History WhamEpisode / LiveActionTV

* The new ''{{Series/Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' does this kind of thing with awesomeness, and on a (very) regular basis:

* [[Recap/BlackadderS4E6Goodbyeee The finale]] of ''Series/{{Blackadder}} Goes Forth''. The entire ''Blackadder'' series is a fairly light, humourous take on various historical periods, with ''Goes Forth'' taking place during WWI. The episode begins with orders coming that the crew are going to make a push across No Man's Land, and the tone of the episode gets progressively darker and gloomier as the characters begin to accept and realize the gravity of what awaits them. The final scene ends with a "good luck" from Blackadder as they climb out of the trench and it is strongly implied that they don't make it very far.
** Their fate is confirmed by the script, whose stage directions conclude with the words "They won't get far." The final moments of the episode itself cements this as it shows the scene of conflict dissolve to reveal the same warzone, many years later, [[TearJerker as a poppy field.]]
** Actually three out of four seasons of Blackadder [[spoiler: end with the death of the complete regular cast]]. But what makes the final scene of ''Goes Forth'' so heartbreaking to watch is its rather chilling realism [[spoiler:that was absent before, playing the deaths for laughs rather]].
* ''Series/BlackMirror'': "The National Anthem", [[EstablishingSeriesMoment the pilot episode of the series, is the series' Wham Episode]], and quite possibly the most Wham Episode in television. British Prime Minister Michael Callow is awakened early morning to an emergency meeting with his staff and shown a video of beloved Princess Susannah pleading for her life. Unable to contain the video as it had been posted to [=YouTube=] and seen by 50,000 people before being taken down, he asks for the kidnapper's demands, which his staff is reluctant to tell Callow. Does her captor want money? Someone released from prison? No. The fiend's demands are far, far worse. [[spoiler:He demands Callow to have sex with a pig on live TV.]]

** "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E10Pathfinder Pathfinder]]", where Barclay manages to establish a permanent method of communication between the Federation and Voyager.

** The Season 1 finale "[[Recap/SupernaturalS01E22DevilsTrap Devil's Trap]]" has Sam, John, and Dean barely escaping from YED at the very end of the episode, heading for the ER, only for the Impala to be slammed mid-conversation by a demon-driven semi. Fade out with everyone incapacitated (or worse) on the side of the road...

* ''Series/{{Black Mirror}}'':
** "The National Anthem", the pilot episode of the anthology series, is the series' wham episode, and quite possibly the most wham episode in television. British Prime Minister Michael Callow is awaken early morning to an emergency meeting with his staff and shown a video of beloved Princess Susannah pleading for her life. Unable to contain the video as it had been posted to [=YouTube=] and seen by 50,000 people before being taken down, he asks for the kidnapper's demands, which his staff is reluctant to tell Callow. Does her captor want money? Someone released from prison? No. The fiend's demands are far, far worse. [[spoiler: He demands Callow to have sex with a pig on live TV.]]

* ''Series/{{Revenge}}'':

* ''Series/{{Scandal}}'': It can be safely agreed that the episode "Defiance" is this, due to President Fitzgerald actually being shot at the end. The episode "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" reveals at the end that the President's assassin is none other than Huck, one of the members of Olivia's team!

* {{Series/Sliders}}, "Exodus, Part 2": The entire series flips on its head when the crew not only meet a general who has the coordinates to Earth-Prime (and are forced to chase him as he hops from dimension to dimension) but meet a new team member (Maggie) and lose another (Professor Arturo, who sacrifices himself to prevent Quinn from being shot by Rickman).

* ''Series/{{Soap}}'' has a good few of these, odd since you learn in the very first episode that Burt killed Mary's first husband (it's only a wham when she finds out). Learning that Carol, pregnant with Jodie's baby and been going on about them being together since her introduction, leave Jodie at the altar was a big one.

