Roy Orbison once sang, “I’ll always be crying over you,” and he didn’t know it back in 1961, but he was actually talking about my relationship with television in 2024. Wild, but true! Crying over a television show is the best: It’s a low-stakes, cathartic activity that reminds us just how emotionally stirring this medium can be. Crying over a television show is a gift, actually, and you’d do well to remember that the next time you’re snot-sobbing while sliding down a wall because your favorite fictional character died being a hero or found closure in a devastatingly beautiful way that has changed you as a human.
And while 2024 might be remembered more for the reasons we were crying in real life, this year’s weepy TV offerings were nothing to shake your head at. From brutal losses to bittersweet moments of closure and everything in between that might traumatize you, there were lots of scenes in scripted television this year that left us wiping away tears — here are 12 of the weepiest.
12.
A teenage patient gets devastating news
Grey’s Anatomy, “Take Me to Church”
Cal Huang’s (Joziah Lagonoy) stint on Grey’s Anatomy is just a one-episode arc, and yet it harkens back to the early Grey’s days when patients’ stories would linger with you long after they left Grey Sloan Memorial. Cal has Li-Fraumeni syndrome, which gives him a predisposition to cancer, and he knows that one day he’ll be diagnosed with a tumor or a type of cancer that he won’t be able to outrun. To cope, the 15-year-old has become obsessed with death, sharing weird death facts, flipping through coffin brochures, planning his funeral. But none of that is enough to soften the blow when Cal learns he has an inoperable, malignant brain tumor and at best a couple of months to live. The crack in his voice when he asks “That’s it?” will ring in your ears. And when he responds to Dr. Schmitt (Jake Borelli) promising that you can cram a lot into a few months — Cal’s list includes space camp and rereading The Lord of the Rings — with a sob of “I don’t want to die,” well, it will break your heart into a million pieces.
11.
“I loved being a witch.”
Agatha All Along, “Death’s Hand in Mine”
And this is why you hire Patti LuPone. Throughout the bulk of Agatha All Along, LuPone’s divination witch Lilia has been dismissed as, well, a bit batty. She’s prone to strange outbursts and forgetfulness, and she certainly didn’t relish being forced into this makeshift coven. And then, in “Death’s Hand in Mine,” we learn we’ve had it all wrong about Lilia, and even more stunning, her truth has been hiding in plain sight since the very first episode. Lilia experiences her life out of sequence, and as a child she witnessed her first coven’s death before it happened. Unable to stop it, she’s lived in fear of her power and of ever getting attached to a coven again — it has shaped her whole life. But here, we watch Lilia step into her power and harness her gift. She fights to save her new coven, who despite her best efforts, she has grown to love. And in her final moments, as she pushes Agatha (Kathryn Hahn), Teen (Joe Locke), and Jen (Sasheer Zamata) out the door to safety, she can finally admit all of this to them. “I loved being a witch,” she says before turning around to sacrifice herself in order to stop the Salem Seven, willingly facing her destiny.
10.
Gambit dies in Rogue’s arms
X Men ’97, “Remember It”
It’s hard enough to watch the complete and utter destruction of mutant safe haven Genosha just as it’s about to be formally admitted to the U.N., but just when you think X-Men ’97 can’t ratchet up the devastation any more, “Remember It” gets personal. The Sentinel army sent from the mutant-hating big bad of the season arrives not long after Rogue (Lenore Zann) has just stomped on poor Gambit’s (A.J. LoCascio) heart by completely closing the door on any relationship, since her pesky powers mean she can’t touch him without taking his life force. Instead, she goes to rekindle a relationship with Magneto (Matthew Waterson), whose electro-magnetic field allows her to touch him, and stand beside him to rule Genosha. She realizes almost immediately that she’s made a mistake, but it’s much too late. All hell breaks loose, and Gambit decides to take on the futile task of attempting to stop the Master Mold and end the attack. His power destroys it, but it costs him his life. In the closing seconds of the episode, we watch Rogue hold his lifeless body in her hands and utter four simple, soul-crushing words as she weeps: “I can’t feel you.”
9.
“It’s what my mom would’ve done.”
Shrinking, “In a Lonely Place”
You almost want to be mad at Shrinking for getting Alice (Lukita Maxwell) to forgive Louis (Brett Goldstein), the drunk driver who killed her mom, so quickly. On paper, it feels too soon. And yet watching the scene play out, the moment feels earned and exactly right. Alice begins in such a place of anger, but when Louis asks her to share a story about her mom, she gets lost in the memory and comes out of it remembering what type of person her mom was, the kindness she radiated, how she was her favorite person. So it makes complete sense that after seeing how much pain Louis is in because of what he did, Alice would want to offer a reprieve. We’ve watched her struggle so much in her grief that forgiveness has at times seemed completely out of the question, but suddenly it all clicks. It’s all so simple, actually, because it’s what her mom would’ve done.
