Way to go!
Here are 15 TV demises we love to death
Ilove a good TV death, don’t you? When done well, the passing of a character can inspire powerful material involving shock and grief, or perhaps guilt and relief. It can also be an occasion for big laughs — on “Seinfeld,” for example, when George’s fiancée dies from licking the cheap envelopes he bought.
Last week, “Succession” gave us the former, as the Roy children dealt with the death of their father, the withholding and abusive Logan. It was an outstanding episode — the show’s best, even — and it conveyed all the surprise, the denial, and the complexity of losing a parent, and in particular one who was an abuser. We didn’t see Logan collapse in some dramatic last bout with the end; the writers made it clear that, from now on, the focus of the story is solely on the kids.
Death on TV has come of age in the era of cable and streaming. Until the 2000s, the deaths of regular series characters were relatively rare. It was considered a negative to have viewers connect with a character, having welcomed him or her into their homes every week for years, and then kill that character off. Generally, if there was a TV death, it wound up being a dream.
Cut to now, when some series — some of them from Shonda Rhimes — might be a tad too willing to pull the trigger. At times, the deaths on shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal” have felt more like buzz-seeking, ratings-bumping gimmicks. At other times — and “Downton Abbey,” which lost Matthew and Sybil, I’m looking at you — the deaths feel more like ways for actors to depart. The reasoning isn’t creative in those cases, as it was, so brilliantly, on “Succession,” as the show moves toward its endgame.
Here are some of my favorite TV deaths, in addition to that of Logan Roy.
HENRY BLAKE (“M*A*S*H”) This classic comedy was brilliant at revealing the darkest ironies of war, and never as effectively as the fate of the show’s original man in charge. Back in the 1970s, it was one of TV’s rare deaths. After getting his discharge, Henry (McLean Stevenson) says farewell and
leaves in a helicopter that will connect him to his flight home. In the final scene of the half-hour, a distraught Radar enters the surgery to reveal that Blake’s plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan. The masked doctors and nurses, their eyes registering sorrow and disbelief, dutifully continue their operations.
TERI BAUER (“24”) Her husband, Jack, he of the growly voice and the superbladder, saved the day after 24 episodes of nonstop action. But the show aired in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and so there had to be a cost. We’d learned in this country that terrorism isn’t a game, or just an action-adventure plot; Bauer could not be one of those heroes who always escapes evil predicaments without consequences. With the death of Teri (Leslie Hope), who was shot by Nina the mole, the show let us know at the end of its first season that it meant business.
NED STARK (“Game of Thrones”) When he lost his head in the first season, fans lost their minds, now aware that “Game of Thrones” was a show with life-anddeath stakes. Joffrey Baratheon, the Brat King, orders the death of Ned, even after Ned has decided to falsely confess to treason to save himself. Most shocking of all: Ned’s daughters are in attendance, Sansa screaming and Arya watching a flock of birds after the sword comes down. The episode was a reminder that all the show’s CGI fireworks wouldn’t have mattered if the series hadn’t been grounded in emotion, in the hearts and souls of its characters. Runner up: The death of the gentle Hodor.
SUSAN BIDDLE ROSS (“Seinfeld”) In the seventh-season finale, George’s fiancée, Susan (Heidi Swedberg), dies from licking the cheap, toxic envelopes that he bought. Is George relieved? You bet. He’s the guy who pretends to pick his nose so she’ll break up with him. The death was one of the darkest comic twists on a show committed to bad behavior, and a reminder that our four New York anti-heroes had absolutely no shame. Runner up: The death of Susie, the coworker Elaine invented then had commit suicide.
CHRISTOPHER MOLTISANTI (“The Sopranos”) It was just too sad. He was Tony’s protégé, but he was sloppy and mistake-prone, his addictive behavior was out of control, and he harbored resentment toward Tony over Adriana. After a car crash, with Christopher injured and asking for help, noting, “I’ll never pass a drug test,” Tony decides to suffocate him and end all the Christopher-related problems. It was one of the critical moments in our gradual realization that, therapy or no therapy, this man was unhealable. Runner-up: The death of poor, simple, desperate Adriana (Drea de Matteo).
GARY SHEPHERD (“Thirtysomething”) Fans assumed that if anyone was going to die on this dramatic ode to friendship, it would be Nancy, who’d been struggling with ovarian cancer. But her great news — that she was in the clear — was balanced by a tragedy. Yup, the old life-death twist. Out of the blue — often a show’s most powerful approach — Gary (Peter Horton) is killed in a car crash. Michael has to identify the body, which we see, and collect Gary’s things. It was handled beautifully, as the pace slowed and news spread among the friends.