* ''Series/SonsOfAnarchy'' is a show with a few Wham-ish episodes, but the season two finale upped the ante quite a bit. [[spoiler:Gemma is on the lam after Stahl frames her for the murders of Edmond Hayes and Polly Zobelle, only one of which Gemma actually killed, Cameron Hayes kills Half Sack after he tries to attack him when he threatens to kill Jax's son in return for his own son's death (who was actually killed by Stahl), then proceeds to kidnap Abel and tie Tara up. When they hear that Abel has been kidnapped, the club leaves Ethan Zobelle, who they had pinned down just moments earlier, and he gets away (to make matters worse, he hasn't been seen or mentioned since so it is very likely he got away with all that he did.]] [[TheIrishMob Goddamn Irish]].

** ''Sweet and Vaded'' of season six has two whams: plot A gives us a heinous bad guy (seriously, the approval for this inclusion was universal) the likes of which we have rarely if ever seen on TV. Plot B has Tara's insane plan to get away from Gemma's threats of being fist raped in prison...she tries to goad her into a fight before screaming and slamming herself on a table, spilling a lot of blood she had drawn from herself earlier. Her boss and Unser rush in and claim Gemma made her have a miscarriage, and when Jax tends to her Tara gets him to sign custody away from Gemma and promise she will never get near her kids.
** In Episode 11 of Season 6...[[spoiler:Jax finally kills Clay, along with most of the IRA's key stateside players. He then doctors the scene to make it look like Clay killed the three Irish as a result of a arms deal gone bad, freeing the club from both the albatross of its former President and the blood money of the gun trade.]]

* Season 3 of ''{{Series/Suits}}'' introduces several new characters after Pearson Hardman merges with a London firm to become Darby Pearson. One is Ava Hessington, an oil executive who stands accused of murder because her company bribed the dictator of an unnamed African country to allow a pipeline...just days before the environmentalists opposed to it were killed. Another is Stephen, a charming British lawyer who arrives to help Harvey handle her defense. In the last scene of season 6, Mike discovers that the dictator was Stephen's college buddy, and Stephen arranged the meeting between Ava and the dictator so that he thought he was being paid to commit murder, while she thought she was paying him to grant building permits.
* Due to ''Series/{{Superstore}}'''s setting in Missouri, an area with a lot of tornados, most viewers probably thought nothing of the offhanded comments throughout the show about tornado drills and the store's lack of tornado readiness. However, in the season two finale aptly titled "Tornado", the titular storm hits the store, complete with impressively realistic footage of the store being destroyed and the roof being ripped off. The employees are terrified for their lives the entire time, and the scene of the traumatized employees emerging into the store after the storm and seeing the state of damage is especially poignant for a sitcom.
* ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' has several of these per season by virtue of its contestant elimination, but arguably none was more shocking or important than ''Survivor: Borneo'' 7th episode, "The Merger", when Gretchen, the beloved leader of the fan favorite Pagongs, was voted out by the Tagi alliance. Gretchen was arguably the first contestant voted out for strategic gamesmanship rather than social/survival reasons, and was the first elimination that *no one* saw coming.
* ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' "First Contact". Season 5 was plodding along, it looked like the series wasn't going to be renewed and it was like a sick sheepdog being taken to the barn to be shot. Then ''wham'' -- a favourite character from ''SG-1'' (Daniel Jackson) arrives, a new species is introduced possessing technology that easily gets through the Lantean/Ancients tech that was always the reliable fail-safe for our heroes, pretty much everything else gets a huge shakeup. And ''then'' in the conclusion, it is revealed that the new enemies are, in fact, rogue Asgard. At the end of this two-parter, the show {{re|setButton}}turns to the [[StatusQuoIsGod status quo]], but given ''SG-1'''s track record of bringing back years old plots down the line, in all likelihood we would have seen them again if the show hadn't been canceled.
** "The Daedalus Variations" as well; the starship Daedalus mysteriously and suddenly appears in orbit with no explanation, and the team goes aboard. They find it's jumping from universe to universe on a regular basis. A lot of the universes seemed like they were foreshadowing future events, including an enigmatic and implacable alien race that also manage to come aboard the ship and wipe the floor with the crew. There's no doubt these aliens would have shown up in the prime universe in a later season, but the show didn't last long enough.
* ''Series/StargateSG1'' has a few, but one that stands out for many fans is season 7's "Heroes". O'Neill gets shot in the gut, and Samantha Carter absolutely ''falls apart'' upon her return to Earth, which, seeing as how she's been explicitly in love with O'Neill for several years, leads viewers to think he's the one who died. Then a [[RedShirt previously unintroduced member]] of the SGC is seriously wounded, a red herring to make the viewer think he'll be KilledOffForReal. But part of the way through his videotaped "final message" to his wife, the viewer realizes that the person that died was [[spoiler:Dr. Janet Fraiser, Carter's best friend]], a fact hammered home a few seconds later by her brutally sudden caught-on-camera death scene.
** "Camelot": The Ori have invaded the Milky Way... and they just {{curb stomp|Battle}}ed a combined Tau'ri/Jaffa/Asgard/Lucian Alliance armada.
** "Meridian": The one where Daniel dies. No, this wasn't the first time it happened, but he spent the entire episode dying this time, and he stayed that way for a whole season.
** "Forever in a Day": Since the pilot, rescuing Daniel's wife had been one of the main subplots. Teal'c kills her in this episode.

