< Live Action TV < Tear Jerker

Live Action TV/Tear Jerker/A-C

12 Dias que estremecieron a Chile

  • 90% of times, the Chilean TV series "12 días que estremecieron a Chile" ("12 days that shocked Chile to the core") was a huge, giant tear: not only the terrible things that are told happened in real life, but the mixture of fiction and real life montages was incredibly effective. The crowner was the episode touching the horrifying incident known as "caso degollados" aka "case of the slit throats", specially two scenes: the one one of the victims's day, a famous stage actor, is told that the corpses have been found in the middle of one of his and his troupe's theater sessions; he and his fellow artists (including the original troupe members playing as themselves) decide to not stop the show, specially to say "fuck you" to the dictatorship that robbed them of their friends/relatives and the one where the same dead man's wife suffers an Heroic BSOD and starts claiming for justice and the fall of the dictatorship. The latter is made worse/better due to the mix of the fictional scene with real footage of the moment when it happened.

24

  • The season 1 finale, when Jack Bauer finds his dead wife Teri tied to a chair.
  • The mid-to-late season 2 episode when Jack is going to fly the nuke into the desert to save L.A., only to find an already-dying Mason hiding in the back. Buckets of tears.
    • Or when Mason brings his son to a blown away CTU so he can have one last moment of reconciliation before his death sets in. The son was in the middle of a heated rant when Mason just grabs him and hugs him. Wow
  • However bad season 6 was, the last few minutes where Jack realizes the only way he can keep Audrey safe is by leaving her were really painful.
  • One of the most heart-breaking moments in 24 was the death of David Palmer. For many fans, he was as much the star of the show as Jack Bauer. Many people haven't felt the same about the show after his death.
  • Larry Moss's death
  • Edgar, who died when CTU got nerve gassed. He walked over to the protective barrier, looked in at everybody else, and mouthed something before collapsing.
  • Jack breaking down in the Season 1 finale (after being told about Kim's 'death') and at the end of Season 3.
  • The deaths of Ryan Chappelle (Alas, Poor Scrappy), Michelle Dessler and Curtis Manning.
  • Renee Walker's death. Full stop.
  • Jack and the squad realizing that they were too late to save President Omar Hassan who went out like a hero.
  • Might be a case of Draco in Leather Pants, but Marcos the suicide bomber's death was so sad. He managed to surrender (and probably wanted to hug his mommy as well), but he blew up anyway because Samir told his men to turn on the suicide vest's failsafe. He finally told Jack to tell his mother that he is sorry.
  • Bill Buchanan's Heroic Sacrifice and a distraught Jack sitting right next to his dead body. Almost made up for all of season 7's problems.


4400

  • There are a lot of scenes, especially in the pilot, since most of the Returnees have gone for extended periods of time, when they try to find their families, and everything inevitably changed: as an example when Lily goes to see her husband and daughter, and finds out he has remarried.
    • Lily dying in the season 3 premiere. Especially because Isabelle, understanding that her ultrarapid aging is the cause tries to kill herself to save her mother. It doesn't work.
      • Shawn having to kill his brother Danny at his own request.
      • The funeral scene in what turned out to be the final episode was overall very effective tearjerker-wise, in spite of the fact that the characters who died, Shawn's brother Danny and his mom Susan, were never important.


Adam

  • Adam, the 1983 made for TV movie about the kidnapping and death of Adam Walsh. The scene where Jon Walsh learns of his son's death and starts tearing up a room while cursing the world is arguably the most gutwrenching scene in television history.


The Adventures of Pete and Pete


ALF

  • ALF managed a few surprisingly effective dramatic moments over its run.
    • The episode where ALF finds out that Willie was a train hopper in his youth, and ropes him into hopping another one. Alone in the car, they end up discussing ALF's lonely existence as possibly the last of his kind. They both make a wish on a shooting star, and afterwards ALF says "I wished I had my planet back."
    • When a woman who claims to have an alien in her house turns out to be a scam artist. Willie tries to comfort the devastated ALF by saying lots of people feel like they're all alone at some point, and ALF replies "Feeling alone and being alone are two very different things."
    • Alf's Special Christmas. Dear God, Alf's Special Christmas. After destroying the Tanner's best laid Christmas plans (par for the course for Alf), he befriends Tiffany (who is an eight year old in the hospital with a terminal illness who "won't live to see another Christmas"), delivers a child (and talks the mother into naming her newborn daughter after Tiffany), and stops the hospital Santa from committing suicide. To top it all off, Tiffany is based on (and named after) an actual child who died that year and the episode is dedicated to her. For an Alf story, it is surprisingly dark.


Alias

  • Jack Bristow's Taking You with Me moment in the finale of Alias made even people who had disliked the character cry. The fact that they then pull a Guy Junior in the Distant Finale was just another twist of the knife.
    • Jack's pretty good at making people tear up. Go back to season one, and the scene where he shows up at Sydney's house on Thanksgiving and gives her the file clearing him of spying for the KGB (the irony being that it's Sydney's mother who was the KGB agent). He's practically tearing up himself as he confesses he might not have been the best father, but he would never want her to believe he would put her or his family in danger.


All My Children

  • When Robin Scorpio reunited with her mother Anna Devane (both from sister soap General Hospital), after thinking Anna had been killed when Robin was a child, only to have to seperate again because of the people trying to kill Anna.
  • The tributes to the late Eileen Herlie and James Mitchell were certainly heartbreakers, particularly Eileen's knowing that Thorston Kaye (Zach Slater) wrote a poem in her honor.

Zach: Now who will lead our Carnival
And who will make us stronger
Who will mend our broken sleep
When she is here no longer

For whose part do we stand and bow
What stories do we tell
And will we memorize the day
When great and greatness fell

Say will this valley overcome
And will these shadows fade
And will we lift our eyes to see
The beauty that she made

The disappearing last of her
That leads to worlds unknown
Has left a path to softly tread
When sadness wanders home

I’ll meet thee where the highland winds
Divide wild mountain thyme
Where I will be forever yours…and you forever mine.


The American Music Awards

  • As if "Isn't She Lovely"--a song where a blind man rhapsodizes about his newborn daughter's beauty--weren't enough of a tearjerker, it went to a whole new level at these awards when they did a tribute to Stevie Wonder. The segment ended with an ensemble singing "Isn't He Lovely" and the camera turned to Stevie in the audience. If you didn't know already, blind people can cry.


