart (where the main girl character FINALLY succumbs to cancer in the arms of her true love/brother at the beach where they had their last childhood memory together) i die a little inside. and also, whats with all the tragic beach scenes korea?

Arrested Development - this show spoiled me for low rated, high quality shows. It is the reason I was reluctant to watch Veronica Mars and Friday Night Lights. It broke me.

And yet Two and A Half Men lives.

Buffy's high school prom and her final dance with Angel to "Fade Into You" by Mazzy Star. *sniffle*

The last episode of season one "The OC" with Seth going off alone in his boat to Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah". *sniff*

The last few minutes of the Smallville season finale where Papa Luthor shaves his head in prison and we see an explosion that might have killed Chloe. Johnny Cash's "Hurt" plays.

Maybe it was just the music.

Also not in it for the give-away, but I had to chip in. There are several back-to-back tear-jerking Scrubs episodes in Season 5: the one where the endearing Mrs. Wilks gets to finally leave the hospital, and then the one where she comes back and dies; the one where Carla finds out she's pregnant; the one (oddly) where the janitor wrestles with his personal value and is affirmed by a severely-paralytic patient. But the one that KILLS me is the one where a girl with severe depression tries to befriend JD, but he brushes her off only to find her in the hospital the next day in what appears to be an overdose. She dies, which he takes to heart and has to be talked out of his self-flagellating funk by Dr Cox because 'once you start blaming yourself for people's deaths, well, that's a slippery slope and it's ruined a lot of good doctors.' The girl's death is bad news for JD but good news for Dr Cox, because he can use her organs to revive three dying patients. Unfortunately, the reprieve offered these patients is temporary. The girl, it seems, died of rabies rather than a drug overdose. Each of the patients is infected and, one by one, dies off, for which Dr Cox takes total responsibility. The last scene has Dr Cox tearing up and fleeing the hospital as The Fray's 'How To Save A Life' plays in the background.
Gets me even now.

off the top of my head:

there's an episode of homicide: life on the street that gets me every time i see it. one of the detectives commits suicide (crosetti?), and because of this he is denied an honor guard for his funeral. for the entire episode the viewer is led to believe pembleton (andre braugher! the reason i fell in love with this show!) is not going to attend the funeral. at the end of the episode, as the funeral procession passes the police station, we see pembleton in his dress blues, saluting alone. i love that man.

life goes on, the "jesse episodes"...especially the series finale.

and there are quite a few moments in felicity that tear me up...i just can't remember specific ones at the moment!

Rugrats. I swear. I was babysitting my nieces, there was this one Mother's Day episode, and one of the kids (Chuckie, I think) is the only one that doesn't have a mom to give a Mother's Day card because, apparently, she died when he was a baby. But he has a picture of her in his bedroom and says, very matter-of-factly, "I remember her sometimes, right before I fall asleep".

Many of my heartbreaking television moments have already been mentioned, especially the cathartic Sex Feet Under series finale and the intensely moving finale of M*A*S*H. But two others are the season finale of The Wonder Years and the Christmas episode of My So Called Life. The end of the Wonder Years was perfect-- providing the happy ending all viewers desired, while also intertwining a bit of reality when the narrator reveals that Kevin and Winnie marry different people. At first, the news evoked sadness about the perfect couple's eventual demise, but as I grew older I appreciated the truthfulness of the conclusion. And the Christmas episode of My So Called Life! Rickie is homeless because his ass backwards father can't handle his gay son. It's hard to imagine a kid as thoughtful and charismatic as Rickie can't be loved in his own home. Also, I loved episodes in which Angela realized that her awkward existence was nowhere near as trying as her close friends' dysfunctional families. Plus, the mysterious homeless girl comes to Rickie's aid to ensure a moving Christmas episode.



Oh yes, and the episode where Kelly just says no to the joint from the actor visiting the school to film the anti-drug PSA. Saved by the Bell helped direct my moral compass.

Back when I was a naive youngster circa the 8th grade, I used to hold stock in the theory that if two people loved each other enough, they could make it work regardless of any obstacle that crossed their path. I was (and still am) a huge Buffy fan and loved the Buffy/Angel romance. When they broke up at the end of Buffy Season Three I was (as any young fangirl would be) upset but hoped that they'd reunite. Up until the last scene of the Angel episode "I Will Remember You," my wish had come true. Then, Joss reminded me, along with the rest of the viewing public, that no matter how much two individuals want or try, love is not a form of superglue. If anything, it's the acid that eats away at the superglue and nothing anyone does has the power to stop the errosion process. Two people can, as Spike once wisely said, "love until it kills you both," but in the end, that's all love will do- kill one's optimism-drenched spirit. I've had my share of relationships but each and everyone has ended painfully, just as Angel and Buffy's last few moments of happiness painfully ended as they cried in each others' arms, yearning for more time to spend with each other. I'm no longer that bright-eyed "love conquers all" optimist that I was eons ago, but if any T.V. moment makes me heartbroken enough to wish that an episode would magically end a different way, that two people above the rest could make it work, it's the very end of "I Will Remember You."

I am terribly late. Please don't hold me after class.

This girl's not a weeper. However there have been a few moments on the small screen that brought a tear to my eye.

-ER is such a shameless puller of the heartstrings. Nearly every episode has to have some weeper of a subplot with a swelling operatic pop song that plays at the denouement. But dammit, they really got this jaded bitch with Dr. Green's farewell, dying-in-paradise episode. I fell all to pieces as "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" sung by that big Hawaiian dude played.

-Farscape was my and Mr. Pink's favorite show. The deaths of both Zhaan and D'Argo were shocking and heartbreaking because we had come to love these characters so much.

-I hate to pull 9/11 out of the bag because it was so obviously a terrible moment caught on television. The actual towers going down was too overwhelming in the moment and at the time I was unable to have an emotional reaction except being stunned. I think I floated about for a few days afterwards completely numb.

Then I saw footage on the news of some guy, a young guy, with an American flag wrapped around his shoulders as he stood by one of the makeshift memorials/walls of missing posters that popped up around NYC. He was a big dude, burly and tough looking. And here he was keening, shouting, and openly weeping for all the world to see. Standing in my den, I covered my mouth with my hand and bawled my eyes out. It was the first tears I shed for all those people. For that horrible waste of life.

1)last episode of 6 feet under-- its scary,sad and yet seems to put everything in perspective somehow. it just made me feel all wierd inside thinking of me and my family and the prospect that eventually well see family members die and go away and that one day we too will not be here.

2) Alias- when her friend was killed and replaced with a clone-- fucking frightening

3)Maud Flanders' death- creepy

The death of Flower on Meerkat Manor was friggin' heartbreaking (that was one hardcore meerkat and to be taken down by a snake? Harsh.) but doesn't come close to trumping the pain felt in my chest when the writers of Prison Break punked out and put Sara Tancredi's head in a box.

The intelligent, strong, caring doctor who'd garrotte you in a second got the worst death in the history of television. They didn't even bring her back ('cause they didn't want to work something out with the actress who'd just given birth). Suddenly, the great female lead had been "kidnapped" and then- head in a box. HEAD IN A BOX. It's the only time I've ever covered my mouth with my hand, felt sick and stopped watching a tv show.

F' you Fox. F' you to hell.

Alright, I'll agree with all the Buffy, especially the Body, but I'm a man. And I've grown up listening to the Cure. And boys don't cry. So I haven't really lost my shit for a while. Although I came pretty close in the Body.

Oh and the Angel season finale.

But what I can remember is a thing in my childhood that made me lose it crying. I was under 5 here just so everyone knows, but the episode of Mr. Bean when he ties the balloons to the kid's pram and it goes flying away in the sky.

When you're a kid who lives in a pram. And you see a pram go flying in the sky. You lose it. You dont know what to do. And then they have actual sombre music and the Mum's face. Oh god, that shit was hard.

For some reason the laugh track seemed to add insult to injury. Everyone else around you is laughing and in hysterics at this poor baby and it feels like they're laughing at you because you have a soul!

At least that was my 3 year old reasoning. Truely heartbreaking, of course I could watch it now and probably get a chuckle, but the scars are there.