** "Skin Of Evil", the Season 1 episode where Tasha Yar dies. Let's not forget that this is the franchise that codified the RedShirt as the person who dies while the main characters are fine, and that the ''only'' [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan major character death]] in the franchise up to that point had [[BackFromTheDead been undone]] [[Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock shortly thereafter]]. Tasha being KilledOffForReal was a fairly large deviation from what most people had come to expect from the series, and as such it was understandably shocking.
** In "Q Who", Q introduces the ''Enterprise'' to the Borg, to make the point to the Federation that they aren't able to handle every threat in the galaxy. This encounter seriously shakes the Federation's confidence.
** Perhaps the greatest Wham Episode in the history of the Star Trek franchise, "The Best of Both Worlds", is absolutely shocking. After a drawn-out battle with the Borg - away missions, sneaking around, confrontations - the Enterprise receives a hailing message from the Borg Cube. It's [[spoiler:Picard. And he's a Borg]].
*** [[spoiler: I am Locutus]]
*** [[spoiler: "Mr. Worf: Fire."]]
*** This was an even larger one at the time, as due to contract disputes there was no proof that Creator/PatrickStewart would be back next season.
** The appearance of "Tasha Yar" at the end of the "Redemption" episode is a major failure to perform this trope, in that it is clearly intended to be a Wham Event, except that the HalfHumanHybrid, TimeTravel angle never affects any story at all, and Sela is just another scheming Romulan commander scheming her schemes until she's replaced by the next scheming Romulan commander.
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' had a few:
** "State of Flux", in which Seska is revealed to be a Cardassian spy who has been selling Voyager's technology to the Kazon.
** "Blood Fever", in which the crew learns that they are approaching Borg space.
** The two-part episode "Scorpion" introduces the audience to Species 8472, an alien species even more dangerous than the Borg, which leads ''Voyager'' to arrange an alliance with the Borg, as well as Seven of Nine, a human who was assimilated when she was still a child and is ultimately disconnected from the Borg collective. Afterwards, she becomes a member of ''Voyager'''s crew, providing valuable insight on the Delta Quadrant.
** "Message in a Bottle", a mostly comedic episode where ''Voyager'' finally succeeds in contacting the Federation to tell them that they are alive.
** "Thirty Days", in which Tom Paris gives in to his hatred of his father, and breaks the Prime Directive, resulting in him being demoted to Ensign, forced to endure thirty days of solitary confinement in the Brig, ostracized by the crew, and practically coming close to undoing five years of goodwill and redemption over the course of the series. However this marks a turning point in his character, as he practically vows never to let this happen ever again. He redeems himself over the rest of the series, begins to make peace with his father, gets promoted back to Lieutenant at the end of Season 6, and by the end of the series, gets married to B'Elanna Torres, and have a daughter. By the final episode, Tom's transformation is complete, with him being content with his lot in life.
** "Pathfinder", where Barclay manages to establish a permanent method of communication between the Federation and Voyager.
* ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': After two seasons of episodic adventure, "The Expanse" sees Earth attacked by the mysterious Xindi. Seven million are dead and this was only the weapons test. To save Earth, the crew embark to the Delphic Expanse with 1) Trip grieving over the death of his sister and wanting revenge, 2) T'Pol quitting the Vulcan High Command to help in the mission and 3) Archer realizing he's going to have a lot of tough decisions to make in the future.
** The destruction of Florida radically alters the theme of the show. [[WebAnimation/RedVsBlue "Man, poor Florida..."]]
*** Now see, why'd they have to go and blow up the mother from ''Good Times''? Hasn't that poor woman suffered enough having to listen to Jimmy "J.J." Walker all the time?
** You're watching an episode in Season Four and you're greeted with a flashback to ''Film/StarTrekFirstContact'' where the Vulcans meet Zefram Cochrane. The Vulcan does the salute, says "Live long and prosper", and Zefram fumbles and lowers his hand... [[spoiler:And grabs a shotgun, blowing the Vulcan away as the other humans rush the ship. Welcome to "In a Mirror, Darkly". Welcome to the MirrorUniverse.]]
* ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'': In "Vaulting Ambition", Burnham finds out that the Gabriel Lorca who has been leading the ''Discovery'' crew is '''not''' the Lorca of the Prime Universe but is instead his mirror universe counterpart, who manipulated ''everything'' for the first half of the season to get Burnham to lead him back to his universe so he could depose the Emperor.