Animal Cops

  • Animal rescue shows can be heartbreaking when it comes to animals having to be put to sleep or seeing really bad neglect or cruelty.
    • Wildlife SOS, when CT the Badger was put down. Gracie Lizzie cried, not so much for CT herself but from watching her being cradled in her last moments by a heartbroken Simon Cowell (no not, that, Simon Cowell - this Simon Cowell).
    • Oh, God. One particular episode of Animal Cops. A breeder of shi tzus had been injured and more or less confined to her bed, and enlisted the help of her daughter and grandsons to care for several of the dogs, who lived outside where she couldn't get to them. They didn't, but told her they did. Watching that poor little old lady cradle the miserably neglected creatures and sob when the SPCA officers brought the dogs inside and she saw their real condition for the first time and realized her family had been lying to her for months... Almost as bad as the old lady's grief was the pitiful little noise of agony the oldest dog (who'd never recovered from a broken back and had gone blind in the kennel) kept making during the examination, and the revelation that she'd have to be put down, because there was nothing else the vets could do to spare her more pain.
      • On the opposite end of the tear spectrum, another episode featured a dog who officers found almost frozen to death in his owner's back yard. They had to pick him up, as he couldn't even move, and take him to an ASPCA vet. Cut to the next day... where he's begun to recover. Cut three months later, where he's running around in his new owner's yard and playing with her and her other dog. * Sniff*


Ashes to Ashes

  • It helps to be a shipper, but the newspaper clippings of Sam's death on Gene's office wall in the Pilot. Heartwrenching enough to begin with, but then when you realize that that was a year ago, there's no way that one made the London papers in such detail, and Gene must have carried them with him when he transferred...
  • In 1x05, Alex has gotten to a Gayngster by going through his naive young boyfriend. Along the way, she's befriended the scared, screwed-up young man with the bad luck to be gay and coming of age in 1981. By the end of the episode, she's reunited him with his parents, and apparently seen him well on his way to a happier life. Then she hugs him, and sees a dark lesion on his neck, which he dismisses as "just a rash". What we know, and Alex knows, is that it's Kaposi's sarcoma, and that he will be dead within months: one of the first victims of AIDS. And somehow she manages to keep smiling until he can't see her face...
  • In 1x08, Alex struggles to tell her mother about her own daughter, Molly -- the granddaughter Caroline will never meet. Alex knows that Caroline thinks Alex is crazy, knows that she can't say anything that will make Caroline believe her, knows that she's babbling, but she just can't stop herself from trying.
    • Alex realizing how much her mother did love her.
  • The scene in 2x07 where Chris comes walking into CID after Gene has set up the meeting as a trap for whoever The Mole is. Chris doesn't get that he's been caught, and Gene and Alex just break it to him gently, knowing he only did it to earn money for Shaz's engagement ring, and got in too deep. Ray's reaction to the betrayal and Gene telling Chris he won't accept his resignation just hit you like a shot.
  • Gene ripping Sam's obituary off his bulletin board in 3.02.
  • Ray's monologue about his father in 3.03. Which gets exponentially worse after the finale.
  • Ray and Shaz singing "Danny Boy."
  • 3x06 has the scene where Chris and Ray, undercover in Fenchurch Prison, discover that Viv is responsible for bringing a gun into the riot.

Chris: Not you, Skip. Not you.

  • In the final episode, most of it qualifies, really.
    • Special mention should go to Gene remembering how he was killed; Ray, Chris and Shaz watching the videos of their deaths; and Alex realising she can't see Molly again.
    • Shaz's childlike crying as the reality of her situation sinks in is especially heartwrenching. "I'm only twenty-six years old. I want my mum, Chris! I need to see my mum!"
    • Alex realizing that if she "moves on", Molly will grow up without her.
    • "No. No, you didn't." "Sorry, Dad." Chris trying to keep Shaz from watching her tape. The Quattro getting shot up. "You are, and always will be, the Guv." "We weren't bad, though, were we?" Oh god....
    • Alex tearfully begging Gene to let her stay. "Y-you can't do this! You can't do this on your own! You need me, Gene! I can't-I can't go in there!"
      • "I'll see you around, Bolly-kecks."

Band of Brothers

  • Every tear jerker is put Up to Eleven because it really happened.
  • You know they'll show the Nazi concentration camps sooner or later in Band of Brothers, considering the setting. Doesn't make the view less of a Tear Jerker.
    • In particular, when wisecracking tough guy Liebgott (a Jew) is translating between the prisoners and Winters, and they all suddenly realize why these people are gathered here to die. And Liegbott's corresponding mini-breakdown.
    • Winters' voiceover at the end of the last episode, telling the audience how everyone's lives turned out.
  • The aptly-titled seventh episode, "The Breaking Point," sees characters the viewers have become emotionally invested in horrifically injured, killed, or suffer nervous breakdowns, made all the worse because it all really happened. Episode Nine, "Why We Fight," borders on Nightmare Fuel with the discovery of a (brutally accurate) concentration camp, as mentioned above.
  • 'The Breaking Point' is an episode-long Tear Jerker. Skip and Penkala are killed in their foxhole. One minute they're there, and the next they're gone.
  • The end scene of 'The Breaking Point' as the dead are named and they fade away.
  • Liebgott translating the speech that ends with "You all deserve long and happy lives in peace."
  • The real Richard Winters talking about what Mike Ranney wrote in a letter he sent him: "I treasure my remark to my grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' Grandpa said, 'No...but I served in a company of heroes.'"


Battlestar Galactica Classic

Original

  • Adama's finding the picture of his wife, Ila, amongst the ruins of his home on Caprica, in the pilot episode:

Adama: I'm sorry Ila... I was never there when it mattered. Never...

    • And a little later when Apollo comes in:

Apollo: Maybe mother wasn't here.
Adama: No, she was here. She was here.

  • "That, Mr. President... was my son."
  • "You can fly with me anytime, little brother."


Galactica 1980

  • The fate of Cy, Starbuck's Robot Buddy in "The Return of Starbuck".
  • Boomer and Starbuck saying goodbye in "The Return of Starbuck."


Battlestar Galactica Reimagined

  • The first episode of the new Battlestar Galactica - "33" - has a tear jerking scene right after the opening credits when ALL of the grief-stricken, sleep-deprived Galactica pilots take a moment to touch the picture of a fellow soldier who was watching the destruction of his home world. If you listen very carefully, you can hear most of the pilots say something along the lines of "Never forget". Later on, President Laura Roslin breaks down after learning that a baby was born during the chaos of the multiple jumps through space, and updates the running survivor count accordingly.
    • The scene in "Maelstrom" where Kara "dies", her ship blows up, Saul frackin' Tigh, of all people, cries over her, and then Bill Adama breaks down in his quarters and smashes his model ship.
    • Doubly so because that was genuine anger on the part of Edward James Olmos, who plays Adama, and who had not been told that Starbuck would return. That model ship he smashed? That was an improvisation - the ship wasn't a prop, it was a museum piece being loaned to the production team...
      • Adama looking through some of his effects. He finds an old birthday card from Kara in which she confesses that she always thought of him as a father, and includes a photo of herself on which she's drawn a moustache like he used to have, asking if he sees the resemblance. A moment both hilarious, and yet shockingly sad.
    • Callie's death scene. The fact that its at the very end of an episode where she's become an emotional wreck and has just discovered her husband Galen is a Cylon and she's broken down and shattered into a million mental pieces just makes it all the worse.
      • Consider the fact that she just trusted Tory, one of the secret Cylons along with Galen and got backhanded for it. It's more than likely that she died thinking her husband was complicit in it.
    • Let's face it, Tear Jerker moments are a Once an Episode deal with Battlestar Galactica. The start of season 2 when Chief Tyrol is shocked at the loss of a life during a short mission he was leading