There's a episode of Six Feet Under, where Claire called Keith for help turning in Gabe, and she knows he's messed up and she has to do this, but it's killing her. David is there, and he can't understand why she's sobbing, and Keith gets it, and tells David it's because she loves him. Anyone who's ever had to cope with a loved one going off the rails completely loses it at this point.

Judging Amy (good show, really kind of depressing all the time) when Maxine's fiance dies and she ends up cutting her long, silver hair off. It was a particularly heart-breaking moment because it was on top of everything that could possibly go wrong. Oh Maxine Grey, you're my hero.

Ok, so you guys got the big ones-- Frys dog, Ben Dies on Scrubs, 'The body', Heny Blake bites it. And good call on the dead like me. But I cried after Veronica almost gets killed by the Fitzgeralds in that bar, and she is crying and breaking down. Also when she confronts her X about her Rape. Friggen gets me every time.

Try this: the Death of Mr.Hooper on Sesame Street, when they try to explain to Big Bird (who is like 4) why Mr. Hooper isn't here anymore....

Watching the last episode of "Sports Night".
As small but triumphant smiles crossed Dan's and Casey's faces when Dana told them that the show was going to continue, I actually allowed myself to hope, for five minutes and against my better judgment, that the show might survive for another season. I still haven't forgiven ABC.

I'm glad people are mentioning "Freaks and Geeks." I pretty much cried like a bitch when I found out it wasn't coming back. That show was helping my life make sense again. That show was like the wind.

I also cried like a bitch when I found out "Deadwood" wasn't coming back and of course when the Doc got sick. Brad Dourif is the man!

Word, Ben.
Absolutely the finale of Six Feet Under. I felt like I was watching my own life or my own family die. I could not get control of my own sobbing, and it haunted me for weeks.

Have any of you seen the British version of the Office?

When Dawn opens Tim's card in the taxi with Lee, I wept for the first time and only time because of a TV show. There is nothing as heartbreaking, then rewarding as Tim and Dawn. Its like in Romeo and Juliet, when she lets down her hair and he climbs up.

Well, Alias is my show, and it hasn't been mentioned much, so here are a couple moments from that.

1) In the first, or maybe second season, Sloane, that evil bastard, finds out that his wife Emily (played to devastating perfection by Amy Irving) is dying of cancer. So he decides to tell her what he's really been doing all along, with the evil and everything. And instead of dialogue, they play Natalie Merchant's "My Skin," which is a gorgeous and haunting song all by itself. And you just watch Amy Irving's composure crumble as she realizes that her husband is not the man that she thought he was. And you watch Ron Rifkin lose it as he slowly reveals his betrayal of trust to the one person he truly loved. And seriously, I lose my shit every time.



2) At the beginning of Season 3, Sydney is having a bit of rough time. She comes back after being presumed dead for 2 years, with her dad in jail, no memory of said 2 years, Sloane pardoned by the government, and most of all, her beloved Vaughn married to another woman. Basically, her entire life has been turned upside down, and there is a scene where Vaughn comes up to her and asks her how she's doing, and she completely loses it on him. She tells him he's only asking to make sure that HE is fine, not her, and that truthfully, she is horrible. She caps it all off by telling him that she is horrible not because she lost him, but because if it had been her, she would have waited, and now she sees what an absolute waste that would have been. And Jennifer Garner has just the right amount of anger and bitterness, and her voice hitches and breaks just a little... And Vaughn has this look on his face, like he knows she's right, but he's still so hurt. It's just all rather heartbreaking.



Also, props to everyone who mentioned Jurassic Bark and the episode of the Office (US) where Pam is crying by herself and Dwight comes up and asks "Who did this to you?" and starts to look like he is about to start crying himself.

The death of Wallace on The Wire. Seriously the death of that kid--at the hands of his friends Poot and Bodie no less--was so damn heartbreaking. Not only because Wallace was such a sweet, naïve and altruistic little kid, but also because you understood simultaneously why Poot and Bodie had to kill him. This moral predicament perfectly sums up the heart of the show: every character is trapped and rendered powerless by a system they have no control over. No matter what role someone plays in 'the game' each character is still a victim; there is no escape, only acceptance. Free will is just an illusion in a world where systems --the streets, the police, the school, the state--influence and infect every action, every decision. Nobody 'wins'--and nothing articulates that more than watching Wallace cry for his life and watching his friends take it away because they have no choice.

As many have pointed out, Joss Whedon is a genius. Therefore his work occupies a lot of my moments, many of those coming from Buffy. Buffy's mom dying, Buffy dying, and the series finale were probably the highlights.

If I had watched Firefly when it was on I would probably say that being canceled was heartbreaking. But knowing its not on now is pretty sad.

Cancellation of Firefly. Worst, most horrible, most heartbreaking moment of my life. Ok... that's an exxageration, but I did cry! I still get misty-eyed when I watch the DVDs. Especially during the episode "The Message" which is the last one they ever shot. The funeral scene at the end always feels like the funeral for the show. *sniffle*

The Firefly episode "Out of Gas". Mal dying alone on the Serenity floor? We're talking heaving, hiccuping runny-nosed sobbing. And that still happens every time I watch the episode, which is why I save it for times when I need a cathartic interlude.

Dammit--sorry about that.

I feel it's important to say, that this moment occurred for me at a very youthful age, but I don't believe that should take away from the power it held for me.

During Season Two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I went from being something of a passive "if it's on, I'll watch it" to a downright die-hard fan. I became fully embroiled in the lives of the beloved citizens of Sunnydale, CA. I felt their pain, I celebrated their joys, and I hoped along with them for a chance to see real change made in their world of turmoil.

Buffy has always been a brilliant metaphor for life, and though mostly a general statement about the difficulties of teenaged life, certain elements stood out more for me than others.

In the finale of Season Two, "Becoming, Pt. 2", in the final moments, when the demon Acathla has been awakened, and it appears that the end really may be near for our hero, and she is about to be killed by the soul-less Angelus, he asks her what is left, when all else has failed her, and she replies, just before his death-blow "me."

That moment, and the heart wrenching ones that followed, will stay with me forever. When Angel's soul returns to him, and a teary-eyed Buffy does what she must, and kills him to save the world, something deeper than just my teenaged tear glands was impacted.

About a year before the episode aired, I lost my father to a long battle with alcohol addiction. I took his death exceptionally hard. He lost himself to his demons in much the same way that Angel was lost to his. And though my pain following his death was not identical to Buffy's, there was something in the statement she made, that when all is lost, we still have ourselves, that pulled me through a very trying time. I learned that we have the power to kill our own demons, even if they come in the form of something we once loved. We hold our heads high and carry on.

For me, then and now, that few minutes of television meant more to me than anything else ever could.

Definately the final episode of Dawson's Creek. Never has a more manipulative piece of television ever been produced. For 90 minutes im in tears every time i watch it. The first time it even took me a couple of hours to compose myself afterwards.

2. The Challenger explosion (1968). The death of a dream, after all.

Dyslexic moment, eh? I believe you meant '86, not '68 for the Challenger explosion. I was in 5th grade at the time and remember it quite well... messed me up for a long time.

There have been many references to the finale of Six Feet Under, but the episode that really really got me was from the first season.

I wasn't quite sold on the series yet; it was promising, and obviously breaking new ground, but I wasn't truly hooked. Then came the episode "Familia" 3rd or 4th I don't remember. The "guest death" was a gang banger named Paco. Paco's real family and his gang family are hanging around the house through the entire episode and I was CERTAIN (having seen enough TV dramas in my time) that there was going to be a shoot out at the Fisher's. Then at the end of the episode the gang leader asks Rico to have all the Fisher family come into the viewing room and I just KNOW that something bad is going to go down. But they just want to include the Fishers in their mourning and the gang leader, "Powerful" was his name, proceeds to give a heartwrenchingly honest and pure eulogy to Paco who stands to the side watching. I still get choked up thinking of it. I was blown away and completely hooked into the series.

Yes the finale was in my view one of the greatest series endings of all time, but that gang leader's speech is the one that kills me every time.