** "Battle of Starcourt": Billy makes a HeroicSacrifice and dies at the hands of the Mind Flayer, Hopper is presumed dead, Eleven loses her powers and is taken in by Joyce, and the Byers move out of town, taking Will and Eleven to California and breaking up the Party, and the Soviets have a fully grown Demogorgon in their control.
** "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab": The origins of both Vecna and Dr. Brenner's experiments, along with the truth behind the lab massacre, are revealed: Vecna was originally Henry Creel, the telekinetic son of Victor Creel who used his powers to kill his mother and sister (then framed Victor for the murders). He was later taken in by Dr. Brenner and became the first child (labeled "001") in the Hawkins Lab program, eventually growing up to become the orderly that "assisted" Eleven. After regaining his powers, 001 slaughtered the rest of the children and orderlies, but a telekinetic fight with El sent him tumbling into the Upside Down (with the same shot from the season premiere), where the dimension's lightning transformed him into the terrifying monster he is now.
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' fans are ''still'' reeling from the third season finale, "No Rest For The Wicked", which had Dean getting sent to hell for the summer, Sam's powers coming back and Lilith only just starting her reign of terror.
** The discovery that Mary knew the YED in "All Hell Breaks Loose".
** "Changing Channels" seems like a goofy episode until you get to the last part and- oh, wait, the Trickster is actually the Archangel Gabriel and he's pretty bitter over the way his brothers and are always fighting and doesn't want to have to see it.
** 'Hammer of the Gods' has Gabriel faking his death for the nth time, other gods complaining about how they were here before the angels- then Lucifer turns up and kills Gabriel.
** The trilogy of "What Is And What Should Never Be/All Hell Breaks Loose". "What Is" set up how much of a broken basket case Dean really was and "All Hell" took it to astonishing new lows (selling his worthless soul). The demon gets killed (but it's an anti-climax if there ever was one), a whole new war has begun, Dad gets out of hell and Sam might have come back wrong. Yay?
** The Season 1 finale has Sam, John, and Dean barely escaping from YED at the very end of the episode, heading for the ER, only for the Impala to be slammed midconversation by a demon-driven semi. Fade out with everyone incapacitated (or worse) on the side of the road...
** "Lazarus Rising". Dean crawls out of his grave, fresh from Hell, which is pretty standard stuff for these guys. They spend the episode searching for the baddie that brought him back, and when Dean and Bobby finally manage to summon it for questioning at the end of the episode, it turns out his resurrection was performed by something we didn't believe existed in this verse- an Angel of the Lord (and a BadassLongcoat Angel of the Lord at that). Because God commanded it. (!) Because we have work for you. (!!!) Guess we're not just chasing around the freak of the week anymore...