RITA MORGAN (“Dexter”) It marked a full circle. Just as young Dexter had been trapped with the body of his murdered mother, Dexter’s son, Harrison, sat beside his murdered mother, whose body was in a blood-filled bathtub. We were accustomed to seeing bad guys killed — after all, Dexter was a serial killer who killed killers — but the death of Rita (Julie Benz) by the Trinity Killer was far more affecting. She was the show’s pillar of innocence and trust, and she meant something to our emotionally shut-down anti-hero. Alas, it was one of the last compelling moments on the show, which started to fall apart in season five. When Dexter himself dies later on “Dexter: New Blood,” it wasn’t nearly as poignant.
OMAR LITTLE (“The Wire”) I loved the way the writers handled this one. Played unforgettably by Michael K. Williams, Omar seemed indestructible, and you assumed that if this guy who holds up drug dealers was going to die on the show, it would be a big dramatic repayment or during a police stand-off of some sort. Instead, it was a low-key and random event, with Omar shot by a drug-dealer kid while he is checking out at a convenience store. Runner up: The death of the coolly ruthless Stringer Bell.
POUSSEY WASHINGTON (“Orange Is the New Black”) Samira Wiley’s Poussey was one of the show’s heroic prisoners, a lovable character whose bravado was a mask for hidden pain. Her death was devastating, not least of all because — like some of the most difficult TV deaths and real-life deaths — it was an accident. In the middle of a fit by Suzanne, a young CO pins Poussey to the ground, unaware that he is suffocating and ultimately murdering her. The scene carried heavy symbolic weight, as it invoked the real-life death of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man whose last words, while a police officer held him in a chokehold, were, “I can’t breathe.”
CHUCKLES THE CLOWN (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show”) We didn’t care so much about good old Chuckles, who was rarely seen. But his death — he was dressed as “Peter Peanut” and an elephant tried to “shell” him — led to one of the show’s many classic episodes, “Chuckles Bites the Dust,” and anyone who has gotten the giggles at an inappropriate time will recognize Mary’s predicament. When her co-workers joke about Chuckles’s death in the office, Mary is appalled — but at the funeral, as the minister celebrates Chuckles’s work, she can’t stop laughing. When the minister tells Mary, “Go ahead, my dear, laugh for Chuckles,” she bursts into tears, and it’s perfect.
EVERYONE (“Six Feet Under”) Yup, the characters all die because — spoiler alert! — we all do. The truth of the episode was overwhelming. The formula of “Six Feet Under” was to begin each episode with a death, one that would eventually wind up in the Fisher family’s funeral home. But the series finale began instead with a birth (of Nate and Brenda’s daughter) and then, boldly, ended with a flash forward through the deaths of each of the characters we’d known for five seasons. It was a note of finality the likes of which we’d not seen on series TV before, all to the impossibly poignant strains of Sia’s “Breathe Me.”
JIMMY DARMODY (“Boardwalk Empire”) He was one of the show’s best characters, an emotionally wounded war vet and a cauldron of Freudian torment, and he was played by Michael Pitt with great bottled-up pain and eyes that were cold and hot at the same time. But where do you take him after he sleeps with his mother? Jimmy makes a power play against his father figure, Nucky, and Nucky isn’t having it. In the pouring rain, his hand shaking, he shoots Jimmy down, and then, standing over him, he says, “I am not seeking forgiveness” and shoots him again. Jimmy dies accompanied by images of him in a war trench.
JOYCE SUMMERS (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) There were many deaths in this series, but this one, the death of Buffy’s mother (Kristine Sutherland), was profound. Without the distractions of music and special effects, the episode beautifully captures the disorientation and denial that come with the loss of a parent, as Buffy imagines her coming back to life. Intimate and honest, the episode also captures the awkwardness and discomfort of loved ones who are trying to be supportive. Buffy is a great fighter of supernatural adversaries, but the most natural adversary, human death, leaves her lost.
TANYA MCQUOID (“The White Lotus”) It was a bold decision to kill off Tanya. She was the show’s breakout character, so ditzy, self-absorbed, and needy, and she was played so entertainingly by Jennifer Coolidge. In the season-two finale, while on a yacht, Tanya manages to wriggle out of her husband’s scheme to have her killed and inherit her fortune. She shoots her way onto the side of the boat, an action heroine of sorts, and then, whoops, she hits her head as she climbs down the side, falls, and drowns. Her ending was oddly comic, like so much of Mike White’s series.
WILLIAM HILL (“This Is Us”) This was one of the times the NBC drama didn’t need to manipulate viewers into tears. Even though we knew it was coming, ever since William’s terminal cancer diagnosis, it hurt. Randall’s biological father had made his way into Randall’s heart, and into ours, too. He was gentle and warm, and he was played with heart by Ron Cephas Jones. Father and son were on a road trip to Memphis when he succumbed, with Randall telling him to “breathe with me,” just as Jack had done when Randall had panic attacks.