Callie: Talk to me you mother-frakker!
Chief: Mother-frakker?
(they both laugh and Callie breaks down)

      • The term "frak" has often been a source of Narm in the show. To be able to go from narm, to comic relief to heartbreaking in the space of a few seconds as Callie just gets overwhelmed by the shock of her situation... it makes me well up just thinking about it. It's brilliant writing.
    • Whenever Edward James Olmos sheds tears,. Especially in Resurrection Ship 1, during the "I can't see you as a blonde." conversation. When he turns around after Roslin calls after him, subtly wiping his eyes...
    • Then "Notion", at the start of season 4.5, has has Dualla's sudden, shocking suicide, and the fallout resulting from it.
      • Agreed on this one. From the beginning of the episode it looked like she was in trouble but her date with Lee had the appearance of walking her back from the brink. Made the eventual suicide, especially the matter of fact way she did it,seem much more heartbreaking.
      • And earlier in that episode, when Roslin gets out of the Raptor, looks at the anticipatory faces of the people in the bay, and she's too heartbroken to even speak.
    • Peggy! Nooooo!! Way to go, Lee, you fat moron.
  • For me, it was Gaeta's Lament from "Guess What's Coming to Dinner?" Gaeta had to have his leg amputated and so, whenever he feels pain and can't take it, he starts to sing. Here's the song (sung like an opera)

Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man
With my three wishes clutched in her hand.
The first that she be spared the pain
That comes from a dark and laughing rain.
When she finds love may it always stay true
This I beg for the second wish I made too.
But wish no more
My life you can take
To have her please just one day wake
To have her please just one day wake

    • Part of the reason that song was so damned effective was that it was performed live on the set, as part of the acting. (Apparently it had people trying not to cry on-set.) Alessandro Juliani is really singing it there, as you see him. Also, the version on the Season 4 soundtrack is *gorgeous*, presented first a cappella, then with strings and drums--it's worth a listen by itself.
  • In something usually missed by many fans of the show, in the episode The Oath Laird, the deck chief's death. Let's put this in perspective, Peter Laird was on a tiny freighter with his family when the Cylons destroyed the Twelve Colonies. He survives on the ship until they meet up with Battlestar Pegasus who then conscripts him and kills his entire family, he serves on Pegasus until its destruction at New Caprica, then becomes deck chief on Galactica. When the mutiny begins, he is beaten to death by Tom Zarek so he can escape to Colonial One, nobody even mourning or remembering him afterwards.
  • What about this Tearjerker/Nightmare Fuel: Razor Flashbacks Episode 3, when the Columbia is destroyed. The last dying screams of the crew...
  • In the series finale (Daybreak Part 2), when Bill Adama and Laura Roslin are in a Raptor flying over their new home, talking about their plans, Roslin quietly, peacefully passes away in the passenger seat right next to him, leaving Bill all alone.
      • When Adama is carrying the dying Roslin to a Raptor, and continued during Adama's farewell to his son, Lee and Kara's farewell to Roslin through the Raptor window, Starbuck's disapperance, and finally Roslin's death.
    • In the season finale, Galactica being flown into the sun, while a faint and mournful version of the original series theme tune was playing over the top..
      • The entire series finale is a Tear Jerker, especially the second part from Anders send off to Adama's "it was heavenly, it reminded me of you."
      • Anders' goodbye to Kara: "I'll see you on the other side." accompanied by this Crowning Music of Awesome reprised.
    • Even if you don't much like Baltar, the moment where he and Caprica-Six are going off to start their lives anew together on Earth, he says he saw a field he'd like to cultivate and farm. Baltar was from a farming planet and culture, which he spent most of his life trying to get away from and prove his worth as a scientist. Now, so many years later, he's going to be a farmer. His life has come full circle. He breaks down crying, not really understanding why, and Six comforts him, saying "I know."
  • How about in Exodus: Part 1, where the Adamas say goodbye in Galactica's hangar deck? Sure, the Old Man always comes through, but they don't know that. Seeing them both get choked up is too much for me.
  • Half-way through the episode Scar, Apollo says he's worried he'll forget the faces of their dead pilots. Starbuck's response is a half-humorous: "I don't even remember their names." Then at the end of the episode she proposes a toast, and lists the dead pilots, one by one. By the end she's in tears. She's not alone.
  • And, going back to 33 -- the first sight of the wall.
  • Kat's Heroic Sacrifice in "Passage", especially the scene at the end where she's made honorary CAG then Starbuck adds her photo to the wall.
  • No mention of Unfinished Business? Oh, god. Not even counting the heartbreaking Tigh flashback, this episode is emotionally crippling to any Kara/Lee shippers as well as probably anyone who's ever been in love and rejected for someone else. Let's see, first up you have the boxing tournament framing device that hints at some MAJOR Unresolved Sexual Tension between Apollo and Starbuck. Then the flashbacks start. Apollo's longing stares at Starbuck at the Founders' Day party. Their drunken hooking up. Their shouting their love on the rooftops (or, well, in the middle of the forest). And we're not even at "heartbreaking" yet - that would be Apollo waking up alone and confused, walking back to the village and discovering that Starbuck just got married that very morning. If you watch it in slow-motion, you can see the exact moment where his heart breaks. Then there's Apollo bitterly settling for Dualla, who it turns out has absolutely no illusions about being a silver medal. Meanwhile, back in the present, Apollo and Starbuck go from viciously pounding on each other to collapsing in each other's arms, tearfully admitting that they missed each other. Every single second of this episode is a Tear Jerker, doubly so on repeat viewings when you already know what happened.
  • The conversation between Baltar and Gaeta before Gaeta gets executed.
  • In "Faith", when Roslin starts chatting with a dying cancer patient, you know it's going to end tear-jerkingly. But the dream scene where the patient, Emily, runs across a meadow towards her welcoming, also-dead family... And what makes it all the worse is Roslin watching the scene, in the dream, and just knowing that when she dies too (much later), there will be no crowd waiting for her. That was rough.
  • The last conversation between Lee and Starbuck where she tells him she needs to go but doesn't know where and asks him what he plans to do. He looks away for a second and when he looks back, she's disappeared. Kara has earned her rest with Anders.

Lee: Goodbye Kara, you won't be forgotten.


