Isn’t it so cute how we let television traumatize us over and over again? We’re a bunch of sweet little sickos who allow fictional characters and story lines to infiltrate our lives and our hearts to the point of making us sob on our sofas, emotionally devastated by deaths and breakups and all manner of life’s hardships that aren’t even real. But when those heart-wrenching moments are done well, they feel real.
Sometimes, in fact, they feel so real that the pain sticks with you for a long time — and in the most affecting cases, you don’t even need to be rewatching said scene to relive the pain. No, in some cases you merely have to walk by something that may seem like an everyday object, but is so representative of that scene or that episode — a slow cooker, a strawberry, duct tape — that you suddenly find yourself holding back tears just looking at it. Don’t be embarrassed! You are among your people here! In fact, here are 15 inanimate objects from iconically traumatic television moments that I can no longer look at without crying now; maybe a few of them will get you all misty-eyed, too. I’m sorry and also, you’re welcome.
The object: A slow cooker
The show: This Is Us
And why are we crying? Is deliciously tender, hearty slow-cooked food worth reliving the trauma the Pearson family inflicted upon our nation for six years? Well, that’s a personal decision everyone needs to make for themselves, and also it probably depends on how hungry you are. For me, when I come face-to-face with the murder weapon, excuse me, a slow cooker, I’m suddenly lost in a montage set to the Cinematic Orchestra’s “To Build a Home” and weeping on my kitchen floor thinking about how that one janky slow cooker burst into flames, burned down a house, and took one of TV’s hottest patriarchs out with it, causing his entire family to endure decades of grief and trauma and guilt and anger and that one time Kevin ended up sobbing on some woman’s front lawn about his dad’s necklace. So, I’ll pass on the barbecue pulled pork.
The object: Strawberries
The show: The Last of Us
And why are we crying ?: The fungi zombie-apocalypse show giveth and the fungi zombie-apocalypse show taketh away. Oh, no, please present us with the sweetest end-of-the-world romance our eyes have ever seen and then force us to watch that romance come to the most bittersweet end possible, and why don’t you set that entire romance to two songs guaranteed to get the waterworks flowing — Linda Ronstadt’s “Long, Long Time” and Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight” — while you’re at it. At least we’ll always have strawberries to remind us of the moments of pure happiness Bill and Frank were able to find amid the absolute horror show they lived in. Oh, wait, just kidding, the strawberries and the good memories make us silently weep just as much as the bad times. That’s what love in the time of fungi will do to a person.
The object: A Sharpie
The show: Lost
And why are we crying?: To watch Lost is to know pain. There are so many moments from the best mystery-box show to ever do it that can really ruin your day should they pop into your brain (Juliet and Sawyer! Sun and Jin!!), and that’s why I try to avoid Sharpies at all costs. When I see a Sharpie, suddenly I’m on that submarine station back in season three, watching troubled rock star Charlie Pace use his last moments before he drowns to scribble on his hand and warn his friends that they are not being rescued by who they think they are being rescued by, sacrificing himself in an attempt to ensure the woman he loves will be safe (this one guy can maybe see the future, it’s a whole thing). See? Day ruined.
The object: Carrots
The show: Friday Night Lights
And why are we crying?: Honestly, fuck carrots. What have carrots ever done for us anyway? Oh, give us plenty of vitamin A to help foster good eye health? Well, la-di-da. Tell me what good that does me, a person who can’t even see when she gets near carrots because she’s crying so hard. Since FNL’s gut-wrenching season-four episode “The Son,” when I see carrots, all I think about is poor Matt Saracen at the Taylors’ dinner table, finally having the breakdown over his father’s death that you know has been building up for the entire episode. He doesn’t like carrots and he doesn’t like when carrots touch the meat and he doesn’t ever want to be rude and he hates his dad!! This poor boy! These fucking carrots!
