Sad Television Moments

I was watching old episodes of Squidbillies and I watched one of my favorite episodes of the show, appropriately titled 'The Good One'.

The thing is, the reason I like it so much is because it is extremely funny from start to finish, and it ends with a surprising heartfelt monologue mixed with some sad music that genuinely affected me the moment I saw it. It sounds weird, but I'd rate the feels I got from this ending above a lot of other sad moments from tv shows, but not above Jurassic Bark.

I guess what makes this episode so depressing is that Early finally got what he always wanted, a family that loved and understood him in a way that he wanted to be loved and understood (for context, the kid ran away and left him for dead) not in the way that others thought they understood him or loved him in the way that he wanted. It reminds me of the John Bear quote "Native American is a label forced upon us by the white man," in response to a PC person wondering what to say to avoid offending him. Early never wanted his son to say that he loved him, he wanted his son to leave him, go out into the world without him and live the life he wanted. It really makes his earlier line about his son's 'training' being complete make a lot more sense and elevating it above a simple throwaway joke.

Anyways, here's the ending. Are there any shows that have made you feel at least a bit sad?

 

The final scene in Star Trek: The Next Generation is both happy and sad at the same time.

Spoiler

"... and the sky's the limit."

 

in before Fry's dog from Futurama

 

Too late, already mentioned it in the OP.

 

I forgot Jurassic Bark was the name of the episode.

 

"Colonel Blake's plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors."

 

I was pretty bummed when Joel left MST3K.

 

An episode of the Simpsons that I didn’t care about as a kid until I re-watched this episode as an adult and almost cried at their cynical and true social commentary.

 

That episode of Full House where Uncle Jessie's grandpa came to visit and died hit me in the feels when I was little.

 

Anyone remember the series finale of Dinosaurs? I forgot about that one, but looking back it was depressing as hell.

 

90s family shows were ruthless.

 

There's a rumor I heard that the original premise of Rugrats was that Tommy's mom had a miscarriage, which resulted in her being incredibly depressed. The idea was that the babies would get into trouble and have adventures when the parents let her babysit them because she was too depressed to properly watch them. So, the babies would have an adventure in the backyard or something and in the background we'd occasionally get a glimpse of Tommy's mom in the background sobbing. The premise was rejected for being too depressing, but when the show became successful they revisited it in the movie (the baby's name would have been Dill).

I don't know if that's true (apparently, the guy who wrote the original pilot went on to write for The Simpsons first season, and that was pretty depressing), but Rugrats certainly had some dark moments without that premise.

 

Mmmm, mmmm. That's some delicious copypasta.

Good God, this one may be the tops. I think many of us have had someone in our lives that we felt abandoned us, and swore that we were going to be the kind of people that would be better than them and not walk out. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm powerleveling a little too much for a Club thread.