Spoiler for 'Life on Mars' Season 2:

I'm not sure if many of you would have even heard of this show from England so I'll give you a brief introduction just so you can understand the heartbreaking moment at the end of the series. The show revolves around a policeman called Sam who is hit by a car in the present day and wakes up in the early 1970's. Throughout the series Sam is never sure whether he is dead and in the afterlife, in a coma or just plain crazy. He has moments throughout the series where he can hear voices from the future and suffers from misterious ailments. While adapting to the police force in the 70's he meets Annie, who tries to understand his predicament.

So cutting to the final 10 minutes of the last episode, Sam makes it back to the present day while leaving his workmates in the middle of a hostage situation in the 70's. Unable to forget his friends and upon discovering that he can no longer feel the touch of others, Sam decides that he must go back to rescue them. With Bowie's 'Life on Mars' playing in the background, we see Sam's final moments as he stares across Manchester while standing on the hospital roof. He takes a running leap off the building and the viewer sees him appear back in the 1970's. Sam manages to save his friends (and get the girl) but as they drive away from the scene, we can hear paramedics tending to the injured Sam in the present day.

It's heartbreaking to see a man take that leap, knowing the consequences. It is ultimately left to the viewer to decide if Sam has really died or whether he was dead along.

I can't watch this episode without crying. While I may not win that DVD, I hope that it encourages some people to track down the show on DVD. Even though you know the end, I promise you it will still hurt.

I have no idea if anyone's already referenced this, but I have faith that I'm not the first. I just can't read/skim through 200+ comments right now.

For me, it was the moment in the special for "The Office" when Dawn is in the cab with Lee and opens Tim's present, and it's the freakin' art supplies, and her sketch of him with the note. I was weeping quietly to myself, thinking of how beautiful the whole thing was, and how heartbreaking, and of how much I loved Tim and hated Lee.

Then all was rectified in the most brilliant ending of a TV series ever.

Three events:

I came to Veronica Mars very late. It never aired on a station available in Ireland.
I had a few months off, well was unemployed, when I first moved to Scotland and started watching it on a reccommendation.
You see as I came closer and closer to the end of the final season I knew it was over, I knew it would not be coming back and the creeping realisation that all the emotion and turmoil was just going to be left hanging just killed me. She just walks out of the voting booth and into the rain - never to let us know how she resolved the conflict over seeing her father commit a crime for her benefit. I was in bits for about a week. And what really just killed is that for a show this dark, this nasty, it really couldn't have been any more perfect.

BBC reporter Michael Burke's repotrs from Ethopia - will never leave me. This was real human tragedy documented for the world to see.

My Joss moment is more about human pathos than human tragedy. Xander to Dawn: "You're not special. You're extraordinary." When the magical and super-powered characters in Buffy experience grief they are brought back to human reality through this tragedy - Dawn and Xander live there all the time, this single line explaining their bond encompasses Joss' recurring theme's of our aloneness in the Universe, and our human struggles are what make us and break us. It just KILLS me.

So I think mine are going to get me shunned a bit because they are shows that I know are not loved on this site, but I just can't help myself. So here goes:
Sex and the City when Charlette is getting married the first time and Carrie tells Aiden that she had an affair with Big. The part that really gets me is when he shows up after the wedding at the church to tell her that he can't be with her. It's heart breaking.
Also the last episode of the show where Carrie is explaining to "the Russian" that she is "someone who is looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love." That gets me everytime. I really relate to her there.
Also another show that you guys make fun of, Grey's Anatomy. The last episode of season 2 when Denny dies. Just about the whole second half of that episode has me in tears. An just when I think I won't cry anymore Alex comes in and picks Izzy up and holds her.
Also I cry when they have top put Doc, their dog, to sleep, but I will cry when any animal dies. I am a sucker for that stuff.

On Buffy, when Oz left Willow. Broke. My. Heart. When Oz says, "My whole life, I've never loved anything else." And Willow is just standing there with tears welling up in her eyes. And you know that Oz doesn't want to leave, but be has to because he doesn't want to harm her with his werewolf ways. So good and I just about bawl every time.

And the series finale of Buffy when Anya dies and they are all getting on the bus and Xander asks where Anya is and Andrew says, "She died saving me." Heart wrenching. Basically the last 20 minutes or so of the series finale, I just cry the entire time. I just well up with a feeling of "girl power" because every girl around the world becomes a slayer at that moment. How could you not just lose it?

When they shot the horse on Little House on the Prarie.

most of mine have already been mentioned, namely the west wing moments (thanks to whoever above reminded me of the scene with donna on the phone with her teacher, btw)... and i'm surprised only one person has mentioned the (original) office christmas special, as i think history will prove it to be what made the uk version superior.

the one that isn't on here and never fails to just kill me, however, is in the pilot episode of sports night, when dan gives the speech to casey after he admits that he's thinking of quitting the show. i dont care if you're six days or six months out of a relationship, you need that reminder every once and again that there are people out there who have your back and like you no matter what state you're in. granted, the scene goes into classic sorkin cheeseball territory after that with the south african runner and casey calling his son, but yeah... to get that kind of emotional impact from a pilot is an impressive feat to pull off (especially with that damn laugh track ABC insisted on)

I can't believe no one has brought up the episode of Quantum Leap where Al danced with his wife. I know I was young, but that one wrecked me.

Damn all of you to HELL!!!

I am of course, now a big blubbery mess, and thinking of my own most painful moments

1)some one has already mentioned this but, the end of Farscape as a TV show when Crichton and Aeryn have gotten engaged and she's preggo and it seems like finally they can take some sort of refuge from all the pain and the violence and the death and Chiana's blind and everyones at peace...then that SHIP turns up and blasts them into crystals and D'argo's screaming NOOOO and Chiana doesn't know whats happening and the whole crew's going NUTS and we KNOW there isnt going to be a new series...I was, no joke, banging the screen of my TV screaming 'You cant do this!' my parents thought I'd had a breakdown, I was hysterical, like, waking up the next day with puffy eyes bad. Damn it.

2) Life on Mars, two moments(British tv show fucking spectacular) The first is the season one finale so, major spoiler, when the main character Sam, played by the simply outstanding John Simm, having woken up in the past after being hit by a car, has stumbled across a case where his father, who in Sam's life left when he was four, is involved.
Now, time line wise it's a little complex, Sam's kid self is around, he's never quite seen him (he's four like I said) but he's aware that he's arrived in the period in his life when his father leaves. When he encounters his father on this case involving gangsters (whose rise to power Sam, by arresting their predecessor, is responsible for) he assumes that his father, who he believes to be innocent and involved just through bad luck, left because he was afraid of these gangsters.
He finds himself at the very wedding his father walked out of and after witnessing his parents dance romantically to Bowie's Life on Mars(which, I warn you, has even the strongest misty eyed) he follows his dad with the intention of begging him to stay. Only as he goes, he realises that his sort of lady love police woman friend is the 'woman in a red dress' he semi remembers (and has been doing since the day of the accident) being attacked in the same woods into which his father and now she, now run.
It builds to a climax until eventually he gives his father a gun and the bastard points it at him, meaning to kill him and run away. Sam's face at this, the genuine heart break is just...painful, in so many ways to witness and leaves me sobbing the entire time. Thinking about it there are a lot of life on mars moments that left me weeping, the hostage episode where Sam's about to be executed by a crazed janitor, he shares a look with his lady love, he's actually smiling, and his boss Gene Hunt swears unholy revenge as soon as Sam's hurt, just a beautiful, incredibly intense moment.
But aye, the entire season two finale when the truth about who Sam is seems to be revealed, the way its done enough to make Sam doubt his own sanity, his own belief that he's from the future(again, John Simm, just extraordinary) until that truly blissful moment in the 'Present' when he, t the tune of again, life on mars, he tosses himself off the roof and wakes up where he's happiest, in the past with Gene and the team...*weeping*

3) Everyones said ER when Mark dies, when carter reads the letter, for me those moments where sad but like, eh, what killed me was Romano reading the letter as its pinned to the notice board. He's sipping coffee, killing time, reads the letter, scoffing at the , frankly, hokiness of it all. Then he gets to Elizabeth's attachment. He genuinely takes pause, turns and stalks away, a bigger show of emotion from Romano we've seen only once, when he lost Lucy. God it broke me.