8.
Gordon finally cries
Colin From Accounts, “Wawam”
Are you surprised to see a scene from Colin From Accounts, one of the best comedies of 2024, on this list about ugly crying? Believe it, baby. The relationship between Gordon (Patrick Brammall) and his dad isn’t what you’d call great. He is, as Ashley (Harriet Dyer) calls him moments before his sudden death, “a fuckwit.” That makes grieving complicated, as illustrated in this episode, written by Patrick Brammall, which uses a half an hour to show us a man slowly crashing through a spiral of grief. It’s almost funny at first, how wholly Gordon throws himself into his new pet project: trying to get his dog, the titular Colin, some acting gigs. But the way he lashes out at everyone around him — from animal casting directors to the people closest to him — gets less and less funny, because we can see how much he’s hurting, even as he refuses to admit it. It’s that journey that gives the final scene such an emotional impact. When Gordon opens a letter from his mother, with a business-saving amount of money his father left him and a note telling him how proud he was of Gordon, and he finally bursts into tears, we get a bittersweet glimpse at exactly what he’s been trying to bury for the entire episode.
7.
“We go home, Rick”
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, “What We”
As much as I had been prepared to cry at the reunion of Rick (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), nothing in this six-episode Walking Dead spinoff made me sob like the moment when Michonne finally gets Rick to open up about why he’s refusing to go home with her. “What We” was written by Gurira, and these two actors have given so much life to these characters over the years that there was no way this emotional reckoning would be powerful, and it doesn’t disappoint. Michonne knows Rick better than anyone, loves him more than anyone, and she refuses to stop pushing him until he stops lying to her and lying to himself. With the building they’re hiding out in literally crumbling to pieces around them (unsubtle, but effective!), Rick releases a torrent of pain about how the group holding him hostage all these years broke him so badly that he had to become dead inside. The thought of coming back to life only to lose Michonne and his children again is so terrifying to him he’d rather not even try. But Michonne won’t accept it. She reminds him that they’ve been given a second chance and the only way to make any sense out of everything they’ve suffered through is to take it. They go home and they love each other “as hard as we can, while we can.” And Rick knows, despite his fear, that she’s right.
6.
Mariko prepares for seppuku
Shōgun, “Crimson Sky”
Oh, Lady Mariko. At once a steely samurai, a loyal servant, a broken person, and a woman aching to be loved. In “Crimson Sky,” all those pieces of her come into play as she arrives at Osaka Castle to force the hand of Lord Ishido (Takehiro Hira): Admit he is holding members of every noble house hostage, or let them go. Either way will lose him the upper hand against Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), and either way, Lady Mariko is prepared to die for the cause. When it looks like Ishido will refuse to let Mariko leave the castle, forcing her to disobey Toranaga’s orders, she claims it an offense against her lord and prepares to perform seppuku. Anna Sawai’s performance throughout this ceremony is breathtaking. With few words and just hints at emotions, she gives us a woman at war with herself — resolute in her convictions and still mourning her fate. When her second doesn’t show up, condemning her to die only by her own sword, a mortal sin in her religion, she only lets the devastation show in her face for a brief moment. And when one of the most romantic gestures to happen on television this year occurs — Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), who not long before had begged Mariko to live for him, steps up to be her second, to free her of that sin and deal the final blow — her gratitude and love for him is palpable. It turns out not to be the moment of her final sacrifice, which comes a few scenes later, but it carries all the same weight.
5.
Nick asks Charlie to get help
Heartstopper, “Talk”
Being a teenager is hard. Somehow Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper never forgets this, despite its joyous, touching story about first love and figuring out who you are. The show’s deft handling of the not-so-rosy side of the teenage experience has never been more evident than in season three, which puts a spotlight on Charlie’s long-simmering eating disorder and mental-health issues. Charlie’s symptoms have been getting worse, and Nick is growing increasingly stressed and despondent that he doesn’t know how to help his boyfriend. Eventually, he can’t sit there and do nothing any longer. After a happy day celebrating Nick’s birthday planned by Charlie, Nick wants to do something for him in return, and so he gathers up the courage and asks Charlie to please, please get help. To tell his parents or a doctor. The fear and helplessness Nick is feeling in that moment is so palpable in Kit Connor’s performance, and the wallop of pain and guilt and fear from Joe Locke when Charlie’s immediate response is “I’m sorry,” as if he needs to apologize for any of it, is so completely devastating. It’s one of the best scenes in the series, and the two actors nail every single beat of it.
