Ashes to Ashes/Tear Jerker

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Tear Jerkers in Ashes to Ashes include:

  • It helps to be a shipper, but the newspaper clippings of Sam's death on Gene's office wall in the Pilot. Heartwrenching enough to begin with, but then when you realize that that was a year ago, there's no way that one made the London papers in such detail, and Gene must have carried them with him when he transferred...
  • In 1x05, Alex has gotten to a Gayngster by going through his naive young boyfriend. Along the way, she's befriended the scared, screwed-up young man with the bad luck to be gay and coming of age in 1981. By the end of the episode, she's reunited him with his parents, and apparently seen him well on his way to a happier life. Then she hugs him, and sees a dark lesion on his neck, which he dismisses as "just a rash". What we know, and Alex knows, is that it's Kaposi's sarcoma, and that he will be dead within months: one of the first victims of AIDS. And somehow she manages to keep smiling until he can't see her face...
  • In 1x08, Alex struggles to tell her mother about her own daughter, Molly -- the granddaughter Caroline will never meet. Alex knows that Caroline thinks Alex is crazy, knows that she can't say anything that will make Caroline believe her, knows that she's babbling, but she just can't stop herself from trying.
    • Alex realizing how much her mother did love her.
  • The scene in 2x07 where Chris comes walking into CID after Gene has set up the meeting as a trap for whoever The Mole is. Chris doesn't get that he's been caught, and Gene and Alex just break it to him gently, knowing he only did it to earn money for Shaz's engagement ring, and got in too deep. Ray's reaction to the betrayal and Gene telling Chris he won't accept his resignation just hit you like a shot.
  • Gene ripping Sam's obituary off his bulletin board in 3.02.
  • Ray's monologue about his father in 3.03. Which gets exponentially worse after the finale.
  • Ray and Shaz singing "Danny Boy."
  • 3x06 has the scene where Chris and Ray, undercover in Fenchurch Prison, discover that Viv is responsible for bringing a gun into the riot.

Chris: Not you, Skip. Not you.

  • In the final episode, most of it qualifies, really.
    • Special mention should go to Gene remembering how he was killed; Ray, Chris and Shaz watching the videos of their deaths; and Alex realising she can't see Molly again.
    • Shaz's childlike crying as the reality of her situation sinks in is especially heartwrenching. "I'm only twenty-six years old. I want my mum, Chris! I need to see my mum!"
    • Alex realizing that if she "moves on", Molly will grow up without her.
    • "No. No, you didn't." "Sorry, Dad." Chris trying to keep Shaz from watching her tape. The Quattro getting shot up. "You are, and always will be, the Guv." "We weren't bad, though, were we?" Oh god....
    • Alex tearfully begging Gene to let her stay. "Y-you can't do this! You can't do this on your own! You need me, Gene! I can't-I can't go in there!"
      • "I'll see you around, Bolly-kecks."
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