The object: A blue Post-it note
The show: Grey’s Anatomy
And why are we crying?: The ballad of Meredith Grey and Derek Shepherd is full of artifacts — ferryboat scrub caps and elevators full of X-rays and drawings of tumors — but no artifact sums them up like the blue Post-it note they wrote their wedding vows on in season five; it was very them! And that Post-it note remained a part of their lore from that day on. I mean, it literally hung over their bed. So, it’s no surprise that in season 11 when Derek dies by way of truck T-boning and Meredith has to find the strength to pick herself up again, perhaps the most gutting stretch of episodes in the series, the Post-it note is there. Looming. She looks at it and remembers the loss and the love, and so do we. And that’s why I never use blue Post-it notes to this very day. They probably should just stop manufacturing them altogether.
The object: A green sweater
The show: Halt and Catch Fire
And why are we crying?: There is just something in the way Joe MacMillan says, “I’m sorry I couldn’t get your dad’s sweater back,” that breaks me into a million pieces. He says it at the end of season four’s “Goodwill” after he accidentally donates Gordon’s green sweater while they’re clearing out his house ten days after his funeral; Joe didn’t realize Gordon’s younger daughter Haley wanted it. They go off on an adventure to try and steal it back, but to no avail. You can see him stewing over it for the entire episode. He feels helpless and useless. He has failed at making things better for Gordon’s daughters. He looks hollowed out, as if he had to summon all of his strength to apologize for something that, turns out, isn’t actually a huge deal. And then he has to summon all that strength once again to hold himself together afterward. I sob just thinking about it; thank God sweaters are so absorbent.
The object: Duct tape
The show: For All Mankind
And why are we crying?: Admittedly, if you don’t watch For All Mankind, the duct-tape scene will sound absolutely wild out of context. If you do watch it, then I bet the moment you even read the words “duct tape,” you got weepy. For those of us who watched the season-two finale of the alternate-history series and lived to tell the tale, how can we not think of duct tape and immediately remember how deeply flawed but lovable astronauts Gordo and Tracy Stevens didn’t hesitate to become the heroes the world needed them to be by, oh, yeah, covering themselves in duct tape and running out on the lunar surface in order to prevent a nuclear meltdown that would’ve had devastating ramifications. If you’re like, Huh? Just duct tape? No one could survive that. Well, you’re right! No one could. Thanks for bringing it up.
The object: A red tracksuit jacket
The show: The O.C.
And why are we crying?: Yeah, yeah, Marissa’s death. Yeah, yeah, mmm whatcha say? But what about Kirsten’s intervention, people? KIRSTEN’S INTERVENTION. The season-two scene is burned into my brain. It is so affecting partly because Ryan basically says he doesn’t want to lose another mom to alcoholism. (Kirsten is a mom to him, it will never not make me emotional!!) But it’s mostly the moment when Seth, who had refused to take part in the intervention, shows up at the end and winds up being the person who finally convinces his mom she needs help. Seth, in his red zip-up and that look of sadness and concern in his eyes? And then everyone hugs?! It is so burned into my brain that Adam Brody’s little face and that freaking red tracksuit honestly might be the last thing I see when I head toward the light.
The object: A bus-stop bench
The show: Fleabag
And why are we crying?: The best thing about a bus-stop bench rendering you into fits of sobs because they remind you of one of the saddest TV breakups in history is that you can just lie down right on top of it until that fit passes. It’s very thoughtful of benches! So, if you happen to pass a woman lying on a bus-stop bench yelling out things like, “Hot Priest, why?!” and “But they love each other!”, oh, and also “HE SAID IT’LL PASS,” know that eventually she’ll be okay. Fleabag is okay in the end and that woman will be, too. It’s me, I’m the woman.
The object: A Discman and headphones
The show: E.R.