4.
The McConville siblings finally get some closure
Say Nothing, “I Lay Waiting”
Say Nothing is a show in mourning. It mourns for all of its characters, it mourns for their real-life counterparts, it mourns for Ireland. But that grief is never felt more acutely than when the series pulls on the threads around Jean McConville’s murder at the hands of the IRA. Over 30 years after Jane was taken from her home in front of her children and never seen again, her daughter Helen (Laura Donnelly) is on a mission to get answers, or at the very least, her mother’s body. She wants to lay her to rest and possibly find some sort of peace for her and her siblings. The most heartbreaking moment in a series full of them arrives when the McConville siblings gather at the morgue to verify that the remains found at the beach are in fact Jean — it’s the little blue safety pin they fondly remember their mother always wearing on her sweaters that confirms it. But there is no big fuss made for them, no extra support, just a gaggle of siblings walking out into a cold, stark parking lot to feel what must be every emotion imaginable, but certainly relief, heartbreak, and anger. Laura Donnelly is so good in every scene she’s in, but she’s exceptional in this one as a woman who has gotten exactly what she was fighting for and realizing that it still isn’t enough, that nothing will be enough to undo the harm that was done here.
3.
Sunja sends Noa to college
Pachinko, “Chapter 15”
Everything Sunja (Minha Kim) has done to help her family survive has meant that her own dreams and hopes had to be set aside or lost forever. Getting her oldest son, the bright, kind, sensitive Noa (Tae Ju Kang) to college in Tokyo, then, is pretty much a miracle of her making. Whether you know how Noa’s story ultimately ends or not doesn’t matter, because watching Sunja leave her son on the steps of Waseda University is devastatingly bittersweet no matter which way you cut it. Her speech to Noa about how her own father wanted her to fly high so she could “see just how big the world really is,” in which she tells her son that it’s his turn to fly now, is a master class from Minha Kim in conveying massive emotional impact in a quiet, nuanced way. When she asks him to promise he’ll tell her about it because she wants to know just how big it is too, it’s Sunja both admitting she never got as high or as far as she hoped and telling her son she believes he will do more than she ever could. Pachinko is very much a show about what we pass on to the next generation, and, yes, many times that is trauma, but sometimes, oh, sometimes it is hope.
2.
Sam and Tricia talk about Holly
Somebody Somewhere, “AGG”
In a TV series full of moments that will bring you to tears of all flavors, this moment in the Somebody Somewhere series finale in which Sam and Tricia open up to each other about their sister Holly stands out because it simultaneously gives us a moving meditation on grief and reveals to us just how much these two characters have grown over three seasons. Any griever will recognize both the pain and the truth in Tricia’s confession that she’s scared to let “the sadness” go because she fears it would also mean letting go of her sister. She’s worried that because she is busy and happy, that she is forgetting Holly. The guilt of that feeling is overwhelming. But it’s Sam, the person who couldn’t even bring herself to sleep in Holly’s bed when we first met her, who reminds Tricia that the sadness and their sister are two different things. Holly will always be with them and punishing themselves for living has nothing to do with that. Bridget Everett and Mary Catherine Garrison’s trust in and affection for each other and these characters is so palpable and authentic that it makes this simple-on-paper scene, just two women sitting together and being vulnerable, soar. By the time Sam is placing Holly’s necklace on Tricia because now it’s she who needs it most, who among us is not a puddle?
1.
Dexter survives the second anniversary of Emma’s death
One Day, “Episode 14”
It’s just a day, they said! Just a day, my ass. July 15 will never be just a day now thanks to Dex (Leo Woodall) and Em (Ambika Mod) and the trauma they have inflicted on all of us (compliment) with their infuriating, tragic, gorgeous love story. And while there are so many moments on so many July 15’s that could’ve filled out this list, it’s July 15, 2004, that can still make me weep just thinking about it. On this July 15, Dex deals with the second anniversary of Emma’s death by getting just drunk enough to imagine Emma beside him as he sits in a room full of her belongings. She tells him that “it won’t always be like this” and one day, some other day, Dex won’t feel the constant pain and aching loss the way he does now. He doesn’t believe it, but she assures him and she’s always been right. It would be so easy to make this scene loud and torturous — no one would blame Dex if he wailed — but Woodall and Mod’s ability to instead play the whole thing quietly, with soft, steady streams of tears, makes it much more effective. It’s the way he imagines her going on one of her playful rants to take him to task, the way he imagines her resting her head in his lap that clue us into the little things that he misses about her. If she weren’t dead and this wasn’t all in his head, it really does almost feel like just another day, a couple sharing a quiet moment together, and that makes it all the more devastating.
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