4)Third Watch. Vastly, deeply underrated show just, any way, but a show with so many moments of true, heart breaking sadness. The obvious one/two the episodes 'September Tenth' and 'September Twenty First'
. We never see anything of the attack its self, no stock footage, nothing on the TV, but we don't need to, because we know whats coming at the end. Its hard to watch, truly it is.
September Twenty First is, of course, ten days later, the characters trying to get on with lives, spending all their free time down at ground zero in the rescue/clean up effort. Everyone is utterly subdued, wrecked, exhausted, sick of being called heroes. An insight, truly, into just some of the after effects of the attacks.
Then there are the other moments on this show that laid me out, most of em I have to admit, Bosco based; His whole character arc after 9/11- culminating in his massively emotional break down in his partner Faith's arms. He's this strong, yes emotional but ANGRY guy who puts stock in appearing as such and he just shatters into a thousand pieces and weeps all over her and she is literally without words at this show of emotion. Weeping...
Then there's the season five moment when his brother has died and Lou, Davis and Sully are the ones to tell him. His reaction is a moment of genius from Jason Wiles, his utter disbelief as he tries to call his brother, who has been brutally tortured and murdered, his anger at them for saying something so cruel, dissolving into hysterical violent anger and heartbreak as his brother just doesn't pick up the damn phone..oh man...
And then season six. Well...all of season six was a rollercoaster of emotion, from the beginning; Gunmen attack the hospital where most of our major characters are gathered, Cruz, Davis, Faith and Bosco are amongst the first to be fired upon and Bosco tackles Faith to the ground after she freezes.
That's how series five ENDED, the bastards!! Series six opens with a replay of the same moment and continues into the gun men moving on giving out lot time to gather them selves.
Everyone is rising and asking if everyone else is okay and Faith moves, realising that Bosco's hand, clutching her leg, falls limply. She rolls him over and boy is shot all to hell. She loses her shit in a way we've not seen her do and this was including times when her daughter OD'd trapped in a blizzard and her husband had a heart attack trapped in a Power Cut-ed elevator in the middle of a riot.
Like, seriously, the woman is the human personification of hysteria over her friend being so badly hurt, beautiful acting from molly price and enough emotion and high possibility of death for a beloved character, that just shatters your heart and brings on the tears.
Then in progressive episodes...he wakes up*weep* he's communicating, talking*sniffle* then the day he leaves the hospital and Faith has half the precinct out in full dress uniform, she has their squad car, she has this whole living honour guard waiting for him. God I weep. I weep like a child.
And then that finale...oy vey. Their station house os bombed, burned out, Cruz dies(weep) and they're all reassigned...Sully describes each character's life after 'Camelot' and its just...*sigh* especially, again, Bosco 'Kickin ass and takin' names' , just...brilliant.

5)When Oz leaves. Twice. I just...I cant even talk about it.

6)Angel. Doyle. When I first saw the ep when he died I was hysterical, I'd never loved a character so much and he DIED. Then Glenn Quinn died. And they had a memorandum for him on the show. I haven't watched the first half of series one since he died for real.
Then the very last moment of Angel. That moment 'I don't know about you. But I want to slay the dragon'
I was already a little weepy, I hadn't been phased by Wesley and Illyara, having never been too invested in either character, but just knowing it was ending was doing me in. Then that. I wept with sadness but also sheer joy because it was incredible, what a way to end.

7) I'm mentioning Buffy, er, I don't know the name of the episode but when she kills her self to save Dawn. I cried for several reasons, the main one, tbh, being that she didn't just toss Dawn the fuck off the tower already!! But I personally never watched Buffy for Buffy, SMG irritated me. I do how ever remember running into the room where my sister was watching other TV and channelling Homer Simpsons in the ep where Lisa goes veggie, chasing the pig? 'its still good, its still good' ? I was like that but 'they could have a plan, they could have a plan!' cos of course we knew she was gonna die so I was running in every five minutes with my ideas of how it might not happen.
Then when I finally did break down and cry it was because of Spike's utter heartbreak when he saw her laying there dead, her speech, hokey, her perfectly undamaged body, gag, but Spike losing his shit? Holy crap.

8) Criminal Intent. The ep with Roy Schieder as a rapist and murder on death row and Goran's mum is dying and he basically figures out Schieder is his natural dad and at one point even raped Goran's mum but then both die, she of cancer, Schieder executed before either can one hundred percent confirm it and at the end of the episode, Goran sits alone in the dark in his mothers hospital room. Sobbing. Best episode the shows ever had, Vincent D'Onfrio is just...extraordinary.

9) Scrubs. You all know what episodes. The ones with the organ donors made my eleven year old brother cry!!Bastards!

10) Green Wing. Another brilliant piece of britishness, utterly surreal and mental for mentals sake but went out on a low high- Mac, the shows easily best character and perfect love match for Caroline, has returned after an absence, here to say his goodbyes after learning he's dying.(The moment when he does was...damn) The whole 'finale special' episode had me near tears but in simply one of the best moments of television in my lifetime of watching, Guy, the shows lovable twat and Mac are sitting in giggling hysterics over a couple of pints. Mac very casually says, between giggles, that he's dying, Guy slightly too giggly and drunk to just stop dead in shock. Both still laughing, Mac has to write down what he has since its too hard to pronounce(we never find out what) and Guy being Guy teases him for being such a loser as get ill. And then they get the giggles again and carry on drinking and the scene ends. Any one who loves the show died a little at that moment. I know I did.
And the wedding. I watched it through my fingers because they kept alluding that Mac might die before the wedding could take place....aw man, now I gotta go and cry and eat ice cream

1-The Gift, Buffy season 5 finale. When she gets to the top and whispers to Dawn and the slo-mo run into the rift. The voice over with her telling Dawn how much she loves her. I start crying ten minutes before every time I watch it.

2. The fall seasons of ER in 98 and 99. Pregnant for both, with my husband gone for training in the military for BOTH, living with my in-laws, hormones running amok and all the dead/injured children/babies. The woman who dies but her unborn baby survives completely KILLED me.

I second (third? fourth?) the callouts to the "Wonder Years" and "Buffy" finales. My most tearful moment, however, occurred in the unbelievably under-appreciated "Oz". The series kept getting better and better, the acting more and more believable. Their body movements conveyed more than most actors do when speaking. I became truly invested in caring about these mostly unlovable and troubled characters. The scene that got me the most was the execution of Cyril O'Reily. (O.k. Dustin, disqualify me right now because it involves a mentally retarded character.) The relationship between Cyril and his brother Ryan and their mother was so complicated and destructive but they really cared for each other and were shattered when Cyril was executed after having been spared previously. Rita Moreno's acting (as Sister Pete) has never been finer. The prisoners banging on their walls tore me apart.

Litelysalted: you are correct, it was Wild Horses. I only know this because I've watched the episode 18 thousand times. Sadly, I am proud of this.

I have two that really stand out for me. The first one was that Buffy episode (I'm assuming it's "The Body," I have the DVDs and never really pay attention to the names) when Joyce died. I was with a group of friends watching the episode and they were sitting on the couch and I was on floor. When Anya started talking about all the things Joyce will never get to do, I heard some noises behind me, and I thought people were giggling, mainly cause Anya said the word "juice." (when did juice become a funny word?) Not sure how to feel, I looked back and saw everyone crying and it all just let loose. A few months later, one of my group of friends had a brain aneurysm and died before the season could finish. And then Buffy went and died. I still have issues watching the fifth season.

The other one, also a Joss Weadon moment, is in Firefly's the Messanger. I think that's the episode. The one with the guy that has too many organs. Right when the guy figures out that they were trying to save him, only that he fucked up and got himself shot. Then, during the burial, he has that speech about walking and crawling while he's sobbing. Fuckin' A, it still kills me. It doesn't help knowing that that was one of the last scenes they filmed.