Beauty and the Beast


Being Human

  • The season three finale. Very nearly all of it.
    • McNair's final letter to Tom, written before Herrick killed him. "Don't avenge me." Even sadder because he doesn't listen.
    • George's scream when he thinks Nina is dead. Words cannot describe it.
    • Lia's realization that her revenge on Mitchell will have the same effect on George as her death had on her family.
    • The build-up to George staking Mitchell. First Mitchell's attempts to convince George to do it by telling him that their entire friendship was a sham, and that George is pathetic. The fact that George knows he's lying is a Tear Jerker by itself. Then, when Mitchell doesn't have the heart to keep that up, he breaks down and begs George to do it because he knows he'll kill again. Finally George agrees. Mitchell says he's finally doing the decent thing, and Nina says this is what they'll remember him by. He tells Annie that she's the love his life. When Wyndham interrupts them, we think that this is a reprise (albeit not a particularly good one). Wyndham informs Mitchell he'll have to be an "attack dog" for the Old Ones, or else he'll "crucify" George and Nina. George picks up the stake, apparently to kill Wyndham, then turns around and rams it into Mitchell's heart.

George: I'm dong this because I love you.
Mitchell: I know.

  • Believe it or not, it gets worse in Series 4.
    • Nina was killed by the vampires shortly after giving birth, after George encouraged her to go outside.
    • George is killed in the first episode. His last words are to name the baby Eve. And then he becomes a ghost, standing behind his own dead body, in front of his door.

George: I have to be with my Nina.

      • Oh, and the reason he dies.? He forced his body to begin changing into a werewolf to save his daughter, but was unable to heal himself.
  • Kirby tricking Tom into thinking that he was going to get his very first birthday party, complete with cake. The look on Tom's face when he realises that no one even knows that it's his birthday.
    • Annie falls for Kirby... who then begins to insult her until she fades away.
    • Kirby messes up Hal's bedroom and it looks like he can almost cope with that... Then he drops Hal's photo of Leo on the floor and Hal looks completely devastated.


Birds of Prey

  • Most episodes ended on a sad, or at least melancholy note, but the end of the finale, when Alfred rings up Batman, who never otherwise takes any part in the show and says:

Master Bruce, I thought you might want to know, your daughter's doing very well. You would be most proud...most proud indeed.

He then silently agrees with something said on the other end, and hangs up.


Blackadder Goes Forth

  • Blackadder Goes Forth: After years of fighting an utterly pointless war and almost getting out of it, Blackadder, Baldrick, Lieutenant George, Captain Darling and hundreds of other men go over the top of the trenches, set to an incredibly poignant version of the theme music. They don't visibly die, but just fade away to be replaced by a modern day shot of a poppy field overdubbed with birdsong.
    • Especially poignant considering the fact that poppies are the traditional flower to remember WWI. After the fighting, especially at Flanders' Field, the earth was so stirred up by the men fighting and charging across it that poppy seeds, which had been laying dormant, bloomed all over it. This always gets to me as the final symbol, especially how something so horrible can produce something so beautiful ... which still isn't worth the price we paid for it. That a comedy show can make this point in a couple of fade-out frames is nothing short of amazing.
    • What particularly makes the ending tragic is its sharp contrast to the finales of the first and second season, in which the entire cast is killed off, and their deaths are played for laughs.
    • When Blackadder said 'good luck, everyone' in that... emotional manner. Not only he did restrain himself from making some jokes when the others told him that they were scared- he did actually say Good luck, everyone. Black-bloody-adder, for God sake, he was concerned about somebody else!
      • Extra-poignant is the fact that those were his last words.
    • Another thing that got me, in that same episode, is when Darling is sent to the front. Really, you have to see it for understand.
      • The image of Darling crying and begging on his knees when the driver comes in and casts one of the most ominous shadows ever to the sound of war drums in the background is probably the most sad-but-super-chilling moment in the whole series. They threw in that bit of laughtrack after General Melchett says "Goodbye, Kevin Darling." Ruined the mood of the scene a bit.
        • The worst part of this was that Darling knew what it meant, but General Melchett sincerely believed that it was all a jolly jape and he was doing him a favour by sending him to the front, signing his death sentence thinking he wouldn't really want to miss the "fun". Darling begs and pleads, but can't make a dent on Melchett's fantasy world.
    • When Darling said he'd never get to marry Dorris. Although because it was being viewed with a younger brother, no weeping happened...
    • 'Made a note in my diary on the way here. Simply says: "Bugger".'
      • Darling's fate was perhaps one of the hardest because, even though he wasn't a very sympathetic character through most of the series, he was so close to making it through the war, and had no idea what was going to happen to him, unlike the others whose lives mainly revolved around trying to get out of 'going over the top'.
      • Blackadder's reaction to Darling's arrival in the trench makes the whole plot thread even more poignant; here is a man whom he has mocked mercilessly throughout the entire series... and yet when he arrives in the trench, rather than sneer at him for having to leave his desk job to join the push, Blackadder goes along with the fantasy that Darling volunteered, deciding not to kick him while he's down.
    • When the guns fall silent and they think they are going to be ok.

Captain Darling: We lived through it. The Great War. 1914 to 1917.

    • These 3 words.

George: No really, this is brave! Splendid! Noble! ...Sir?
Blackadder: Yes, lieutenant?
George: I'm... scared, sir.

This was especially hard-core considering George's flamboyantly upbeat attitude and eagerness for battle for the whole show and he's the first person to admit, in a sincere non-joking way (unlike how Blackadder had been doing the whole time), that he didn't want to die. And he's smiling while he says it.
    • The first time that Lt George has ever sounded unsure of himself.

George: I mean, I'm the last of the tiddlywinking leap-froggers from the golden summer of 1914!... I don't want to die!... not overly keen on dying at all.

    • Blackadder hears out one last plan from Baldrick and, instead of insulting it, says "Well, it'll have to wait..."
      • He doesn't actually hear it out; there isn't time. But he does say that whatever it is would have been better than his plan of pretending to be mad.

Blackadder: ...After all, who'd notice another madman 'round here?

    • The Audio version of this scene, lacking the slow fade to the poppies, instead has a few lines from the episode. One each, actually.

George: We've had some good times, some damnably good laughs, eh?
Baldrick: I thought it was going to be such fun
Darling: But, eh, I don't want to go...
Blackadder: Good Luck, everyone.

  • Baldrick's rant innocently asking why they can't all just stop fighting and go home, and what would be wrong about that.

Baldrick: Why can't we just stop, sir? Why can't we just say "no more killing, let's all go home"? Why would it be stupid just to pack it in, sir? Why?


Blake's Seven

  • In one of the very shocking moments within Blakes Seven is the loss of Gan when he's crushed to death by falling debris from an explosion. It's a truly chilling moment as he dies yelling at Blake "Go! I'm not worth dying for!" before being killed. Up till this point the protagonists had spent a series almost emerging unscathed from such situations, often laughing off the after effects.
    • "Blake", one of the most tragic series finales ever seen on TV.
  • The death of a COMPUTER. Poor Zen...

