TV Series that are Tearjerkers!

Closest series I know is the animated series Steven Universe.

They had several episodes that are pretty emotional throughout its run, but its final season, when it renamed itself Steven Universe Future, was heavy with emotions. Throughout the final season, the title character's mental health was deteriorating due to untreated PTSD, which in the penultimate episode, led him to become a monster and attack his friends and family.

I used to get a good cry out of The Waltons.

Nowadays This Is Us is the most reliable show I know of to jerk those tears.

Any cookery show that involves onions tends to do the trick, but strangely enough never while I'm watching. I only tend to get emotional when cooking.

Get your hankies out.

Just my opinion, but I’d say it’s surely a phenomenon that derived from toxic masculinity - the need to deny and/or make light of sentimentality. Oh dear God, please don’t force us to confess feeling emotions of hurt, sorrow, grieving, anguish. That’s...why, that would be ******* aberrant!

I cried at Dumbo when I was a kid, but to be honest I try to avoid stuff that makes me sad.

"This Is Us"

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/this-is-us-emotional-moments-make-you-cry

Neither here nor there. No one here was talking about seeking out things that make them sad, per se. Fictional tearjerkers are popular for a reason; because every so often humans want to tap into that part of their emotions. There’s nothing wrong with that.

I think there’s something wrong with being afraid of being sad.

Life is sad, I want to be entertained not made more miserable.

I’m not scared of being sad, my wife died when my youngest was three, I’ve been there done that.

That just means you aren’t a fan of tearjerkers. Don’t make it into some kind of superior philosophical choice.




Everyone has had sadness and many have had tragedy. That doesn’t make them swear-off sad tv shows or movies.

I don’t think it motivates them to make non sequitur flip commentary on a thread that was simply asking people for their favorite bawl-their-eyes-out shows.

You could start a thread about shows that make you laugh. That would at least make sense.

I have done.

Bye

I don't know if The Waltons ever made me cry. It might have. Grandma's stroke (and smiles a long time later when she was recovered enough to return to the mountain family. All the more touching because Ellen Corby who played the role had a stroke in real time life.


Little House on the Prairie was another to rip open the tearducts. Mary going blind, her baby dying in the home for the blind fire (along strangely with the only regularly cast actress/character of color...Hester-Sue).

These days, This Is Us is meant to get tears, and to force folks to think. It becomes irritating to me with all the moving back and forth in time, between present and one of the past times.

Few things have tugged at my frayed heart-strings as much as when those wicked people in Born Free (the movie), forced Elsa out into the wild after having kept her all those years and taking away her natural instincts. What chance would she have for survival?

I don't watch too many medical shows because they constantly get viewers attached to characters and then have them die.

(although I somehow managed to see all episodes of Marcus Welby, MD).

Good television is reliant on tapping into emotion both up and down.

I have never watched it - but just seeing the commercials and the subject

A Million Little Things

leads me to believe it would be a tearjerker - maybe why I have never watched it.

"he suicide unleashes an emotional tidal wave that washes over the victim's friends and family and veers into other mysteries. The larger story (Wednesdays, 10 p.m. EDT/PDT) focuses on how they react to the suicide of Jon (Ron Livingston), a hotshot businessman who seemed to have everything."

Has anyone seen it?

I have also found that some of those crime shows can be tearjerkers - especially when they involve children.

Like -

Criminal Minds
Any of the CSI shows
and even Bull - as he is often helping to get someone off on a charge they are not guilty of.

There was one on Criminal Minds I think - it involved two teenagers one was killed and they were both best friends --- they had my daughters names - that was a tear jerker for two reasons!

In that light, here are two of the highest-rated (short) single-season series that in different ways will make you bawl your eyes out throughout their short run.

Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day (2011)

Erased (2016)


The first is a great character study/slice of life drama and the second is a disturbing mystery/thriller.

I don't think any television 'fiction' series ever made me cry or even get teary. Documentaries can devastate me....certain movies "Saving Private Ryan", "Terms of Endearment", "Captain Phillips" left me blubbering.

I almost forgot, Old Yellar was a sob fest.

True confession-
I read the book Marley and Me while out in the woods on a “field problem” during my Army career. That book made me cry so bad I had to hide inside my sleeping bag with it zipped up to cover my face. Big hotshot squad leader sobbing over the plight of that Labrador.

Needless to say, I never watched the movie when it came out.

That stuff makes me cry like a baby.