The episode of Buffy in which Angel gets his moment of true happiness, becomes Angelus, and then stands, bathed in moonlight and snaps the young up and comer Jenny Calendar's neck like a bunch of TGIFriday toothpicks. That was the moment in which I knew it was over for Buffy and Angel. The moment when I knew that Giles was badass... Besides, nothing can tear at your heartstrings then Giles, drunk with love, sniffing the roses leading to his room. And there lied out on the bed is his one true love. Come on "Sorry, Jenny. This is where you get off".... CRACK-dead love of your life.

And I was still reeling from Willow's fish.
They didn't even get to bond though...

I've been working my way through Six Feet Under on DVD for the past year, and I just finally reached the series finale at 1 a.m. last night. I was fine until those last six minutes- honestly, throughout the rest of the episode I found myself tiring of every character breaking down and weeping, endlessly. And then Claire drove away, and the song started, and it was all over. I dissolved into a puddle on the couch. Of course, the episode has been mentioned here many times before, but it just happened to me less than twelve hours ago, and my eyes are still puffy.

La Femme Nikita, Season 4, Final Episode.

Believing that this was to be the Series Finale (before a successful fan campaign got a wrap-up 8 episode fifth season), I can state without a doubt that I lost my shit during this episode. After 4 years of electric chemistry, on again, off again romance and general sexual head-fucking between the lead characters, the spy organization they work for determines Michael needs to be eliminated. After sending him on a certain death mission, Nikita disobeys orders and rescues Michael. Knowing that she must stay , Nikita orders Michael to run away and never come back. When she sees he won't leave without her, knowing that every minute could increase his chances of survival, Nikita coldly and convincingly tells Michael that she doesn't love him, and never did. The moment that disintegrated my heart? Silently, Michael looks back at her, opens his knife, and CUTS THE CORNER OF HIS EYE, producing a single blood tear, before disappearing into the woods.

People, this was, for all I knew, the conclusion to first LoVe, the first JAM, I had ever known and had been following for four years. I was a wreck for weeks.

The moment I discovered that Jason Dohring (Logan on _Veronica Mars_) is a scientologist was easily the most horrifying moment in television history.

1. Seeing the second building of the WTC get hit by the plane, live, on (if I'm remembering correctly) Good Morning America, making it clear that the first one wasn't an accident. Then a little later, at work (most of us were watching in the break room), seeing that tower collapse, again, live. Had to leave the room, just couldn't watch anymore.
2. The episode where Buffy's mom dies. One of the best hours of TV I've ever seen.
3. The MASH episode where Hawkeye falls in love with the Vietnamese woman, then she has to leave.
4. The Homicide episode with Robin Williams. He and his family were tourists, and his wife was shot to death in a robbery. I think it's the best acting Williams has ever done in his life, before or since. The whole episode is kinda devastating, but one memorable part is when all the cops are making jokes about stupid tourists and Robin Williams overhears them, comes in and says some things that make them feel bad for joking about it.

Listen, 24 is ridiculous now. You know it, I know it. But when Edgar dies in front of the whole office, and Chloe shows she's a human being, I lost it. Edgar was the only character on that show who I'd want to ever be friends with, the only redeemable thing about that craptastic downward spiral, and I cried like a little baby in my friend's living room. Oh, and then I stopped watching it forever.

If I recall correctly, I've only cried six or seven times for a TV show. Yes, it's a bit sad that I've kept count, but I like to consider those moments somewhat special, that I was actually moved enough to cry since I usually am very based in reality when watching things, knowing it's fictional and such, but some things just really are so convincing and sweet and realistic and sad and surprising, that you really can't help but cry even if you don't want to. Well, the three that stood out for me were:



1) Futurama - "Luck of the Fryrish" I found the dog episode sad too, but I've never had a pet so I suppose I just never connected with it as much as other people did. However, I never had an older brother either, but Luck of the Fryrish, the last few minutes were just a pure punch to the gut. You just think the whole time that it's just going to be one of the pure-comedy episodes, they show a little of Fry's backstory in flashbacks and how his brother resented Fry for having a lucky seven-leaf clover and always copied him in things like breakdancing. So when Fry learns that someone that looks like his brother achieved all the things he wanted to do when he was younger, like travel in space and such, he's bitter because he thinks his brother took his clover and stole the life he wanted. However, in the last few minutes, you realize along with Fry that his brother did not in fact steal his life, but missed his younger brother so much (none of his family was aware he was frozen in time and lived in the future) that he named his son after him and modeled him after Fry and his ambitions. God, it just brought insight on what a family deals with when a member goes missing, an aspect I never really thought they'd bring to this laugh-out-loud show.



2) Doctor Who - I read some spoilers before watching the season 2 finale, so I thought Rose was going to die or something really terrible. No one died, but it was still extremely sad. Rose is taken to an alternate universe because it's too dangerous to stay with the Doctor to fight with the Daleks. She leaves behind her family and friends, because she's made her decision then and there that she's staying with the Doctor forever and that he's worth that. He's angry because she risking her life but at the same time, he wants her to stay because they love each other and she makes him not lonely. However, as the portal to empty space or whatever opens, Rose and the Doctor are holding onto these magna-clamps or whatever, but Rose loses her grip and is about to fall into space but then her dad teleports back in and teleports both of them out to the parallel world. Rose is alive, but the seal between worlds is closed and she can never be with him again.



3) The Office - Season 3 finale. Basically, I always enjoyed The Office but didn't love Jim as much as other people did. I thought he was a good, funny character but not much more than that. However, a lot of Season 3 was about Pam's growth and independence as a person, she broke off her engagement with her schlub fiance and realized her deeper feelings for Jim. He's dating someone else and she rejected him a year before, so she's accepted the fact that they won't be together, because she can be by herself and be okay. She's basically saying this in her talking head, she's regretful and sad but accepting and grown when Jim walks in after driving all the way from a job interview and asks her out and then she accepts and turns back into the camera with tears in her eyes. Not exactly sad but so so good.

Man I can't believe I forgot all of those moments from ER. That just shows how long its been since I've watched it and cared about it. Dr. Green was my favorite character and seeing him die was tough. That shot of Carter and Lucy on the floor looking at each other after they got stabbed was unbelievable. Damn this show has probably as many as Buffy.

So very late to the game, so I will at least agree with the Futurama/Scrubs/West Wing scenes that have been laid out.

One scene I find particularly poignant is in the UK "The Office" when David Brent is being told that he is being made redundant. When he gets choked up and promises to change and essentially begs to not be let go, it's pretty heartbreaking.

I did not read all of these, but I read quite a few of them. I don't admire y'all for the task of determining a winner.

However, if I might humbly nominate one from among the entries I did read, I thought that the Piglet story about empathizing with her daughter was very touching. It was unique among the entries I read in that it was about empathizing with someone else who empathized with the television, whereas all the other entries I read were about empathizing directly with the television.

Just one guy's opinion.

Dana: I have seen enough to know that I have SEEN EOUGH! And now I want something good to happen. I want something good to happen before the day is over, and I'll be judge of what's good. One good thing before the day is over, I swear that's all I want!


Isaac: Hey lady! Are you planning on getting my show on the air anytime soon?

The season 1 finale of "Sports Night". A series that started slow had just began to hit its midseason-stride when Robert Guillaume suffered a real-life stroke that was written into the show. In a time before SPOILERS were everywhere, Isaac/Robert's surprise return at the point of a near-breakdown by Dana. The first time I watched it a probably shed a tear for good reasons. Ever since, though, I do because it breaks my heart how such a great show could have had such a short run.

Ninth inning rally, indeed.

I have another FNL moment, and I'm just going to steal the summary from the TWOP recap because it describes it so wonderfully:

Tami immediately looks weepy but manages to hold it together. She restrains herself to remarking that they were supposed to have two weeks. Coach recounts what Carl said, "blah blah blah, passed the buck up onto the top." Tami now looks like a staring, wounded deer. Coach reminds her that this is what he does, basically saying they need to suck it up. Tami gets up and moves to the couch. Coach follows her and continues talking, while Tami continues staring into the middle distance. You can almost see the emergency wall she's building up around her heart. And that takes all your energy, so much that you can't talk, you can't communicate. Coach continues blathering, saying he can't do his job half-assed, and then faced with her continuing silence, he asks her to speak. Tami begins moving her mouth but nothing comes out. She tears up a bit when Coach isn't looking, and you know she is scrambling inside her own head, knowing she should talk but really just wanting him to leave so she can break down in private. Eric finally says "That it?" and then when she nods, he gets up, grabs the keys, and says he'll be back in a bit. He leaves and she just lets loose.

