When's the last time that you were moved to tears by a television show or a movie? Or a song? Or a comic book, say?
This question was prompted by a recent Lance Mannion rant on the graceless ouster-by-execution of Annie Parisse's character Alex Borgia on Law & Order. Not that I cared much about that; Borgia meant nothing to me and L&O lost most of its luster when Jerry Orbach died here in the real world. It was another, fictional death mentioned by Mannion that got me thinking: the death of Henry Blake on M*A*S*H in the season-ender in 1975. He got his discharge papers; everybody threw him a bittersweet sendoff party; he gave Hot Lips Houlihan a goodbye tonsillectomy for the ages; he left for home and wife Lorraine. And in the very last scene of the episode, we learned that Blake's plane had been shot down over the Sea of Japan. No survivors.
I was thirteen years old, a huge fan of the show, and utterly devastated. I bawled like a baby. I haven't seen that episode since.
It was very effective television.
Anyone else have a moved-to-tears moment like that, made possible by popular culture?
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