Criminal Minds/Tear Jerker

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Season One

  • In the episode "The Fox", when Frank Fielding ( a mentally retarded man, who is the brother of one of the first victims ) realises that he saw the killer, and misinterpreted his sister saying 'help me' as 'go away'... his cries of anguish as he beats his hands against his head and has to be restrained by four of the BAU agents is just heart-wrenching.
  • The last ten minutes of "Riding The Lightning".

Sarah Jean: If it's not too much to ask...I'd like your face to be the last one I see.

    • The last half of that episode should be included here. Particularly that one point where Sarah Jean begs Gideon to let her be killed in the electric chair in order to giver her son, who she claimed she killed to protect him from her sadistic Complete Monster husband, a better life. She stood for 15 years in prison and died to protect her son. This may be the most selfless act evident in the series to date.

Season Two

  • "Revelations": Especially for all the Spencer Reid fangirls out there who need to run and purchase a box of tissues whenever this episode comes on.
    • One moment in particular, that verges on Nightmare Fuel: Gideon is talking to Reid over a one-way video feed, telling him he's strong and he can hold out, and Reid just... stares blankly at the screen, almost catatonic, looking like he's already broken.
  • At the end of "Jones", William LaMontagne Jr talks the woman who's been killing the men down by telling her his name and saying that she knew his father. The woman, who's been close to tears, cries when she finds out that William LaMontagne Sr died during Hurrican Katrina.
  • "Ashes and Dust":

Doctor: I'm giving her as much painkiller as I can. She asked about her husband and son. She passed out again before I had to answer.
Prentiss: She doesn't know?
Doctor: Whatever you tell her, she won't live long enough to know different.

    • And not much later...

Mrs. Cutler: Where are they? Are they okay?
Hotchner: They're fine. They're just outside in the waiting room.

Mrs. Cutler: I don't want them to see me like this. I'm not ready.

Hotchner: Agent Prentiss will tell them. I can stay with you until you're ready.

Mrs. Cutler: I'd like that.

  • The ending of "Distress":

Roy Woodridge: It wasn't safe.

Jason Gideon: I know.

Roy Woodridge: Is the boy all right?

Jason Gideon: Yes, sergeant... yes, the boy's all right.

  • The younger Unsub in "Open Season" dying and Gideon comforting him. Him begging Gideon not to hurt his brother because he is all he has left and him knowing his brother was shot and killed before dying himself was just heartwrenching.
  • Nathan Harris sitting in church, thinking the only way to help people in the future is to kill himself in the episode Sex, Birth, and Death.
    • At the end of the episode he picks up a prostitute and and, instead of playing out his fantasy, he attempts suicide to prevent himself from hurting others. He fails.

Season Three

  • "I guess I'm looking for it again. The belief in happy endings." ("I'm holding on... I'm barely breathing...)
  • Bit late to the party, but season three's "Seven Seconds" has a pretty major one when they're trying to revive Katie Jacobs
    • Not to mention the mother pleading over the mall intercom to get Katie back.
    • That one balloon during the speech was truly tearjerking.
  • "True Night's" ending ("Hey, this is Vicky! I can't come to the phone right now because I'm out living my life!")
    • The heartwrenching way the Unsub says "he made me watch". Just... that.
  • Reid's face in "3rd Life" after he watches Jack Vaughn kill his daughter's kidnapper. Like the saddest puppy in the world. It doesn't help by the way he follows it by whimpering, 'I tried... I tried, but I couldn't...'
  • "Elephant's Memory": The audience is led to believe that a sympathetic, teenaged unsub is about to get cut to pieces in Suicide by Cop. And then they start playing Johnny freaking Cash.
    • In the same episode Reid tells Morgan about a particularly cruel prank played on him high school; while in the library a girl told him that another girl, the prettiest in school, wanted to meet him later. Going to the meeting place Reid found the girls, the entire football team and several other students all there. Stripped naked, Reid was tied to the goal post and despite all his begging no one helped him. When he finally got loose around midnight and went home he discovered his mother, who was having one of her episodes, didn't even notice he was missing. Did we mention he was only twelve at the time?
    • And again in the same episode (poor Reid), Reid's speech at the 'Beltway Clean Cops' meeting.

Reid: That kids face is really, uh, stuck in my brain. It's really, uh, I can't... and I ... I wanna forget about him, and... I want to escape.