That... is pretty much exactly, exactly every fight I've had with my fiance. That scene just nailed it. (Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton are freaking amazing).

Okay, a lot of mine have been said, but here's another.

I watched Grey's Anatomy before it went from soapy but fun to wtf?, but none of the main characters ever made me cry.

There's this episode, though. "Into You Like A Train," I think it's called, and it's the usual heavy-handed metaphor because two people, a young woman and an older man, have been impaled on a pole and they can only save one of them. (Derek can only love Addison or Meredith! Oh no!)

They go with the older man, because he's got a better chance, and the thing is... the young woman and the older man are both conscious this whole time, and they're talking, and when the doctors tell them they're going to cut them out in a way that will maybe save the man, but not the girl, the man starts protesting and the girl just quietly, tears running down her face, asks if her fiance will be there before they do it.

Her fiance can't make it in time.

I'm already crying, and then... the next thing you see after her death is McDreamy, not thinking about himself for once, talking to the fiance and he says "she wanted to tell you- if love was enough, she would still be here with you."

I lost it. Because, well. Yeah. If love was enough, but there are times it's not, and I'd been through one of those times recently.

Grey's hasn't gotten a reaction that emotional from me since. Even my disgust now is apathetic in comparison.

Okay, so, The Body is getting a crap ton of votes--but what about the episode at the end of Season 1 of Buffy? I forget the name of it, but Buffy finds out (through eavesdropping on Giles and Angel) that it's prophesied that she's going to die at the Master's hands and she loses it? She's all, I don't want to die, I'm only sixteen, okay fine I quit--and rips off the cross that Angel gave her and storms out? I lose my shit every time.

I've never cared for SMG. I think she was great as Buffy, but she's always been a bit snobby to me. However, that episode, as campy as Season 1 was-- gets me every time.

Also--Doyle dying on Angel. I have a weakness for the Irish. 'Cept David Bore-howveryouspellit's faux accent--that just hurt me.

1. Much as I rail on Claire Danes, the scene from "My So-Called Life" where she gets dragged into the rehearsal for "Our Town" opposite Rayanne is a KILLER. When she asks "Were you happy?" and her voice cracks? Rivulets down my face.

2. There are a few misty moments from "Sex and the City": the scene where Samantha catches Miranda's eye at her mother's funeral service and mouths "I'm sorry" and starts crying, the scene in the same episode when Carrie takes Miranda's arm as she walks, sobbing, down the aisle, and the scene where Miranda's nanny says "You love" to Miranda after Miranda tracks Steve's mother, who has dementia, down in the streets of Brooklyn. SO FRIGGING SAD.

3. When Bette Midler sang "One for my Baby" on the Johnny Carson finale and he got all misty.

4. 1972 Olympics: when Jim McKay on ABC Sports breaks it to watchers that the Israeli athletes were dead and he says "Our worst fears were realized tonight. They're all gone."

NADINE!

Green Wing = Genius.

Already commented, but something else from Oz, I'm now onto Season 4, episode 4. Beecher getting the child's hand, and the scene where he's just wailing in the dark? God. This show is wrecking me and I'm only halfway through.

Does "Band of Brothers" count as tv? It was a beautifully done 10 part miniseries on HBO a few years ago about the men of Easy Company, 101 Airborne during WWII. If so, my final entry is for the episode "Why we fight", Episode 8. In this part of the series, the men of Easy Company are rolling through the German countryside and come upon an abandoned concentration camp. Thinking that there are no people still housed there, the men go to check it out. They find hundreds of prisoners in varying states of illness. The prisioners tell the men about how the German soliders started killing people, but eventually gave up and left them to die. The men of Easy find inexplicable horror and awful atrocities. To help bury the dead, the commanders of Easy round up citizens of the nearby town, who say that they did not know about the camp, to help bury the dead prisioners.
The whole damned series has many moments that get me on a crying jag, but none as bad as this one. I cry for about 45 out of 60 minutes. It is even more heartbreaking when you know that this is the true story of the experiences of the real men of Easy Company, who appear at the beginning and at the end of each episode, talking about things that happened at that particular battle or moment in the war. Hearing grandfathers talk about the horrors of that camp and the things that they saw there is just, well I have no words. If you have not seen Band of Brothers and like war things, go rent it immediately. The best series, show, or orignal anything that HBO has ever, ever done.

I completely agree with SFU, MASH, Brian's song, Hill Street Blues, and Band of Brothers. I would add another excellent mini-series--Lonesome Dove and a very old episode of the Andy Griffith Show when Opie kills a mamma bird with his slingshot and has to care for the baby birds. For such a corny show, it was very poignant.

"My name is Saul Tigh. I'm an officer in the Colonial Fleet. Whatever else I am, whatever else it means, that's the man I want to be. And if I die today, that's the man I'll be."

He wasn't always a good man. He didn't always make the right choices. After everything he'd been through. After everything he had done (however wrong), for the sake of humanity, for the sake of the fight. Only to discover that he'd already betrayed everyone he ever loved, ever trusted simply by being what he was. But he could still make his choice. And, oh, did he make a good one this time.

The episode of "Good Times" when the Evans Family finds out that James has been killed. I was a little girl when I watched it and it tore me up! I loved that family!

Freaks and Geeks, when Neal, Bill and Sam are riding their bikes through town with the garage door opener Neal found in his dad's car. They knows it opens the garage of the woman Neal's dad is sleeping with, and they ride around clicking it at every garage in town hoping to find the one that opens. Bill and Sam say they have to go home, their parents are waiting, and Sam gives them a speech about loyalty. The last scene is of Neal, finally finding the right garage, seeing it slowly reveal his dad's car, and his two best friends aren't by his side.

So Buffy's been mentioned a zillion times, this episode has been mentioned once, but this quote:

"I think horrible is still coming. Right now, it's worse. Right now, I'm just trying to keep from dying."

Even though it was specifically a breakup, the words speak of such pain from loss and SMG really knocked that line out of the park... there haven't been many times in my life when I felt like that, where feeling horrible would be the better alternative. But when I have, it was comforting to know that someone somewhere had enough of an idea of what I was feeling to put it into words.

Also, as mentioned before, the Body... but what specifically gets me is when she goes from saying "Mom" to "Mommy." You could be a superhero in this life, and all the strength in the world can't take the terror you feel out of a moment like that one. It's a moment where we all become children and want our moms to take care of us, and just the overwhelming pain of trying to deal with the fact that she can't.

The final moments of Season 3.

Cristina Yang realises her husband who has left her at the altar is finally gone. Her words are heartbreaking:

"I'm free. Damnit."

It's a credit to the acting of Sandra Oh that she makes the moment so rife with emotion and ambiguity. Does she want to be free from him? Is this a weight taken off her shoulders? Or has she just gotten her heart utterly and completely shattered. It's shocking to watch as she begins to wail and rip her wedding dress off of her, with the help of her friend as she just has a meltdown.

It's mesmerizing. And more importantly, heartbreaking.

aww shit, I can't read any more of these comments - they're making me cry! And I'm at work, so that's not such a good idea.
All this just shows how many, many amazingly emotional moments tv has given us over the years.
I'm going to drop off some of my examples and run away before I overflow again....

The Body. It utterly devastated me when I first saw it. And since I lost my Dad, I can't watch it at all.

Buffy's season five death. I was ok until Spike broke down!

Mrs Landingham's death in the West Wing. You bastard, God!

Colonel Blake's death in MASH.

The ep of Scrubs when Ben dies. And the one where Cox loses all those patients.

Greys Anatomy - George helping to deliver Bailey's baby while her husband is seriously injured. Also the train crash ep, and Denny's death.

The SFU finale.

The Blackadder finale.

ER - too many to recall, in the early seasons. (But for some reason, Mark Greene's death didn't do it for me).

Doctor Who - the Doctor & Rose, parted for ever! *sob* even Billie Piper's excessive mascara couldn't ruin that one for me. Also, 'Father's Day', and the end of 'The Girl in the Fireplace'.