** ''Every'' time ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' ups the JustForFun/HolyShitQuotient we get a WhamEpisode. Notables from season 5 ''alone'' include: "The Song Remains the Same" (notable for revealing not only the origin of Azazel's plan but Mary and John's own shocking pasts), "Point of No Return" (for the jaw-dropping developments with Dean... and for the ridiculous amounts of really obvious HoYay between Dean and Castiel (talk about catering to your audience...)), "Hammer of the Gods" (where the HSQ hit the roof and just kept on going), "The Devil You Know" (thank you, Crowley), "2 Minutes To Midnight" (Introducing the CosmicEntity Death (which threw the show into GoMadFromTheRevelation proportions)), and "Swan Song" (if you don't know why it's on this list, then you haven't seen it).
** Season 6 had a few {{Wham Episode}}s, but by and far the biggest is (naturally enough) the season finale "The Man Who Knew Too Much". Castiel - as per his own StoryArc for the season - finally [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope jumps off the slippery slope]] from WellIntentionedExtremist to full-blown KnightTemplar: [[spoiler: he breaks the wall in Sam's mind - returning his memories of Hell and putting him in a coma - before killing Balthazaar and absorbing all the souls of Purgatory. He then proceeds to [[AGodAmI declare himself the new God]] and demands that the heroes bow down to him]].
** Season 7 midseason finale "At Death's Door". [[spoiler: Bobby]] dies; that is all.
** Season 8, episode 1 "We Need To Talk About Kevin" has Dean [[spoiler: escaping from Purgatory by working alongside (and demonstration friendship with) a ''vampire'']]. It also goes on to reveal this season's plot--shutting the Gates of Hell ''forever''.
** 8x22 and 8x23, "Clip Show" and "Sacrifice" were back-to-back Wham Episodes (though this is to be expected, as they were the two final episodes of the season). In "Clip Show" Crowley [[spoiler: begins killing off everyone the Winchesters have ever saved--supporting characters such as Sarah Blake are killed while Crowley gives them an ultimatum: Make a deal with him to stop working to shut down Hell, or everyone they've ever met dies]]. "Sacrifice" ups it even further with [[spoiler: Sam using Crowley for the third trial, and the revelation that he doesn't care at all if he dies in the process]]. Then [[spoiler: Metatron betrays Castiel, kills Naomi, and uses Castiel's grace (rendering him human) to ''forcibly evict all the angels from Heaven and make them fall'']].
** Ho ho ho, the season 9 finale has to be the absolute worst in the series - and that's saying something! To name a few in the episode: [[spoiler: Metatron decides to become the new Jesus(!) Cas is captured by Metatron's flunkies (!!) Dean is killed by Metatron (admittedly not unprecedented) and then ''Dean becomes a demon''(!!!). That's right, that thing that he's been ''hunting since the show began'']]!
** The Season 12 finale is probably one of the biggest: [[spoiler: Lucifer kills Rowena and Castiel before Crowley of all people performs a HeroicSacrifice to activate a spell to trap Lucifer in a post-apocalyptic AlternateUniverse. Lucifer is trapped, but not before dragging Mary in with him. Meanwhile, Lucifer's [[HalfHumanHybrid Nephilhim]] son is born, already fully grown]].
** The Season 14 finale, though... After every BigBad and cosmic horror the Winchesters have stood up to and antagonized, who has it out for them now (and which sets up a story arc for the very last season)? [[spoiler: Chuck, aka God Himself, goes from mild-mannered to literally-raise-the-dead scary just because the Winchesters are tired of being His favorite entertainment as cosmic chew toys and don't want to play ball.]]
* ''Series/TerminatorTheSarahConnorChronicles'' has a few, like the car bombing at the end of "What He Beheld."