"I am sorry. I... have... Failed you."

  • The Avon/Anna backstory. Avon's failed bank fraud resulted in the capture of his lover, who was subsequently tortured to death. Later he learns that the Federation only came after them because they thought he was political, and while trying to get revenge on her killers he runs into Anna herself, who's still alive because she was a Federation agent assigned to watch him. She tries to kill him and he shoots her dead. Happy endings, eh?
  • The massacre of the resistance group and later the murder of Tel Varon and his girlfriend in the very first episode. It's not that their deaths are particularly sad: it's that they don't matter. No one will notice, no-one will be outraged and, after a little Orwellian editing, no-one will remember they ever existed at all.


Bones

  • "Aliens in a Spaceship". Finding out that one of the twins killed himself to give his brother the rest of the oxygen was bad enough since they obviously didn't make it, but Zack's inability to understand why he should tell the twins' father made it 50 times worse. The concept is heartbreaking for everyone -- but for many real-life twins, it's downright TERRIFYING.
  • The end of "The Man in the Fallout Shelter", where Bones is able to tell the fiancée of a man murdered in 1959 what really happened to him, and that he'd never abandoned her.
    • Towards the end, with Bones and the present.
    • "Don't you wish someone had told you that your parents were dead--just so you can finally stop wondering?" "Yes."
  • "The Finger in the Nest," in which Brennan decides to adopt Ripley, the fighting dog at the center of the case. However, since the dog has killed a person, the judge in the case orders it put down - which she doesn't find out until after she's already purchased toys, bedding and a personalized collar tag. Brennan's expression at the news, and then her halting attempt to say something over Ripley's grave, is heart-wrenching.
  • The comparing scars scene in "Mayhem on a Cross" where Bones reveals that her foster parents locked her in a car for two days
  • "The Pain in the Heart". Everything involving Zack.
  • The Christmas episode of 2009. The scene near the end where the radio broadcaster gives his final show about how it's really his fault that the man died, because of all the hate he's spreading.

"These will be the final words I broadcast. And I hope they're the words you remember the best. Peace on Earth."

    • Yes! His words were so touching, you'd have to be inhuman to not tear up at that.
    • Bones says she finds the idea of a woman burying her son "heart breaking." Booth tells her “You are the one who always says that the heart can’t break because it’s a muscle. It has to be crushed,” she replies “Well, isn’t it heart crushing?”
  • The Boy in the Shroud. The entire episode, but especially the end when 'Bring on the Wonder' plays.
  • "The Superhero in the Alley." The ending, when Angela completes the final page of the murder victim's semi-autobiographical comic book? Yeah.
  • "The Graft in the Girl". Amy, the teen daughter of Booth's boss, has cancer, which it turns out was caused by a bone graft from a bone with cancer. After further investigation it turns out there are more people with cancer from the same donor (whose bones were illegally harvested). In the end the murder is solved and, but Amy is still going to die.
  • The 100th episode. The Parts in the Sum of the Whole. That final scene when they were SO CLOSE to getting together but Bones couldn't do it and she pushed him away.....
    • Their goodbye in the final episode of season 5 caused some tearing up as well, for sure.
  • "The Doctor in the Photo" in season six. The car scene when Brennan tells Booth about the epiphany she's had (that she "doesn't want to die with regrets" and "made a mistake" in rejecting him), and then breaks down and SOBS at his response. Their subsequent conversation and watching her slowly pull herself back together just made it worse.
  • "The Singing in the Silence" - a deaf mute runaway girl is found covered in blood. It turns out she had to kill a man who tried to kidnap her and take her back to her violently abusive parents, who it turns out in fact kidnapped her from her real parents when she was a toddler. It is an incredible Adult Fear episode for any parent, to imagine their defenceless three-year-old being taken and used so horrifically that she's unable to trust anyone, and her only happy memory is of a stuffed rabbit... sniff...
  • Vincent's death. "Please don't make me leave, I love being here..."


  • Boston Legal, when Denny's old acquaintance lost his argument to be frozen cryogenically, and is going to Arizona to die of ALS, Denny goes to say goodbye to him, and Winston says that they never were close friends, and Denny suddenly grasps his hand and hugs him . . . When a show that usualy makes you laugh goes for the tears, get out the hankies.
  • "Last Call." That is all.
  • Shirley's father is dying of Alzheimer's, and she goes to court - with Alan as her lawyer - for the right to end his suffering. This speech ensues, after which the camera pans to Denny and the entire audience starts sobbing like children.

Alan: My, uh, best friend has Alzheimer's, in the, uh, very early stages, it hasn't... He is a grand lover of life and will be for some time. I believe even when his mind starts to really go, he'll still fish, he'll laugh and love, and as it progresses he'll still want to live because there will be value for him, in a friendship, in a cigar. The truth is I don't think he will ever come to me and say, this is the day I want to die, but the day is coming and he won't know it. This is perhaps the, the most insidious thing about Alzheimer's. But, you see, he trusts me to know when that day has arrive, he trusts me to safe guard his dignity, his legacy and self respect. He trusts me to prevent his end from becoming a mindless piece of mush and I will. It will be an unbearably... * chokes up* painful thing for me, but I will do it, because I love him. I will end his suffering, because it is the only decent humane and loving thing a person can do.


Breaking Bad

  • Jesse listening to Jane's outgoing message over and over and over again, and then there's the end of season 3.

Bulgaria's Abandoned Children (Documentary)

  • Bulgaria's Abandoned Children which is not only heart breaking, but is a heartbreaking documentary. A young girl named DiDi, who can only cling to the belief that her mother is coming to pick her up from the Mogilno children's home (even though DiDi's mother abandoned her, and never wants to talk to her again). She makes the following speech to her friend, Todor:

DiDi: Todor, you are my friend, because you're very nice and you love me. If I had stayed in Pazardjik and not come here, I would have got married. I would be a good mother. I would look after my children very well. If I had children, even if they weren't my own, I would never send them to such a place. What have I done so wrong...that made Mummy send me to an institute. I didn't want to be sent here. I wanted to live in Pazardjik forever. (pause) I don't think I will become crazy like the others. I don't want to stay here any longer. I am missing my Mummy. I love you very much, Todor. You kiss me and hold my hand...

    • One of the final scenes, where a young boy, almost too crippled to walk, gives the journalist covering the story a hug, and he has to be held up as he slowly walks over to her.