Supernatural - Sam has to kill the werewolf girl (what? Ackles & JPad sold it, IMO). And basically all the big moments in season 2, same reason.

That ep of Cold Case about the young transexual. CC is all about redemption and stuff, they do go for the tear ducts. But this is the only one which ever got to me, for some reason.

Why yes, I am easily reduced to a puddle!

Damn, the ducts are off again - leaving now....

"My Screwup" is probably the most gut-wrenching thing I've seen on network TV since Henry Blake's chopper went down. John C. McGinley is simply amazing, especially the closeup of his face at the end of the episode. I usually have to look away to avoid shedding my own tears.

But for my money, and I agree with Melody, "Why We Fight" from Band of Brothers is, by far, the most heartbreaking television moment for me.

Mine is the X-files episode "unrube" when Scully gets kidnapped AGAIN and Mulder saves her. She tries to be all tough but then he lifts up her chin and she starts to cry and they hug. It's touchy and it kinda gets me horny. Mulder and Scully sex would be so hot and you know it!

Jen - the head-shaving in solidarity killed me, too. I loved it.

I have to third, fourth, fifth whatever it is the SFU finale, particularly that final montage. I sobbed so hard I could barely see the screen, sobbed when I went to bed, woke up my husband and told him about it and made him hold me while I sobbed some more, then wrote a blog post about it the next day and cried at work, something I desperately hate to do. It was the hardest I've ever cried in my entire life, no joke. I was crying for those people on TV who'd come to seem like family but also because I would die one day and so would everyone I loved. Devastating.

I saved it on Tivo and when I watched it again a couple months later, sobbed again almost as hard.

1. The scene in China Beach (I think it's one of the flashbacks from the final season) where McMurphy and Richard - the Scully and Mulder of the Vietnam war - having finally acknowledged their long-simmering mutual lust and gotten engaged, ultimately decide to go their separate ways when their tour is up.

2. And speaking of the X-Files ('cause Colleen McMurphy is clearly the Dana Scully prototype)... Scully's wrenching howl, "This is not happening!" from the ep of the same name, in which Mulder's tortured, lifeless body is returned but the alien healer is gone, still rings in my ears.

3. In the Six Feet Under episode after Nate dies, Frances Conroy delivers the most exquisitely naunced and heartbreaking portrayal of grief I can recall in any medium.

Ok, I was really young when this show aired. (10 years old, I think) But I cried the first time I saw the episode of Family Ties titled "The Real Thing" in which Alex professes his love to Ellen and they play "At This Moment" by Billy Vera and the Beaters. I find it more touching considering the current physical condition of Michael J. Fox, which breaks my heart. I get teary eyed every time I hear that song. It is the ultimate "I just got dumped by the person I love because he/she loves someone else more and I want to wallow in my own self pity by listening to it over and over again while crying my eyes out and eating cookie dough ice cream directly out of the tub with a large wooden spoon" song. (This is the stage of break-up recover that precedes the sharpening of butcher knives while listening to "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morrisette) Don't worry. I am in therapy.

I am terrible - cry at everything, but two of the more upseting tv moments for me were:
1. Buffy - Once more with feeling - The look on the scooby gangs faces as Buffy tells them that she was in heaven before they bought her back.
2. Joan of Arcadia - Not sure of the eps name, but Joan has just visited her friend who was hospitalised after alcohol poisoning and when God appears to her (as a kind old lady) she falls apart sobbing that she doesnt want to make any more mistakes, that she's sorry and she'll be better.

Maybe I misinterpreted the task, but my mind did not immediately start searching for a favorite show's saddest storyline; rather, it automatically went to:

1. That Season 1 Gilmore Girls episode I accidentally recorded with no sound. I had to make up what was happening based solely on gesture and snappy outfits!

and

2. Countless episodes of My So-Called Life or Buffy or Veronica Mars where the tape had less than an hour on it and stopped, or there was a freak power outage.

What I'm saying is, my own ineptitude, a lack of TiVo funds, and having favorite t.v. shows in a time before internet episodes were available have broken my heart over and over again. Sigh.

The TV moment that had me crying like a lost child was the episode "Goodbye" of 8 simple rules i.e. the episode dealing with the sudden death of Papa Hennessey, Paul following John Ritter's untimely death.

The individual reactions of all the characters to the tragedy of losing their Father/Husband had me in tears over and over again.

It has to be the Arrested Development S.O.B.s (Save Our Bluths) episode. To see the cast of a brilliantly funny show openly fighting tooth and nail to save it from cancellation, and yet still manage to keep the show hilarious. This was such a heartbreaking moment, on so many levels, and also one of the most honest moments that I have ever seen on television. How could you not shed a tear, watching a worthy friend succumb in a ratings war with the likes of the O.C.?

While, clearly, the episode with Radar announcing the death of Henry Blake is clearly the most heartbreaking moment in television (it is a generally funny episode, heartfelt, et cetera. You feel that happy kind of melancholy feeling and then BAM, they get you. They get you so good), the one that most affects me is the last episode of Northern Exposure when they play Iris Dement's "Our Town" over the shots of Sicily... I still start to tear up when I hear that damn song.

Oh man, I have been crying reading these. I have so many to add but don't think I can take it. I definitely agree with everyone who listed episodes of Buffy and Angel and Firefly, Futurama, etc.
One I thought of was in Buffy, when Dawn wants desperately to bring Joyce back from the dead, and Buffy races to stop her from casting the spell but at the last moment also desperately wants to see her mother again.
And yes the one where Buffy's classmates give her the beautiful parasol, with *Class Protector* written on it, I sob.
And when she herself dies. I had no idea that the show was coming back, and I thought that it had to be over and that that was the finale, and I was devastated!

not a moment really, but anyhow, the day I thought that saved by the bell was gonna be replaced by the power rangers (I grew up in italy) I start bolling like the love of my life just died. My parents still make fun og me, I was 12 but I think I still deserve it.

This website is like crack, but I have to stop reading and get to work. I just keep thinking, in the words of my mother-in-law, "My people, my people." I feel for those M.A.S.H. lovers; I bawled uncontrollably for most of the last episode of SFU even though I had come to believe that most of the characters were deeply despicable (and I think I was most moved by Claire being reunited with the one decent guy who just loved her); and I am officially banned from watching all shows and episodes of shows in which some animal may suffer. Today, I am just so grateful for (excuse the parlance) so much exquisite sharing.

I just keep thinking it is going to be so hard to make the judgments about this because inevitably you end up judging people's psychic hot spots. (I know the good men and women at Pajiba will come up with a better solution, but as I've been reading I feel that I haven't.) Despite this, I want to jump in and throw mine on the table for display with the others.

Just recently, the season finale of Heroes. (I apologize if it's already been mentioned.) I cried here for the same reason I left the theatre after seeing Independence Day sobbing uncontrollably (if you can believe that). The scene:

Peter Petrelli is losing control of his body and it is absolutely confirmed that he is going to be responsible for the destruction of New York and changing the face of the world. Because he is out of control, he can do nothing the mitigate the damage he is about to do. Suddenly his brother, Nathan, shows up. He can mitigate the damage. He can save him, and New York. The only cost his life (this is what I believed at the time). So Nathan is redeemed in the act of saving his brother and New York and sacrificing his own life to do so. The dialogue is pretty boilerplate, as I recall. I believe "I love you"s are exchanged. What gets me -- even when I'm just thinking about it, no matter where it occurs whether it occurs in idiotic action movies, episodes of Oprah or as in this case overly hyped Milo Ventimiglia vehicles -- is this: this outrageously courageous act of love. What this moment was about, for me, is Nathan finally taking Peter in his arms (metaphorically as well as literally) and giving an unqualified I love you and I take on all that comes with that, including supporting your stupid dreams of being a hero and your not so stupid dream of not being the cause the deaths of millions of people. I love you so much that I will sacrifice myself in defense of those dreams.

Any time I can find this moment I break down. So when Randy Quaid's character from Independence Day -- a broken alcoholic who is failing his children -- uses his plane to blow up one alien ship, I see him doing it as one last tribute to his children as if to say, "I don't have much, but what I have is yours," and I have to weep.