** John's "I knew the whole time and did nothing" speech to Jesse. He goes from emo!John to John Connor in one scene.
** "On The Lighthouse." There's a second machine intelligence operating in the present of similar design to John Henry, based on Cyberdyne technology. And it wants both John Henry and the Connors dead.
** Nothing compared to "Adam Raised a Cain." Our heroes find out about John Henry, and Weaver finds out about our heroes. Derek is dead. Sarah is captured by police. In one episode, everyone becomes exposed, and the team gets cut down to John and Cameron alone.
** "Born To Run" had far more Wham than any of those. John Henry has taken Cameron into the future with him, and John and Catherine Weaver follow after them. Now it's just John and Weaver in the future, where they shortly meet Derek Reese, who lets slip that in this universe - presumably due to John's teleportation into the future - John Connor never existed. And then Kyle Reese and Allison (from Palmdale) show up. Then the show was canceled.

* ''Series/ThirdWatch'' has a lot of these, but the most memorable is the season five finale "Monsters" where the hospital that the entire Third Watch is at gets gunned down by Donald Mann's people.

* ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' has had a few. "[[Recap/TorchwoodS2E1KissKissBangBang Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang]]" and "[[Recap/TorchwoodS2E6Reset Reset]]" were pretty shocking, but "[[Recap/TorchwoodS2E13ExitWounds Exit Wounds]]" beats them both for sheer "wham".

** ''Every episode of Season 5 save the finale counts.'' If each episode doesn't have a HUGE ending, each episode still has something '''huge''' happen in it.

** In "Exodus, Part II" (beginning to notice a pattern with the part two's, anyone?), Colonel Tigh [[spoiler: euthanizes his wife]], the Pegasus is destroyed, everyone escapes New Caprica, Baltar goes to join the Cylons, and the crew compliment of the Pegasus are merged with Galactica.

** ''Every episode of Season 5 save the finale counts.'' If each episode doesn't have a '''huge''' ending, each episode still has something HUGE happen in it.

* ''Series/BatesMotel'': The penultimate episode of season four has [[spoiler:Norman Bates gassing the house in an attempt at murder-suicide with his mother Norma. Norman survives, but Norma doesn't. While it was a ForegoneConclusion that Norma would die [[Film/{{Psycho}} given the source material]], it was still shocking to see her go as she was still one of the show's two main protagonists]].

* ''Series/TwoBrokeGirls'': "And Not-So-Sweet Charity": After a season and a half of building up the money to rent a space for their cupcake store, [[spoiler:Max and Caroline accept a buyout offer from the new owners and pay off their debts]]. That leaves them in the same position they were at the beginning of the series, but with even less money.

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'' has several of these.

** The Season 6 episode "My Road to Nowhere" ends with [[spoiler:J.D. and Kim breaking up after she suffers a miscarriage]]--capped off by TheReveal that [[spoiler:she lied about miscarrying, and she's still pregnant with J.D.'s baby]]. This is later followed up in "My Conventional Wisdom", where [[spoiler:J.D. finds out that she lied]].

*** "Saul Gone": [[spoiler:Jimmy briefly flees capture from police only to almost immediately be caught and arrested. Facing both Marie Shrader and extradition back to Albuquerque, Jimmy spins the well-detailed story that he was forced into participating in everything Walt did out of fear for his life so that he's able to negotitate an extremely lenient sentence for himself. Upon discovering Kim did confess her part in everything that happened to Howard, Jimmy--both feeling guilty and wanting to do right by Kim--confesses the truth of his willing involvement in Walt's drug empire and even brings up his guilt over what happened to Chuck and his part in that too. Jimmy loses out on the generous seven year sentence he would've gotten and instead gets 30 years--though could be less if good behavior is involved, Jimmy is respected by all the criminals for his history as Saul and therefore will be treated very well, Kim--having had her spirit revitalized--visits with Jimmy at one point where they share a cigarette just like old times again and then shortly after, part on good terms again.]]