And why are we crying?: I’ve never been so thankful to feel old by way of something from my youth not existing anymore. In the season-eight episode “On the Beach,” beloved Dr. Mark Greene is dying of a brain tumor in Hawaii and spends his final days trying to mend his relationship with his older daughter, Rachel, who, it should be noted, is a real dick. But at the very end of things, she sits on her dad’s bed and tells him she does remember him singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to her every night. And so, as if finally returning the favor, she slips her headphones onto Mark’s ears and plays him Israel Kamakawiwoʻole’s version; he’s still wearing the headphones the next morning when Elizabeth realizes he has died in his sleep. It’s been 22 years since that episode aired, and the visceral reaction I still have when I think of that little blue Discman is, well, it’s unhealthy and I won’t apologize for it.
The object: Blue astronaut suits
The show: Station Eleven
And why are we crying?: Thanks to Station Eleven, whenever I buy my astronaut suits, I make sure to avoid anything in the blue family. My house is strictly a white-astronaut-suit house, understand? Otherwise, I’d be sitting in my suit weeping, thinking about how Miranda Carroll used her final moments on this earth to make a phone call that saved her friend — and everyone else — holed up in Severn City Airport before the blue-suited spaceman that she created in her comic book ushered her to her death. Crying in your spacesuit? That would just be insane.
The object: A Toyota Prius
The show: Six Feet Under
And why are we crying?: To be honest, when I see a Toyota Prius out in the wild and it makes me tear up thinking about the Six Feet Under finale, only 80 percent of that is from reliving that final montage in which Claire Fisher drives off to start a new chapter and into the future, showing us how every main character eventually dies. (David! Seeing Keith! I cannot!) The other 20 percent of it is from knowing with every fiber of my being that she should’ve been driving her green hearse. Yeah, yeah, it was wrecked earlier in the season, but come on — now we’re out here crying over a Toyota Prius?!
The object: Those big plastic pitchers and cups from the local pizza place, you know what I’m talking about
The show: Parenthood
And why are we crying?: Thank God these cups are so big — they can hold both my fountain soda and the tears pouring out of my face while I’m transported back to the time Kristina, who has been carrying around her breast-cancer diagnosis, finally tells her entire extended family what’s been going on while they’re all in the middle of sucking down pizza and soda after Victor’s baseball game. All we hear is music as Kristina relays the news, but we see gasps and hugs and yeah, of course, tears. It’s at once both a release of a terrible burden and a reminder that we haven’t even gotten to the hard part yet. It is heart-wrenching. Thanks, Bravermans, for ruining family outings to pizza parlors for the rest of us.
The object: Literally any Amtrak signage
The show: The Americans
And why are we crying?: Please, I’m begging you, never sit near me if we’re on an Amtrak train together. Whenever we’re pulling out of a station, I will put one hand up on the glass and let tears silently stream down my face as I re-create that completely life-altering moment in The Americans series finale when Elizabeth and Philip Jennings realize their daughter Paige has gotten off the train they were taking on their journey to flee back to Russia and that they’ll never see her again; the moment they realize they’ve lost both their children. If you, too, feel the urge to kick Amtrak signs while singing “With or Without You,” it’s okay to admit it — this is a safe space.
The object: Stupid little kid’s lunch box!!!!
The show: Jane the Virgin
And why are we crying?: “Mommy, why are you crying?” I don’t have any kids, but if I did, this is what they’d be asking me every time I handed them their cute little tin lunch box in the morning before school. And the answer would be [deep, dramatic inhale], “Well, sweetie, in season three of Jane the Virgin, a heartfelt, self-aware telenovela that ran from 2014 until 2019 on the CW, they decided to kill off sweet Michael Cordero Jr., our protagonist Jane Villanueva’s truest love — I said what I said — right after Jane and Michael finally found happiness together, and the last time she saw him, she handed him a lunch box just like this one full of snacks for when he took the LSAT, which was supposed to be his new chapter, but ends up being the last thing he ever does because he drops dead as he’s handing in the test and just thinking about that makes Mommy really, really sad, okay?” Then the kid would be like, “But Mommy, didn’t Jane the Virgin reveal Michael was still alive in the season-four finale, ‘Chapter Eighty-One’?” And then I would be like, “THAT’S NOT EVEN THE POINT, KEVIN! GO TO YOUR ROOM!”
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