Nailed it!

pillboxed | May 22, 01:22 CET

Me too!

fraac | May 22, 01:46 CET

Yeah, except they attached the wrong name to the right description.

:^P

filops | May 22, 01:57 CET

Wrong name? That's the correct episode title. Of course, everyone always talks about the ep that follows it, but the event occurred in the ep listed.

zeitgeist | May 22, 02:08 CET

That was definitely the first thing I thought of, but there was an awful lot in Buffy that I never saw coming.

On a different note...I think in terms of what constitutes a shocking moment, Lucy's on-air pregnancy and the Kirk/Uhura interracial kiss are completely separate from unexpected plot twists which are also separate from wacky or scandalous celebrity behavior. It seems weird to rank them up like its one big category.

Invisigoth | May 22, 02:21 CET

Two things it could be. I chose poorly. :-)

Vague That Up | May 22, 03:46 CET

Ah, you thought it was Spanya? ;)

zeitgeist | May 22, 03:47 CET

I missed it as well. Tell me, wasn't that Joss' only "cliff hanger" episode?

Madhatter | May 22, 04:15 CET

Yep, figured it was that one.

A bit about the famous kiss - NBC was so concerned that there would be flak that they tried to pressure Roddenberry to change it to a kiss between Uhura and Spock, figuring viewers would more easily accept her kissing an alien than kissing a white man.

ShadowQuest | May 22, 04:40 CET

The "Dexter" one still hurts...watched it the other day; tears.

Illyria | May 22, 04:50 CET

Just rewatched those first ten minutes of the Body for the first time after eight years or so. Still the same impact. Everything so powerful: the writing, the acting, the framing, the colours... Speechless.

Ava Vargas | May 22, 06:30 CET

I think IWMTLY was a really good episode, but was completely overshadowed by its ending and The Body.

jclemens | May 22, 07:24 CET

I think the only show that broke my heart more(and I mean crushing) was the latter part of season five. Damnit, getting all teared up just thinking about it.

Sigh (Takes deep breath). Not yet....still not yet. Okay, think I'm past it. Now, what are these other shows you wonderful people speaking of? Think I'd heard of them once or twice.

Madhatter | May 22, 08:50 CET

The 'Dexter' moment was surprising and disturbing but there was some hint that something was in the offing in the few seconds beforehand (to the extent that just before the reveal I actually said "Oh no" out loud) so it wasn't quite as shocking as the end of IWMTLY IMO which, to me, was totally out of the blue.

Not sure about some of these, to me 'shocking' is slightly distinct from just 'very surprising/unexpected' because it also implies a negative aspect to the response, it's like surprise with an edge of "I'd actually rather this wasn't happening" (so Ellen coming out, Jacko on stage with wife and Ross/Emily for instance are all pretty dubious IMO, those're just surprises or twists, not actual shocks).

Saje | May 22, 08:57 CET

I think one of the things that moved me the most about "The Body," aside from Anya's speech, is the fact that Giles was the first person Buffy called after she called the paramedics.

Not her best friend Willow, or Xander, but Giles. The only adult left in her life. Because right then, Buffy wasn't grown up. She wasn't the tough Slayer any more. She was a broken-hearted little girl, needing desperately for her mother to not be dead. Needing someone to comfort her, to lie to her and tell her everything was going to be ok.

ShadowQuest | May 22, 14:30 CET

For me, Tara's death was a bit more shocking than Joyce's.

With Joyce, yes it was unexpected and painful, but we didn't actually see the death happen. With Tara, we saw her blood splatter on Willow, we saw Tara's confusion as she said "Your shirt", not realizing that her life had come to an end. We saw Willow's shock, grief and finally desperation, using all her witchy powers to try to claw Tara's soul back from Osiris.

It was a powerful scene, even split over two episodes like it was. I still love/hate Joss for that. :-)

quantumac | May 22, 15:19 CET

I still haven't forgiven him for Jenny Calendar.

sab39 | May 22, 17:03 CET

The Buffy choice was obvious ;). Would've picked a different one for 'The Shield', though. My mouth fell open when (spoilers for The Shield's season 5 finale and the series finale) Shane actually killed Lem with that grenade. Although, granted: his suicide and murder of his family also came as quite a shock. Both of these are 'good' moments in that I kept thinking 'no, he wouldn't go that far' in the moments leading up to the actual event. God, how I loved that show.

GVH | May 22, 17:21 CET

I assumed that it was "Angel loses his soul," since that seems to be the popular choice for these things; I didn't even bother clicking the link until some comments started popping up today about "The Body". I'm glad that they highlighted this moment, a very worthy one for such a list.

LKW | May 22, 21:18 CET

Honestly, how could the Slayer's Mom have ever had a decent rela=tionship with even the best boyfriend ever? Brian and all future Brians by definition wouldn't have hung around, right? :-)

DaddyCatALSO | May 22, 21:40 CET

I assumed that it was "Angel loses his soul," since that seems to be the popular choice for these things;

That's pretty interesting - "Angel loses his soul" didn't even occur to me but it was also a pretty shocking moment. Maybe it feels less shocking in retrospect because it fit in so perfectly with the metaphorical framework of the show (it was basically the old idea that once a guy's had sex with you he no longer needs to "make nice") whereas Joyce was outside that framework, was in fact a specifically non-magical death ?

Saje | May 23, 00:50 CET

It's the "realness" of it that gets to me. Not a battle, not a supernatural phenomenon, just a very painful medical coincidence and its repercussions for those left behind.
It's not the Slayer receiving a blow, it's just a girl. No, it's a girl we know so well by that time, it feels like someone close losing a parent.

Ava Vargas | May 23, 03:44 CET

I'd agree with the Buffy moment.

But I think the Alias moment was totally the wrong one. The end of season two, "...you've been missing for two years..." should have, hands down, been listed (IMO). By the end of season 4 it was sort of yeah, whatever, because things had gotten so convoluted.

sbz | May 23, 11:06 CET

A few of the episodes ie the Kirk Uhuru kiss and the Maude roe v wade were consider taboo in the 60s and 70s. Interracial romances were looked down on during the 60s. l know from experience and you never spoke the A word and here you have both on tv. lt was alot different back then.

zee | May 23, 17:43 CET

I, in turn, find that point interesting, Saje ;)

Thinking about it, I'm not the best qualified to compare the moments, at least on the level of personal inintial reactions. My area had no local WB affiliate for the first four seasons of BtVS, so I only read about Angel's transformation; by the time I actually saw Surprise, the idea had long been a part of my Buffy knowledge. By season five, I was able to actually watch the show as it aired [though, technically we still didn't have a local WB channel; that season our local UPN station arranged to show the current season of Buffy (as well as Angel)on Saturday nights (as UPN had no national weekend programing). Ironically, that station switched affiliation to WB for the next year... just in time for Buffy to move to UPN! Fortunately, our local cable co. scrambled to add the UPN affiliate from Boston to its package, and I scrambled to get cable in my new apartment by that September - by that time, Buffy had become MUST see television for me :)]. So, I do have personal experience with the "oh NO..." shock of that final minute of I Was Made to Love You. We'd thought Joyce was safely through her health problems, and then - bam. (Metaphoric "bam", of course; in actually, a silence that hit like a blow.)

Really, now I'm surprised I didn't think of Joyce's death right away, despite how often it seems like I've heard Angel's change mentioned. You do make a good point that, within the parameters of the series, it can be seen as even more of a shock.

LKW | May 24, 00:31 CET