** "Pimento": Jimmy reluctantly takes Chuck's advice to let HHM handle the Sandpiper case, but Howard and "the partners" refuse to let him work with them and offers him a buyout to relinquish control, Jimmy refuses to take it and let them take the case. It turns out [[spoiler: Chuck made Howard keep Jimmy out of the lawsuit, and Chuck blocked Jimmy's career at HHM all along, because he doesn't think Jimmy has changed his ways as a con man and doesn't deserve to practice law. When Jimmy finds all this out, he cuts ties with Chuck]].
** "Marco": The season one finale is not quite as effective but still packs a punch! Jimmy is understandably overwhelmed by Chuck's betrayal and has a breakdown at the bingo game he hosts. He goes back home, reunites with his friend Marco, and the two begin pulling scams again. On the night they decide to do just one more, Marco suffers a fatal heart attack. Jimmy refuses to let doing the honorable thing drag him down again.
** "Nailed": Jimmy's decision to forge the Mesa Verde documents to humiliate Chuck blows up spectacularly when Chuck, driving to the copy shop to find proof of Jimmy's wrongdoing, is overwhelmed by the electricity in the room and falls and hits his head.
** "Klick": Ooooh boy. When Chuck wakes up from a coma, he apparently isolates himself, causing Jimmy to confess his guilt in tampering with the Mesa Verde documents in order to make Chuck feel better. Only it is revealed that Chuck had secretly recorded Jimmy's confession, and that [[BatmanGambit the entire thing was a ploy to make Jimmy do just that]]. Meanwhile, Mike tries to assassinate Hector Salamanca and but is dissuaded when he hears his car horn blaring. He returns to his car, where he finds a note on it that says "Don't", meaning that there was someone watching him the entire time. This person is eventually confirmed to be [[Characters/BreakingBadGustavoFring Gustavo Fring]].
** "Chicanery": Jimmy is brought before the bar hearing over his break-in into Chuck's house. He manages to turn the tables on Chuck by [[spoiler:having his ex-wife Rebecca to attend the hearing and having Huell plant a cell phone battery in his breast pocket, which both exposes the delusional nature of Chuck's EHS before the court and causes Chuck to have an angry MotiveRant on the stand which undermines his own case against Jimmy]].
** "Fall": ''Daaaaamn''. [[spoiler:Nacho's plan to kill Hector fails and is forced to tell his father to give in to Hector's demands, leading his father to disown him. Thanks to Jimmy tipping off Chuck's malpractice insurer about his mental illness, the insurer seeks to double HHM's premiums. Chuck turns against Howard when he demands that Chuck go into retirement, and takes HHM to court in a breach of contract lawsuit the firm can't afford. Jimmy engages in a cruel scheme where he turns his elderly clients against one of their friends so that the woman will agree to an early Sandpiper settlement and earn him a hefty payday. And Kim, who has taken on an ungodly workload to keep her firm with Jimmy afloat, falls asleep at the wheel and has a car accident.]]
** "Lantern": [[spoiler:Jimmy is spooked enough by Kim's accident that he agrees to abandon their firm. Nacho's plot against Hector works the second time around, and Gus is forced to save Hector's life when he has a near-fatal heart attack. It is strongly implied that Gus knows what Nacho did and will put him in the doghouse for jeopardizing his revenge plan. Chuck's financial leverage over HHM is neutralized and he is practically fired by Howard. This, along with a confrontation with Jimmy, causes Chuck to suffer a major relapse into his EHS delusion and eventually kill himself]].

* ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'': This show was a veritable master of the melancholy MoodWhiplash, but there are a few big moments that really kill in the show:
** Both major episodes featuring Ben Sullivan ("My Occurrence" and "My Screw-Up") are considered two of the biggest emotional gut-punches of the early season. "My Occurrence" features him [[spoiler:getting diagnosed with leukemia]], and "My Screw Up" features [[spoiler:his death from said leukemia]].
** The last three episodes of the third season feature J.D.'s gradual realization that he doesn't love Elliot anymore--right after she finally decides to leave her boyfriend Sean to be with him.
** The Season 5 episode "My Lunch" sees Dr. Cox making the worse mistake of his medical career, leading to the deaths of three patients--which affects him so badly that he's forced to take a leave of absence from Sacred Heart, leaving J.D. (and the audience) unsure whether he'll be back.
** The finale of Season 5 features a twofer. Shortly after Dr. Cox and Jordan discover that they're unexpectedly pregnant with their second child, J.D.'s new girlfriend Kim reveals that [[spoiler:she's pregnant with J.D.'s child]]. Turns out that [[spoiler:J.D. accidently impregnated her on their second date]].
** The Season 6 episode "My Road to Nowhere" ends with [[spoiler:J.D. and Kim breaking up she suffers a miscarriage]]--capped off by TheReveal that [[spoiler:she lied about miscarrying, and she's still pregnant with J.D.'s baby]]. This is later followed up in "My Conventional Wisdom", where [[spoiler:J.D. finds out that she lied]].