These moments put my to-cool-for-school cynicism in its place and fill me with hope. They make me feel human -- small but not alone.

It might be a bit late in the day, but I feel that Cupid (an earlier Rob Thomas effort) deserves a mention too.

For those who missed it (nearly everyone I suspect, as it got cancelled after 15 episodes) Jeremy Piven plays Trevor, who may be a mental patient or may be the Greek god of love. Either way, he's trying to match up 100 couples, so he can get back to Olympus.

All 15 stories were great, but the episode entitled 'Heart of the Matter' has a third act that will completely knock the wind out of your sails.

Don't believe me? Head over to you tube and search for a user called ZiggyBecket.

Once you've enjoyed it on there, go on over to the SonyPictures TVonDVD site and vote for it in their poll, so more of Rob's work can get the DVD release it deserves.

As for the suggestions above mine - what a great list!

Because pity is in the requirements, I might have this one!




I forget which season but in Highlander when Tessa dies and all the moments of her with Duncan are flashing on the screen with Queen's "who wants to live forever" playing. Balled like a baby....granted I was 12 but still remember it 13 years later!

This is late, but my most recent heartbreak was the S1 Doctor Who episode "The Parting of the Ways". I didn't see this first series in its original run, but I fell for CE's Doctor earlier this year when my public television station started airing Season One. I knew that Eccleston had only done the one season, but somewhere between episodes three and four I just sort of forgot about it. My first Doctor had been Tom Baker, and I never imagined anyone could take his place. By "Father's Day", though, Nine had completely stolen my heart and I was absolutely invested in him. So when the final minutes of "The Parting of the Ways" were ticking by, I was overwhelmed by a sense of loss and grief. It wasn't just that Rose was losing her Doctor -- I was losing mine. I would never see Christopher Eccleston's Doctor go on any new adventures, never again see that open hand stretched out toward me, inviting me to come along with him. He was Rose's Doctor, but Nine had been my beloved companion one night a week for three months...and now he was going away. I cried for twenty minutes, sobbing brokenly like a child whose puppy had run away. And I still cry each time I watch that last episode, the wound of loss rubbed raw again.

I second (or third or fourth or whatever) all of the mentions for Scrubs (Ben's death, especially) and the Wonder Years, as well as these:

The Scrubs episode, "My Way Home" with all of the Wizard of Oz references. When Dr. Kelso hands Turk the brain-dead patient's license and we see the organ donor sticker on the back, he says, "It looks like you had a heart all along." Does me in every time. And Ted's band sings a gorgeous version of "Over the Rainbow."

The Wonder Years episode with Kevin and Winnie's first kiss is overshadowed by her brother's death in Vietnam. So painful.

PaddyDog, you owe me an afternoon. After the "Flower's dead" post I lost it at work. At first I couldn't believe it, but Google proved you right.

My boss is never going to look at me the same way again. How do you explain tears over a meerkat.

Flower, you were a bad ass. R.I.P.

So many of these are repeated due to the dearth of comments...hope I don't do so...

I'm a diehard Gilmore fan. I loved Veronica. The Simpson and Futurama references speak to me too (altho I refuse to see the ep about the dog--read about it on here and I'd die if I watched it).

My favorite good-bye happened on Cheers. Diane is leaving to go finish her novel in a cabin somewhere and is supposed to be back in six months. Sam Malone looks at her and says, "Have a good life." She says something like oh, don't be silly, I'll see you in six months." Then they pan to her legs treading up the stairs and Sam half-whispers, "Have a good life."

Saw that as a kid and it still wrecks me. Most poignant good-bye I've seen.

The last montage on the last episode of Six Feet Under. I haven't bawled so hard at moving images on a screen since my first traumatic cinema experience - the death of Bambi's mom.

Okay, I know that while I am a fan, there are a million more intense fans out there who may beat me to the punch, but there are tons of heartbreaking scenes in Firefly. Shall we mention watching Mal lose his faith in God in the pilot? Shall we mention his devotion to and love of his crew that we see in Out of Gas? Inara breaking down in Heart of Gold when she sees that Mal has slept with Nandi? The music that plays when Mal and Zoe return Private Tracey to his family in The Message? There are tons...
However, there is one small moment that I didn't even catch the first time I watched the series through because to feel the heartbreak of it, one must love the characters and understand their interactions. It come in the pilot episode, when Kayli has been shot and Simon has forced the crew to run from the Alliance in exchange for him saving Kayli's life. We see him performing surgery, and then the shot cuts to the hallway where we see that Jane is crouching at the window, hidden from the crew, worrying over Kayli's fate.
That moment for me exemplifies the beautiful way that the gray areas of life were drawn on the show. Jane is not a good person, we know that almost from the go. But he has become a part of the crew, the family, that Mal cares so much about, and he loves them in his own way. Knowing him from watching the whole series and then seeing his care for Kayli is touching and simple and sad. He, like all the characters and situations, resides in a state of moral fluidity due to the precarious frontier nature of their lives on Serenity, and it makes me love him (and the whole series) all the more for its honesty.

well, looks like this thread just keeps on keepin' on.... (Martina - all those Firefly moments? Seconded! I love that show to bits.)

So here's another one of mine:
The West Wing - Toby's twins. 'Babies come with hats!'
I loved Richard Schiff's performance in that one. He absolutely nailed it, and it reduced me to a tearful puddle.

"Dear Matthew, I am dead. No matter what I may have told you about my secret plan, do not get on an airplane and fly around the world searching for me. Also, be assured that this is not just a further ruse to throw everyone off the track of my secret plan. P.S. The crow flies at midnight."

I still remember the day my mom called me and dropped news of Phil Hartman's death casually into the conversation.

"So now your brother's grounded. I don't know what we're going to do with him. Honestly. Oh, honey. I almost forgot. That actor you liked died. Philip something?"
"Philip? I don't know any actor named Philip."
"The one from Saturday Night Live."
"Mom. There is no actor on Saturday Night Live named Philip."
"It was something crazy. His wife shot him. You know the one. He was on that other show. That one about the radio-"
"PHIL HARTMAN?!?"
"...station."

Anyway, I thought they handled his death well on Newsradio. It was the perfect blend of sad and funny and I kept tearing up when they were reading the letters. They were hilarious, but nobody was laughing and I just thought "Under different circumstances, I would say this is their best episode." And then I cried some more.

My god, I'm tearing up at work just reading all of these.

The weepiest moment in recent history was at the end of Doctor Who's "The Girl in the Fireplace." It was so sad to think that she spent her entire life waiting for the Doctor to return to her, and to him, it all happened in the blink of an eye. I got so mad at the Doctor in that episode - he already knew that time ticked along at a different pace when he stepped through the fireplace! He should have known that years would pass by in just a few of his minutes. Jerk Doctor.

And for all you old Who fans out there, the death of Adric in "Earthshock." So sad that Tegan couldn't have died instead.

Gotta be for me the xmas special of the christmas office. The whole sequence where Tim and Dawn get together really moves me. Something about the xmas setting really does it and the end where David Brent makes the whole office laugh with a frank spencer impression really makes you wonder about how much the documentary nature of it affected ur view of the characters. Whether David wasnt as much as a dick as you thought. Most of mine have also been mentioned already but I havent heard anyone mention Life on Mars yet. Maybe it hasnt aired yet in America but I was really really shook up by the final episode. Where he goes back to his own time and jumps off the building of his work to get back to the 1970s where he really wants to be. Any episode where the lead character can commit suicide (or was it?) to the sound of David Bowie and you are actually happy for him is impressive.

The final moments of The Office Christmas Special (the BBC version of The Office), when Dawn is riding in the taxi with her loutish husband after leaving the office christmas party in Slough, and she opens her secret Santa gift and it is obviously from Tim, the man she truly loves and who truly loves her. The gift is a box of oil paints and is accompanied by a note that says simply, "never give up". You would have to watch both seasons of the show and the christmas special to know why this scene is like a sledgehammer to the chest. It is played so concisely and starkly, no swelling music or bitter tears, just a scrawled note..."never give up". Holy shit...it's genius.