Burn Notice

  • For such an awesome and well-written show, Burn Notice is surprisingly Tearjerker-free. One exception, however, is the final scene of season 3's "Fearless Leader". Michael and Fiona have been trying to have a romantic dinner by themselves to try and salvage what's left of their relationship. They finally get around to it, and Fiona's all excited about some jobs she's lined up for them, but Michael reminds her that they've got no idea who's coming after him now that "Management" has lifted his protection. He needs to get back into the spy game, no matter what, and he knows the cost is going to be their chance at a normal life. He's clear of the cops, he's relatively free of the people who burned him - this is the moment he's been waiting for. Except it's also the moment Fiona's been waiting for, and now she knows they don't want the same things for the future. And then Fiona, hardcore, badass, gun-toting, explosives-loving ex-IRA terrorist Fiona, chokes up and begins to cry.
  • In "A Dark Road", Michael is faced with the choice of forcing his mother to ruin the life of the records clerk she's befriended, or put his client and countless other innocent people at risk. He bulldozes Madeline into Blackmailing Tina, the clerk, by bringing up the fact that she's good at playing the bad guy and letting other people get hurt (since she let Michael's father get away with the abuse for so long). Madeline is devastated, and while she plays the role she needs to and gets the evidence Michael needs, she almost doesn't forgive Michael for making her do it.
  • Michael, after facing Simon asks his mother whether he could become a complete monster. She comforts him and says her boy could never go that far. That he was crying at the time...


Carnivale

  • The ending of Season 1's "Babylon" and the next episode, "Pick a Number", where Dora Mae is murdered by the Babylon miners. From drunken, heartbroken Jonesy finding her body and carrying it back to the Carnivale, to Ruthie and Lila cleaning and wrapping the body in silk and telling stories about where the silk came from, to Rita Sue keeping all her pain locked up until she goes to throw out the bloody water from cleaning her daughter's body and can't get her hands clean, and bursting into tears.
    • Even sadder was the look on Samson's face when, not quite believing his own eyes, he saw Dora Mae as the literal whore of Babylon.
  • The part where Jonesy runs to hug his wife after she was convinced he was about to die a horribly unpleasant death
    • Unexpectedly dashed later on. "Sophie... don't..."


Casanova

  • The ending of the David Tennant serial of Casanova. Despite, well, you know, being busy naming his trope, Casanova spends much of the serial trying to win Henriette, the one woman he truly loves, as told by his elderly self. The tears come in three stages:
    • Edith, the maid to whom older-Casanova has been telling his story, reading the letter sent by Henriette's daughter that says that Henriette had died 6 months ago.
    • Instead of giving him the letter, Edith sits with Casanova at his bedside while he lays dying and still believing that Henriette is alive and coming to see him. As he fades, Edith whispers to him "She never stopped looking...and she never stopped loving you...she's coming...she's coming to be with you..." and when he finally dies, "......she's here."
    • The final shot of a young Casanova and Henriette dancing through the streets of Venice, united forever in death, while a cheerful music-box tune chimes away into the closing credits.


Castle

  • Given that it deals with murder, for Castle to deal with Tear Jerkers frequently would cause it to descend quickly into Narm, but it can be effective. Season 2, episode 5 involves a baby swap. At the end of the episode, the ex-husband of the deceased meets with the (ex?)wife of the killer. They bond over the living child (his, raised by her) and the dead child (hers, raised by him).
  • After Chet proposes to Martha, she mulls it over for a day, then goes back to say no...only to find that he'd died overnight. Susan Sullivan does a great job bringing out all the emotion, and lets us feel real emotion for a character that was never on screen.
  • Near the end of the episode "Sucker Punch", when Beckett realises that that man who may have killed her mother (or at least knows why she was murdered) has been right under their noses the whole time. Then, she's forced to shoot him dead, knowing that now, she may never know why her mother died.


Charlie Daniels' Volunteer Jam

  • January 1979: The surviving members of Lynyrd Skynyrd performs for the first time since the plane crash that killed Ronnie Van Zant and Greg and Cassie Gaines (with the exception of bassist Leon Wilkeson, who was still too injured to play, but was backstage). With Daniels and his band sitting in, they played an instrumental version of their signature song, "Free Bird". The kicker: a lone spotlight, shining on an empty mic stand, where Van Zant would've been. Daniels himself later said there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

Charmed

  • Charmed is notorious for being full of Narm, the 4th-season's "Hell Hath No Fury" as fury-Piper screams at the top of her lungs "How dare you leave me?!" to Prue's grave is sad. Considering how cheap death usually is for the Halliwell sisters, this kind of permanence in the show isn't taken lightly.
    • Even the cheap deaths can be devastating when they're played well. The fact that she's alive again by the next episode doesn't make Piper's "...Prue? I'm cold..." in All Hell Breaks Loose any less soul-crushing.
  • In "Morality Bites" when Phoebe realises that she must die for her crimes and Prue and Piper have to stand back and watch her burn to death.
  • Prue's funeral at the start of season 4. The music adds to it as well, Holly Marie Combs as usual is brilliant in that scene and Darryl the Deadpan Snarker was tearing up.
  • In "A Paige From the Past" when Paige goes back in time to see her parents' deaths. That remains Rose McGowan's strongest performance of the series.
  • The sixth season finale where Chris dies and Leo just loses it does it for me. Cried the first two viewings of this episode.
  • In "Payback's A Witch," during his birthday party, Wyatt brings his action figures to life to search for the Put on a Bus Leo. Wyatt doesn't know what happened, but he feels Leo broke a promise to always be there. That is sad enough, but it turns out that Wyatt blames himself for Leo going away.


The Closer

  • An episode of The Closer has Detective Sanchez's little brother being shot and killed. As events turn out, the Sanchez's brother was killed because he was mistaken for being a gang member due to the hat he was wearing. At the end of the episode, Sanchez breaks down over his deceased brother's blood-stained hat saying that he had given his brother the hat a month earlier for his birthday. Sanchez then goes on to sob his heart out while shouting, "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" and proclaiming that his baby brother's death was all his fault.
  • Made all the worse by the fact that his full-on sobbing breakdown happens in front of Lt. Provenza, the squad's crotchety old bastard, and when Sanchez starts choking out, "I'm sorry, sir," the look on Provenza's face is enough to break your heart. He awkwardly put his arms around Sanchez, and holds him, and I'm getting overwhelmed just writing this out.
  • Provenza's got a lot of these. He's such a mean old hardass, and then he kills you. Another recent ep, he had to tell a little kid his whole family was dead, and he comes out of the interview room and tells Brenda the kid's been crying all night "and I'm not doing so well either."
  • Any interaction between Brenda and Gabriel in Ruby, after Gabriel beats the living tar out of a child murderer. Brenda's so angry at him and sympathetic at the same time, and Gabriel, her favorite, is so broken and desperate for her to tell him it's all gonna be okay.


The Colbert Report

  • In one episode, Stephen interviewed zoologist and animal advocate Alan Rabinowitz, and asked him why he chose his career path. Rabinowitz then explained that, when he was younger, he had a severe stutter that prevented him from speaking. He was only able to speak clearly to his pet turtle and chameleon, and said that since he realized that animals couldn't speak for themselves either, he became determined to speak out for them.