      • Even worse when you realize that the kid he's talking about is the unsub from "3rd Life," in the moment mentioned above.
  • All of "Penelope". Garcia almost dying on the table. Morgan not picking up his phone and his absolute despair at finding out Garcia's been shot. Battle trying again and Morgan pushing a crying Garcia into the corner and giving her his gun. Garcia talking about how everything has to happen for a reason, and if she stops believing that then nothing makes sense.
  • The arrest of the unsub in "Damaged" was difficult to watch. "Daddy!...Daddy!"

Season Four

  • Morgan and Garcia on the phone in "Mayhem", when Morgan is in the ambulance with the bomb about to go off:

Morgan: There's something I really want you to know, Garcia.
Garcia: Save it! Just get out!
Morgan: No, no, no, I'm not quite there yet.
Garcia: Morgan!
Morgan: Just listen to me.
Garcia: Morgan, please!
Morgan: You know what you are, Garcia? { the bomb goes off}
Garcia: Derek?!
Morgan: having jumped out at the last minute Garcia? I'll tell you what you are to me. You're my God-given solace. Woman, you promise me one thing - whatever happens, don't you ever stop talking to me.
Garcia: [crying] I can't right now, cause I'm mad at you.
Morgan: That's all right. I can wait.

Megan Kane: You're the first man who didn't let me down. Will you stay with me?

Hotch: Yes.

Megan Kane: Promise?

Hotch: I promise.

  • The ending of "Demonology", with Prentiss standing outside the church while the snow falls. It becomes even more poignant with her quote from Joyce's The Dead.
  • The entire last half of "The Big Wheel" is one big tearjerker. Especially when Vincent gives the speech to Stan before dying,and when Stan finds out that Vincent was the one who killed his mother, and how innocent and caring Vincent really is.
    • This becomes especially painful when you realise that Vincent was so traumatised by his mother's death that he was forced to relive it - to take on his father's role - over... and over... and over...
  • "Amplification" has Reid leaving a recorded message for his mother to hear in the event that his being infected with anthrax proves fatal. Understandably, he has trouble keeping it together, as does the audience.

Reid: Hi Mom, this is Spencer. I just, um, I just really want you to know that I love you and I, I need you to know that I spend every day of my life proud to be your son.

Season Five

  • The part when Hotch had to say goodbye to Jack at the end of "Nameless, Faceless."
  • Hotch watching Jack playing in the playground through a webcam in the beginning of "Reckoner". Oh, Hotch.
  • "100" - the entire thing, but specifically Haley saying good-bye to her son Jack and her and Hotch's final conversation before she's killed.
  • "The Slave of Duty" takes things to an extreme for Hotch and Jack.
  • "Mosley Lane": "He was alive yesterday?!"
    • Just the way Stephan's father says it as it dawns on him that his son had been alive all those years, only to die just before the children were rescued.
    • Let's face it, the whole end of that episode. Dry eyes are impossible.
  • Garcia in "Exit Wounds", when one of the victims dies in her arms, and later, when she and Morgan discuss if her being able to handle blood in person means she's losing her humanity.
  • The entire ending dialogue in "Uncanny Valley", culminating in one of many Crowning Moments of Awesome for Reid:

Samantha: "Don't leave me."
Victim: (just recovering from paralysis) "Let us go."
Samantha: "I can't."
Reid: (walking into the room) "Samantha? Hi. My name's Spencer. I'm with the FBI. Listen, I know what your father did to you, and I want you to know that he can never ever hurt you again."
Samantha: (mechanically) "He never touched me, he's a good father, he loves me."
Reid: "I know that he probably forced you to say those things. Punished you if you got it wrong, send you to the 'room with the lightning'?"
Samantha: "Yeah."
Reid: "The dolls that your father gave you, after he hurt you, what would happen to them?"
Samantha: "He...he kept them in his office with the other toys."
Reid: "And that's where he let you play with them?"
Samantha: "When I moved out, I had to take my friends with me, I couldn't...leave them behind."
Reid: "Of course. So you went to get them. What did...what did you find?"
*Flashback of adult Samantha walking into her father's office, seeing him stroking the hair of a little girl holding her dolls*
Reid: "Yeah. He gave them to another girl, didn't he? (Samantha nods) ...do you want them back?"

