12 Times TV Shows Dealt With Real-Life Tragedies

8 Simple Rules... for Dating My Teenage Daughter was a sitcom about a suburban family - husband Paul and wife Cate, played by John Ritter and Katey Sagal, and their three teenage kids. Dad Paul held the show together, serving as the sounding board for the rest of the Hennessy family, and as the straight guy to their screwballs. Ritter and Sagal had great chemistry and made a believable TV couple. 

John Ritter's untimely passing at age 54 in 2003 from an aortic dissection was sudden and unexpected, and the show's writers had to quickly come up with a way to address it. They decided to go with the truth: Paul on the show passes as Ritter did in real life, and the rest of the family is left to deal with the fallout. The episode was authentic, funny without being schmaltzy, and lacked a live audience, which created a deafening silence. The result was a sweet and heartfelt sendoff.   

James Garner, who played Cate's father-in-law on the final episode, said the emotion on set was real during filming of the "Goodbye" episode. "When [the cast members] have to do their tender scenes when they are crying - it's not difficult for them," he said. 

Sesame Street teaches kids about the alphabet, numbers, colors, words, and other educational concepts, but also doesn't shy away from heavier subjects like prejudice, parental incarceration, divorce - and death. 

When one of the show's first human characters, Will Lee, who played grocery store owner Mr. Hooper, passed in 1982 from a heart attack, it was an opportunity for the show's writers to teach children about the irreversibility of death. For the episode "Farewell, Mr. Hooper," they consulted child psychologists and other experts to make sure the dialogue was easy for children to grasp without overwhelming them.

In the episode, 6-year-old Big Bird comes to terms with the fact that his friend is gone forever. He expresses expected feelings - anger, sadness - and worries what will happen without Mr. Hooper in his life: "Who’s going to take care of the store? Who’s gonna make me birdseed milkshakes and tell me stories?” 

Actor Bob McGrath, who plays Bob on Sesame Street, said in an interview that the researchers also came up with several reassuring messages they wanted to get across to children about what happens when someone dies, including: "'You'll be taken care of'; 'you know they are never coming back, but you're safe'; and 'Someone else would take care of you.'" 

The episode doesn't get into philosophical questions about the circle of life. "Why does it have to be this way?" Big Bird asks. And human character Gordon replies, "Big Bird, it has to be this way... because."

Caroll Spinney, the actor who played Big Bird, called the episode “one of the best things we ever did.” 

Spinney and the writers won a Peabody Award for the episode, and the writers won a Daytime Emmy Award.

Family Guy, ever since it first aired in 1999, has always been tongue-in-cheek, offering plenty of toilet humor and off-color gags. But sometimes, the animated program has shown some emotional depth, albeit with plenty of humor mixed in. 

Beloved actor Carrie Fisher was a regular on the show, playing Peter Griffin's boss at the brewery, Angela. After Fisher passed in 2016, Family Guy paid an uncharacteristically heartfelt homage to her via a service for her character, Angela. Peter gives the eulogy for Angela, who passes from taking a swim after a meal. He talks about how Angela "may be gone, but her voice will live on in DVD, Hulu Plus, and tiny droid-projected messages," and ends his speech with, "I may have lost a boss, but heaven has gained a princess."

Of course, this is Family Guy, so Peter discovers he's been delivering these words at the wrong service.

Luke Perry, who played Archie Andrews's dad, Fred, on The CW show Riverdale, passed unexpectedly at age 52 in March 2019 following a stroke. Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told Entertainment Weekly the creators decided to wait until the next season's opener to add Fred's passing to the storyline: "We didn’t want to rush it; we didn’t want to sandwich it into all the other plotlines, and we just wanted to take our time and think about it." 

In the episode, Fred dies in a hit-and-run incident after stopping to help a woman with car trouble. That woman is played by Shannen Doherty, Perry's former co-star on Beverly Hills 90210, making a surprise guest appearance. 

“Very early on, we landed on the idea that Fred should have a heroic death and that would be impactful for Archie,” Aguirre-Sacasa said. “It felt like that’s a way that Fred could have gone." He said he and Perry had discussed including Doherty on the show before the actor's passing, but it hadn't worked out. For the tribute episode, he said, when casting Doherty's character, "we thought it would be nice if it was someone that he cared for in real life and he cared so deeply about Shannen... And she really wanted to be a part of it from when we first talked to her about it.”

The episode ends with Archie vowing to live a life that would make his dad proud. There are fireworks and a parade. The final screen is black, with the words "In Memoriam Luke Perry 1966-2019."

The '90s sitcom NewsRadio never took anything seriously, not even itself. But one episode, although it still contained humor, was also filled with emotion: the show that dealt with actor Phil Hartman's passing. Hartman played Bill McNeal, a self-involved, pompous radio personality everyone loved to hate. He was a crucial part of the show and an essential cog in the cast's group dynamics. On the show, Bill dies from a heart attack. In real life, Hartman's passing was mind-numbingly horrific: His wife shot him before taking her own life. 

The NewsRadio episode begins with the team back at the office after attending Bill's service. It starts off somber, but soon they're making their usual jokes and it seems like life will go on. Bill has left behind a letter for each of them, and they get teary-eyed as they read them. 

Stephen Root, who played station owner Jimmy Jones, talked about the episode in a 2020 tribute to Hartman for Entertainment Weekly:

We read it once on the day that we usually do, on a Monday. We all cried through it and we all decided, unilaterally that we weren’t going to rehearse this show... And it was pretty tearful to shoot, but it was cathartic that we did something within the fictional structure that was real, because we really hurt that he was no longer there. That was good that we were able to address it. The rest of that season, we would have a cardboard cutout of him just peeking around the corner, almost on every show. 

On the sitcom Spin City, which ran from 1996 to 2002, Michael J. Fox played Michael Flaherty, the lovable, energetic deputy mayor of New York. Although the show had a strong cast and top-notch writing, Fox was a big draw. so the actor's announcement that he planned to leave the show in 2000 due to health concerns was a cause for heartbreak. Fox's Parkinson's disease had progressed to a point where shooting schedules were too grueling for the actor. Fox agreed to stay on through the show's 100th episode - a key number for syndication sales.

The show gave Fox an extra-long, one-hour send-off. The episode features Flaherty taking the fall for his colleagues, then resigning from his post and moving to a different city. Among the guest actors is Michael Gross, who played Fox’s father on Family Ties.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Fox had input into the final script, which was more dramatic than usual because Fox wanted to address both his character's departure and his own. Fox said he “didn’t want to be flip with the way that other people felt about it.” Co-creator Gary David Goldberg said Fox “wanted to approach [the episode] both as an artist and as a man. And he is a very special man.” 

One scene apparently took seven hours to shoot, which was physically and emotionally difficult for everyone, especially Fox, director Andy Cadiff recalled:

If you can imagine doing take after take - and the emotion stayed right on the edge every single time. It was something I had never seen before. When I said, "Cut!" for the final time and we wrapped the scene, the crew applauded. It went on for five minutes.

The show tried to limp along for another two years with a new deputy mayor in town, Charlie Sheen, but it was never the same. The final episode aired in April 2002.