While Season One's "Paper Marriage" is best-remembered as the original appearance of Reverend Jim (who became a regular the following season) as the officiant of Latka's green card wedding to a call girl, it has a surprisingly poignant ending, especially as the first time Latka had A Day in the Limelight. While everyone around Latka knows this marriage won't last by design, and it's explained to him that it won't, he doesn't fully realize the implications. At the ceremony, it turns out he spent the previous night writing a speech in English (with nothing more than his translation dictionary to work with) that he assigns Alex to deliver, and it's a short but heartfelt declaration of love to the bride, ending with an assurance that love can bridge the language barrier between them. After their first kiss, Latka says "We will love forever..." but she has to leave for another appointment already and, while she tries to be polite about it, he's clearly confused and hurt as she removes the bride outfit (revealing street clothes underneath) and leaves it, veil and all, in his arms. Everyone around him feels awful for what happened, and even as he tries to put a brave face on it ("Boy, America ees a tough town") he's clearly on the verge of tears. Happily The Tag reveals he shakes off the sorrow by day's end, and — though no one working on the show could have known then — John's in-passing assurance to him that he will find "someone else, you'll see" will prove true at the end of Season Four when he marries Simka.
In "Jim Gets a Pet", said pet is an old racehorse that had outlived its usefulness, and which he keeps in his apartment. Typical wacky Jim business, but when the horse dies, Jim officiates at a funeral (he is a Reverend, after all) and gives a remarkably perceptive, moving eulogy.
There was another episode where Alex's sister returned his 16 year-old dog, Buddy, that she had been looking after for several years. An excited Alex goes all out and pampers Buddy through the course of the episode, but he soon dies at the vet's office. Louie, who hated the dog, shows a rare moment of kindness, and gives Alex some time alone to mourn. Alex is normally a very stoic/levelheaded individual so to see him break down and start sobbing is heartwrenching.
In Season Five's "Jim's Inheritance", Reverend Jim's father dies and leaves him a fortune, but it winds up being placed in a trust due to Jim's mental state. The episode ends with Jim going through his dad's personal effects, finding a tape of "You Are The Sunshine of My Life", and listening to it while staring at his dad's old suit draped across a chair.
File that one as a heartwarming moment also; the look on Jim's face as he listens to the song - and gets the message - is pure contentment.
While Jim is the source of many hilarious moments in the series, knowing his backstory as told in "Going Home" and "The Road Not Taken" can add an overarching sadness to the character. Once a successful student at Harvard with a promising future, the effects of a single pot brownie (that he was pressured into eating by a former girlfriend) led Jim down a path of drug abuse that ultimately left him a brain-fried shell of his former self. Seeing what his son had become was clearly painful for Jim's father in the episode where he goes home to visit, though their reunion did end on as positive a note as it could given the circumstances.