Colbert: ...Are you trying to make me cry?

  • Colbert's recent treatment of Salvatore Giunta; instead of making jokes or interrupting, Colbert sat down with this man and drew out the events that led to Guinta earning the Congressional Medal of Honor. Guinta wished to make the point that the armed forces are full of equally brave people who are not so honored, and Colbert obviously respected him and helped him to articulate this on air. When he stood up to personally applaud Guinta.

Colbert: How can we honor the other men and women at home who don't have (the Medal of Honor)?
Guinta: There are so many unsung heroes in this war, and there are so many people who have given every single one of their tomorrows so we can have our today. And they'll never come back to a handshake. They'll never come back and hug their family. And it's for those that I wear this.

  • When he set out to save marriage from the gays. He was describing this elaborate scenario with that sneaky smile he gets, then all of a sudden when he gets to the actual saving marriage bit, he spends the next few minutes not crying about how he's just broken Jonathon's heart and how he's the only one who can comfort him and...
  • No specific dialogue, but the episode where he mentions his father, and interviews someone who knew him, had me almost in tears just from the genuine emotion and how Colbert was unable to stay in character throughout.
  • Stephen's tribute to Steve Jobs. After a segment about the show's free plugging of Apple products over the years, and how he often had them sent to him for free as a result (including his appearance at the 2010 Grammys, reading the nominees off the first iPad owned by someone outside the company), he shared an email he received the next day from Jobs himself that said "Sweet! Thanks! Steve". Stephen sent a reply, saying "Right back at ya. Thanks for everything."


Community


Cosmos

  • In the last episode, Carl Sagan does his desperate plea to cherish life and to stop nuclear proliferation, which threatens everyone on the planet. This, for those of you keeping score, was filmed in 1980. Sagan was ardently against nuclear weapons, and was even arrested for once breaking through a fence with protesters trying to stop a weapons test. Fast forward ten years later--1990, right after The Great Politics Mess-Up--when Sagan was filming updates for the series. He talks about how "the impossible has happened" and how old enemies (namely the US and Russia), are now working together. The statement, after decades of fighting against the Cold War and nuclear proliferation, against the constant threat of death and of mutually assured destruction, he simply says "perhaps we have, after all, chosen life".

Criminal Minds

  • Adam/Amanda in Conflicted. Abused by his step-father until he developed DID. The second personality, Amanda, regards it as her job to protect him and takes over when she realises that, if he can be found competant, he'll go to jail for the crimes she committed. Reid's desperate 'Adam?' and Morgan replying 'He's gone' is heartbreaking.
  • In one of the few episodes of Criminal Minds where the unsub isn't evil, Frankie Muniz (of Malcolm in the Middle) plays a comic book artist who gets caught by a gang and forced to watch as they kill his fiancee, which causes him to have a psychotic break and run around systematically butchering the perps. The final scene has him sitting in a padded cell, calling his dead fiancee's cell phone over and over, just so he could listen to the away message. Hey, this is Vicky! I can't come to the phone right now because I'm out living my life. He thought up the away message for her.
    • There's also the episode "Distress" in which a veteran with PTSD believes himself to be in a war zone. When the cops find him he sees a young boy and, believing that there is shooting going on, he runs toward the child and is shot when his action is misconstrued. As he dies he can only ask if the boy is all right.
      • Considering that this is one of the episodes where Reid really starts to struggle with the aftermath of his own abduction in a pretty classic PTSD way, this blink-and-you'll-miss-it exchange between him and Hotch takes on a whole new light, too:

Reid: He's definitely suffering from PTSD.
Hotch: He's trapped in his own head, reliving the worst moment of his life over and over again. He must be terrified.
Reid: Y-yeah.

    • What about the episode when Reid befriends a young man struggling with his own violent fantasies. At the end the boy attempts suicide and a witness sees Reid's card and calls him. He desperately struggles to keep the boy alive, shouting for paramedics, and when he succeeds can only wonder if he's just condemned the boy's future victims.
    • Two words: "Profiler, Profiled." Oh God. The pair of scenes where Morgan -- big, cool, invulnerable, tough-guy Morgan -- finally breaks down and acknowledges that he was sexually abused as a child by this week's UnSub, and that he's been living with both the shame of that and the guilt of not having stopped him sooner for his entire adult life, with about half his team overhearing the second one, and then his visit to the grave of the unnamed first murder victim... Jesus.
      • The scene where Derek finally confronts his mentor, and after exposing him for what he is, telling him to go to hell while the man can only be dragged away begging for help from his victim. In a way it was sort of cathartic.
    • "Riding the Lightning." The scenes near the end where Gideon's forced to stand by and watch as a woman allows herself to be sent to the electrical chair for the murder of her young son, which she didn't commit... it doesn't hurt either that Mandy Patinkin is a scary genius when it comes to looking utterly crushed by despair.
    • Any time Reid is in pain or distress, which happens way too often. "Revelations" is agonizing to watch.
    • Morgan and Garcia have several excellent tearjerker moments. Most recently in "Mayhem", when we (and Garcia) think he's been killed by the bomb in the ambulance, and definitely in "Penelope" when Morgan tells Garcia he loves her.
    • "P911". The breaking point is the end, when the woman sees her kidnapped son for the first time since he was one year old. He introduces her to his action figure, named Jack, and (badly) holding back tears, she says, "Hello, Jack. My name is Jackie."
    • "Mayhem" covers up some questionable plot elements with sheer emotional trauma, especially Hotch sitting in the middle of the road screaming for help that isn't going to come. And if that doesn't shove you over the edge, there's Morgan quoting Semper Fi at the ex-Marine who's keeping people out of the area. (Yeah, he lets Morgan through.)
      • Morgan stuck in the ambulance with a bomb that's about to go off, Garcia pleading with him over the phone to get out.
    • In "Amplification", Reid, having been infected with a new and thus incurable strain of anthrax, calls Garcia to have her record a message from him so that his mother will be able to hear his voice in the event that he does not survive his ordeal. Both Garcia and Reid tear up, but are then forced to get back to work almost immediately.

Reid: "Hi mom, this is Spencer. I just, uh, really want you to know that I love you and I need you to know that I spend every day of my life proud to be your son."

