Which TV character's death moved you the most?

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Laura Palmer

 

[Locutus of Bored]

In the middle of a silly season of a silly show, True Blood managed to deliver one of the most powerful and moving death scenes I've ever watched with the death of Godric, and it wasn't even of a significant character on the show.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i2pLSQ3czg[/yt]

 

[Melakon]

Bill McNeal on NewsRadio.

 

[auntiehill]

The first one that springs to mind is Henry Blake on MASH. I was just a kid and it really took me by surprise. My mom, who was also in tears, used it as a good teaching moment: in wartime, no one is truly safe.

As I've gotten older, other character deaths moved me: Bobby Singer on Supernatural, Daniel Jackson on SG1 (OK, only the first time; he died and came back a ridiculous number of times), Locke and Jin & Sun on LOST, the fairly realistic death of Sybil on Downton Abbey, etc.

 

[sidious618]

Jack Shepherd on Lost, although it was amplified by so much else and the fact that it was the finale that perhaps it's not fair of me to list him. Nevertheless, I was sobbing.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Claire Kincaid on Law & Order.

Of course, Spock was a TV character. He just didn't die on TV. Plus, he's not really dead, as long as we remember him.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Most of the deaths on Lost (Charlie, Jin and Sun, Locke, etc.)

Henry Blake on MASH, which works because even the actors were surprised, and thus the scene is amazingly authentic.

Downtown Abbey's deaths so effected my wife that she will no longer watch that show.

 

[Forbin]

Jennifer "Pilot" Chase on Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future.
Seriously.

Kosh on Babylon 5.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Not exactly "moving", but Alan Alda as a convicted rapist, being executed in the gas chamber in Kill Me If You Can, was very realistic and disturbing.

 

[DonIago]

Pretty much every significant death in Six Feet Under.

Is that cheating?

 

[Saga]

Claire Kincaid on Law & Order.

yes. totally unexpected.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

IIRC, the scene in the OR of Radar revealing Henry's death was actually take two. There was some technical problem that made the first take unusable, if I remember right from a documentary I saw on the show way back when.

OK, I searched before submitting. Here it is, with further correction and clarification, confirmed at snopes.com, with citations. From Laughing Matters by Larry Gelbart:

Unhappily, there was some sort of technical glitch. Either the boom mike or a light or whatever could go wrong did, and we had to shoot it again. I was heartsick. Gary would never be able to do a second take as beautiful as he did the first. I still knew nothing about directing. He was better.

 

[Melakon]

Gary was such a pro, he made playing Radar look easy.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

In 24, the death of David Palmer happened right at the beginning of the floodgates opening when you still felt that there existed characters other than Jack Bauer who were in the protection bubble. Unfortunately later in the series they made characters so expendable they lost all impact, but at that point, it still had an impact.

For Six Feet Under I'd vote for Nate's wife for the most moving death, just in the way the episode unfolded where she just disappeared and it gradually becomes harder and harder to deny she's dead.

Battlestar Galactica has a few (Though a few of them later reversed). Ellen Tigh, Starbuck, Laura Roslin.

 

[Agent Richard07]

Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits) of NYPD BLUE.

As soon as I saw the thread title, this is who came to mind.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

In the middle of a silly season of a silly show, True Blood managed to deliver one of the most powerful and moving death scenes I've ever watched with the death of Godric, and it wasn't even of a significant character on the show.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i2pLSQ3czg[/yt]

When that episode aired, my girlfriend (who is generally NOT a cryer) weep for about an hour afterward. When he cameoed later that season (or another season, I forget which), she gasped his name as her eyes welled up in preparation to be moved again to tears. For this scene and character to affect her so much, they had to be beautifully shot, written, and performed (which I agree that they were).

As for the character death that moved me the most, I'd probably have to say Lt. Dan Muldoon in the first season of the Naked City. I loved that character and he dies before the opening title shot in the episode "Bumper." Later in that same episode, his replacement (a super-unlikable A-hole) is paging through his day planner and comes to a memo written for some day in the future that says: "Jimmy's birthday. Needs new gloves." Jimmy Halloran was his young partner and this small notation spoke so much about Muldoon's character that I was moved to tears. Kind of a silly thing to cry over -- a tiny consideration for someone else scrawled into a book -- but the actor John McIntyre played Muldoon with such charm and compassion that losing that character from the show was devastating.

 

[RevdKathy]

It was in a film, though the character began on TV: Spock's death reduced me to a sobbing wreck in the cinema. It still makes me choke up even now when I know there's 4 more films.

 

[doubleohfive]

Spoiler: My choices.

Everyone in the final episode of Six Feed Under

Ten's regeneration on Doctor Who

Cordelia Chase, on Angel

Juliet, Sun and Jin, and Jack's deaths on LOST

Crixus and Spartacus on Spartacus: War of the Damned

Catelyn Stark, Rob Stark and his fiancee at the Red Wedding on Game of Thrones

J.R. Ewing, on Dallas

Richard Harrow, Boardwalk Empire

Opie on Sons of Anarchy

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Admiral Forrest from Star Trek: Enterprise, since he reminded me so much of my dad and thus watching Forrest die was almost too much to handle.

Side note: Vaughn Armstrong was on an episode of Law & Order: LA and played a very Forrest-like character. Died there, too.