Samantha: "He couldn't. He said they were gone for good."

Reid: "He lied. He's been lying to you for a very long time. Do you want to see them?"

Samantha: "...Can I?"

Reid: "Yeah! Yeah, do you want to play with them?"

* Reid wheels out a child's suitcase and opens it, showing Samantha's dolls. She walks over with such a smile of childish delight as to inspire Manly Tears. She picks one up and starts to cry while cops and paramedics stream in.*

Reid: "Listen, Samantha? You need to go with these men. But your friends can go with you, okay?"

Samantha: "N-No one'll take them away?"

Reid: "I promise, no one will ever take them away again."

Season Six

  • Just a little thing, but Morgan shouting at Garcia for not doing well enough in "The Longest Night". Scary and saddening because he'd never done that before, and it showed just what a bad place Morgan was in. He makes up for it later, though, by begging for her forgiveness.
  • The last ten minutes of "JJ." Seriously, show? Did you really have to have JJ have a heart-to-heart with Garcia, with both of them crying, and then go to a montage that was basically "Why JJ Is Awesome"? *cries*
  • "Into the Woods" One Word: Sad. Sad made even worse by the unsub getting away.
  • "Coda": for some reason, Ali Sparks's breakdown over her husband's body was especially heartwrenching. Dead bodies are pretty common on this show, but this one just made this troper lose it.
  • "Valhalla": Emily's tearful, surreptitious departure from the BAU. Also, she has a few sweet interactions with her teammates, including the following exchange with Garcia:

Garcia: Are you okay?
Emily: Oh...um...yeah. I'm good.
Garcia: I'm not a profiler, but....
Emily: Don't start. (sees Garcia's hurt look) I'm sorry. I'm--I'm gonna be all right.
Garcia: Okay. I'm just really worried about you. The flu is going around...(new thought) Are you pregs?!
Emily: (laughs) No. No, I just...I'm not sleeping. I'm having this nightmare. It's a recurring nightmare. There's a hill and there's a little girl on top of the hill....She's, like, six years old, dark hair...and she's just dancing in the sun. But somehow I know she's waiting for me, so I start to walk up the hill, but the hill gets steeper and steeper, and by the time I climb to the top, the little girl's gone. And I, I look everywhere for her, and when I can't find her, I start to panic, and I panic because I know what's waiting out there for her. I know what the world can do to a girl who only sees beauty in it. Like you. (Garcia is taken aback, touched.) Somehow, you...you always make me smile. And I don't think I've ever thanked you for that.

  • "Lauren." Just..."Lauren." To explain, Emily goes rogue to keep the team safe, hunting down a terrorist she believed she'd put away years ago. She's captured by Doyle, branded, tortured, and almost killed, but Morgan gets to her in time. The team (with the exceptions of Hotch and JJ) are told that she died on the operating table, in order to put her into Witness Protection. The ending where we see the team at her funeral physically hurts to watch.
    • This troper broke down at the team's reaction, particularly when Reid tried to leave and J.J. stops him.

Reid: I didn't get to say good-bye. (JJ embraces him; he starts sobbing on her shoulder)

    • Also, during her one-woman stakeout, Prentiss chokes up to hear the following voicemail message:

Garcia: Come home. Please. God, Emily, what did you think? That we would just let you walk out of our lives? I am so furious with you right now! But then I think about how scared you must be, hiding in a dark place all alone. But you're not alone, okay? You are not alone. We are in that dark place with you, we are waving flashlights and calling your name, so if you can see us, come home. If you can't, then...then you stay alive. Because we're coming.

    • This is made a million times more touching simply because of how REAL it is. For anyone who's ever had a friend in danger you can't contact, or a missing person... It just hit the nail on the head so devastatingly perfectly. This Troper nearly had a hyperventilating nervous breakdown because of that little bit there. And she's still waving a flashlight.
  • "Hanley Waters". Sad in the parts revolving around the team elaborating grief for the events of Lauren. Sadder when the unsub has her husband express his grief for their son's death. Extremely sad when the unsub finally breaks down when Hotch talks to her about her child.
    • As well, the title is quite poignant. Everyone remembers the unsub but never the victims.

Season Seven

  • Morgan's eyes during Prentiss's return.
  • Reid acting horribly cold towards JJ in "Proof", because he feels like she betrayed his trust. And then we find out how he reacted to Prentiss' death.