    • If Hayley and Jack having to be taken into protective custody and allowed no contact with Hotch in "Nameless, Faceless" didn't invoke tears, the scene in "Reckoner" where Hotch is watching his son on the swings through a webcam on a car parked ten feet away will. When Garcia choked back tears as Hotch says "Happy birthday, buddy", to Jack on the camera.
    • The ending of "The Big Wheel" where the killer (who is incapable of controlling his severe OCD and wants to stop killing, but can't) takes his friend, a little blind boy, to a ferris wheel, the boy's greatest desire being to ride one. As he is describing the view the killer slowly dies from a gunshot wound he had sustained earlier, telling the boy that years earlier he had killed the kid's mother and that he is sorry, also telling the kid (who a few scenes ago had admitted to wishing he was dead) to never think like that again and that he's special.
    • The ending of "Damaged" when Rossi says goodbye to the Galen siblings, having finally caught the man who murdered their parents twenty years earlier.
    • "100". All of it. Especially THAT phone call, where Hotch listens to Foyet torturing his ex-wife and son, and as Foyet kills Haley. If you weren't crying then, you sure were when Hotch gets to the house, finds Haley's body, and beats Foyet to death with his own hands, then sobs over Haley's body while Morgan holds him back. The entire episode seems to delight in ripping your heart out through your chest.
    • And continuing the heartbreak, "Slave of Duty", especially the funeral, Hotch's eulogy and quoting from "Pirates of Penzance", the team having to leave the funeral to work a case, and Jack watching the home movies of himself and Haley, so he doesn't forget her.
    • The 2nd half of "Uncanny Valley," where the unsub is a childlike, severely disturbed young woman whose psychiatrist father raped her and subjected her to electroshock treatment as a child; when he took away her treasured doll collection, she started kidnapping real live replacements, dressing them up and keeping them paralyzed with drugs. When Reid comes for her, carrying her original collection and promising that no matter where she goes, no one will ever take them away again, she breaks the fuck down, and so does everyone watching.
      • "Don't leave me."
    • The end "Mosley Lane" when the parents of Steven, -who was abducted as an eight year old, seven years prior to the episode- discover that he had been alive right up until the day before the BAU cracked the case and found the missing children. Stevens parents (understandably) break down. As does the audience.
    • The end of "Normal" is gut-wrenching at least. The unsub was going nuts after his youngest daughter died after being hit by a car and was convinced everyone blamed him. The climax of the episode has him forcing his family to get into his car to run away where his motive is revealed, and he snaps and crashes his car at high speed after his wife screams at him for killing their little girl. He's caught when he gets out of the wreck and tells the police his family are still inside... and he realizes they were Dead All Along, he'd already killed them. He completely breaks down when he remembers and is arrested screaming "I'm sorry, I'm sorry".
  • Exit Wound has not only one of the woobiest Unsubs ever who kills people who leave town because of SEVERE abandonment issues and has a home life that redefines 'terrible' but some really sad scenes as Garcia staying with a severely wounded victim of said killer as he dies, and then at the end explains that she did it because when she was shot she thought the last face she was ever going to see was her murderer's, and it was such a horrible feeling nobody deserves to feel. Also, when suspect Josh is told that while he had been locked up, the serial killer struck again, which means it's not him. Unfortunately, the victim was his mother, his lone surviving relative. Kudos to Eric Ladin (Josh).
  • "Elephant's Memory". It's bad enough that the killer, a brilliant but severely learning-disabled teenage boy intent on systematically wiping out the people who've made his life a living hell, is going to hit a nerve with anyone who ever had a bad day in high school; the real kicker, though, is the scenes of him and his girlfriend -- the only reason in the world he has to stay alive -- hiding out on a neighbor's property and talking about how one day they're going to have a house just like this...
  • Depending on where the turns of events in the second half of "Open Season" leave you, the episode can be downright agonizing to watch. In particular, a tip of the hat to Gideon, thank you for that, sir.
  • Coakley realising that he was respomsible for his wife's death, resulting in him driving off the cliff. As he goes over the edge, he thinks he's holding his wife's hand again.
  • While not the most extreme of tearjerkers, the woman in the beginning of Ashes and Dust has her own depressingly optimistic moment. She has suffered burns so severe across her body that Hotch tells Prentiss that they should lie about the death of her family, because she will not survive to find out otherwise. Prentiss is barely able to keep up the lie without crying, and the woman passes her final few moments of life believing that she and her family will live Happily Ever After.
  • The soldier in "Outfoxed" coming home from the war to discover that his whole family has been murdered while he as away.


CSI

  • CSI. "Goodbye and Good Luck". 'Nuff said.
    • Also, Warrick's apparent death in "For Gedda".
      • The horrible confirmation of all the rumors in "For Warrick". When he died in Grissom's arms.
      • It wasn't even so much the confirmation that Warrick was dead. It was Grissom completely losing it while holding Warrick in his arms. Grissom spent the entire series beforehand showing two emotions: indifference, and occasional happiness. Watching him fall apart as his friend and colleague dies in his arms as well
        • And when Grissom breaks down reading the eulogy at his funeral.
      • Warrick was a father who was looking to gain custody of his son when he died. There is a video of how he considers Grissom to be a father figure when he didn't have one himself.
    • Just mentioning the episodes "Dead Doll" and "Living Doll".
    • "Grave Danger" when they found Nick. Warrick pleading with him to drop the gun and Grissom using his father's nickname for him to keep him from going hysterical again.
    • "Feeling the Heat". Namely the ending, where Catherine tells the Winstons, who killed their baby because they thought he was going to die of Tay-Sachs anyway, that the tests for the kid came back negative.
    • Miami had "Wannabe", an episode where a CSI wannabe fanboy witnesses a crime. After retrieving evidence the fanboy "borrowed" from his apartment, Speed starts making friends with him. Then he dies horribly. Evidence can't link the suspect to the fanboy's murder, but he does go down for the original. Then Speed finds out the kid was mentally disturbed, and actually killed himself.

Speed: What do I do?
Caine: You go home, get some rest, and you come back tomorrow.

    • The last 5 minutes of "One to Go" reduced her to a blubbering pile of mush.
  • The CSI:NY season 5 finale "Pay Up" when Detective Jessica Angell was shot and killed. First of all, she's on the phone with her boyfriend, Detective Don Flack, when the bad guys drive a truck into the diner she's in. His panic makes you tear up. Then, later on in the episode, we find out that she died through Flack's quiet, stressed, "She's gone..." before he breaks down. The fact that Flack was the last person many fans expected to see cry on the show makes it worse. Flack's expression through the rest of the episode, especially when he gives her police badge to her former-cop father, is heartbreaking.
    • The show hasn't been the same since, and more's the pity for that.
  • The fate of Cassie and Ashley James. Two sisters, both of them beautiful and outgoing, drawn into the modelling world. One of them ends up dead of eating disorders and self-neglect, the other crazy and homeless, wandering the streets of Vegas with her shopping cart...
  • "A Thousand Days on Earth" - a little girl is found in a box, abandoned, only to be recognized by her father, who is in prison. The whole episode is said, but seeing her father (played by the same actor who plays Det. Sanchez on The Closer), a hardened criminal, break down in tears of anguish and impotent rage when he sees her picture on the news is ... wow.
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