Reid: I trusted you. I came to your house ten weeks in a row, crying over losing a friend. And not once did you have the decency to tell me the truth.
JJ: I couldn't.
Reid: You couldn't, or you wouldn't?
JJ: No, I couldn't.
Reid: What if I had started taking Dilaudid again? Would you have let me?
JJ: But... you didn't.
Reid: Yeah. I thought about it.

    • And later, Prentiss:

"You mourned the loss of a friend. I mourned the loss of six."

  • The revelation of the Unsub's motive in "Painless". If only the school principal had chosen him to appear on TV. If only the survivors had the balls to tell the truth that it was the Unsub who had saved their lives during the original bombing. If only the bomb had not made the Unsub unable to feel pain. If only the girl had invited him to join the survivors.
    • Those Top 10/9/8? You mean those who hid the truth from BAU on their first chance? You see the way that girl disowns the unsub on the way to restaurant? They are not innocent, otherwise they'd have come clean ten years ago already. The unsub saved their lives, all right; they owe him that much. Would it hurt if they at least thank him? Drop their pretense? Give him the credit he deserves?
  • The last scene in "From Childhood's Hour." Rossi's first wife reveals that she has ALS, and she asks him to be the one to pull the plug when the time comes. Especially jarring for Rossi since the case they just finished working dealt with an unsub who thought he was helping children by killing their mothers.
    • Even more poignant and heartbreaking when you remember that Rossi is Catholic. Suicide, even assisted suicide, is a mortal sin. He's now faced with a hell of a Sadistic Choice; does he watch the woman he loves die and do nothing to help her, or does he commit a mortal sin and help kill her?
  • The third mother in "From Childhood's Hour", saying truly awful things to her teenage daughter to provoke the girl into killing her, because she believes it's the only way the unsub won't kill them both. She's in tears even as she does it.
  • The end of "Epilogue", where Rossi's ex-wife Caroline takes the assisted-suicide decision out of Dave's hands by revealing she did it ten minutes ago. She dies in his arms, which is what she wanted.
    • The heartwrenching continues when Caroline asks Dave "will he be there?" Dave tells her yes, but it's not until the final scene of Dave at her grave that it's revealed that the "he" she's speaking of is their son who died in infancy. Their graves are next to each other.
  • JJ telling her son a bedtime story over the phone, because she's trapped in Kansas overnight as a result of the weather.
    • And she's got it entirely memorized. Not just the gist, but word for word.
  • In "Hope", the episode begins with Garcia talking about her parents' death. They were killed by a drunk driver while out looking for her. She had broken curfew again. It is interesting to know that the happy character has such guilt weighing on them.
  • "The Bittersweet Science": Hotch is in the room while the Unsub tells his cancer-stricken son that it is okay to "let go" of the pain and die. Hotch's eyes water, and then he sheds a single tear. It's especially tearjerking when you realize that Hotch shows emotion the most around his son Jack, and watching another man lose his son might be hitting Hotch closer to home than his single tear lets on.
  • "True Genius". Reid's self-doubt throughout the episode is utterly heartbreaking.

'I just... don't know why I'm in the FBI.'

  • Morgan and Angel, the escaped victim in "Foundation". Angel has been mute, after the trauma of being abducted and held captive by a sadistic killer, and attempted suicide. Morgan tells Angel the story of fighter pilots in World War II, how they knew each other when taken captive by the coins they carried, and the first words Angel speaks are to ask what happened to them. It takes a turn for the heartbreaking when Morgan tells Angel about Carl Buford (from "Profiler, Profiled"), the man who raped and abused him. He confesses that he thought about suicide himself, and that while he wished the shame could go away, he and Angel are the only ones who can punish men like Buford and the man who took Angel.
  • The ending of "Heathridge Manor" is a truly heartbreaking Hope Spot. After the Unsub is defeated, we see his sister Lara in their home. She is putting away all of her mothers old costumes, she's wearing white pastels, the sun is shining outside, and the mood is fairly calm and relaxed. Then the doorbell rings... "I've been waiting for you for so long, Lara. You have to come with me now." Also doubles as Major Nightmare Fuel material.
  • In "Profiling 101", after making a deal with the unsub to get the names of all his victims, Rossi personally goes to each family to report the tragic news. It is a rough scene to watch.
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