Tear Jerker / Good Omens (2019)

Specifically Tear Jerkers from the 2019 series, for such moments from the book it's based on see here.

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Warning: Spoilers Off applies to this page. Proceed at your own risk.

Season 1

• Anytime Crowley laments his demonic state is rather saddening, especially considering it was over 6000 years ago and he still hasn't gotten over it.
  • From the second episode we get this:
    Crowley: I didn't mean to fall. I just hung around the wrong people.
  • In the third episode, we get this during the argument between him and Aziraphale:
    Aziraphale: May you be forgiven.
    Crowley: I won't be forgiven. Not ever. Part of a demon's job description. Unforgivable, that's what I am.
  • Later in the fourth episode, after he considers his options where he could go, there's this:
    Crowley: I only ever asked questions. That's all it took to be a demon in the old days.
    • In the opener of Season 2, we find out the specifics. He found out his hard work, which he was immensely proud of, in expanding the universe was to end in only 6,000 years and to be Earth's "wallpaper". It's pretty understandable why he was so upset.
  • And finally in the fifth episode, drinking himself senseless, thinking Aziraphale had been killed.
    Crowley: I never asked to be a demon. I just minded my own business one day and then "Oh lookie here, it's Lucifer and the guys!" [...] Next thing I was doing a million lightyear freestyle dive into a pool of boiling sulfur!
    • This still manages to be even sadder in the script-book. The way Crowley tells it, it just hammers home the fact that he didn't even know what he was getting himself into until it was too late.
• In relation to the above, Crowley's appeal to God as he contemplates leaving for Alpha Centauri. Yeah, he's a demon, but in that moment he sounds like he's praying:
  Crowley: Great Plan? God, you listening? Show me a Great Plan. Okay, I know you're testing them, you said you were going to be testing them. You shouldn't test them to destruction. Not to the end of the world.
• Crowley is genuinely horrified that God plans to drown everyone in the Great Flood.
  Crowley: Not the kids. You can't kill kids.
  • Even worse, he comments that this is something his side would come up with, not the 'holier-than-thou' Lord. The fact that Aziraphale is so apathetic to the whole issue (or at least is trying to pretend to be) makes the morality of the entire situation even more horrifying.
  • Aziraphale is also clearly trying not to cry at one point.
  • The scenes are made even more poignant for a Doctor Who fan as Tennant's Doctor was one of the Doctors who believed they destroyed their own homeworld of Gallifrey and spent one terrible night counting each and every child that was living on Gallifrey at the time. Later companion Clara once told the (Twelfth) Doctor that, if he tried to go evil, his reign of terror would end with the first crying child. This seems to apply to Crowley as well.
• Crowley's reactions when he has to save Aziraphale from discorporating twice. The first time during the French Revolution, it's clearly Anger Born of Worry as he rescues the angel from the guillotine. Crepes are not as important as his friend's body, as the demon goes What Were You Thinking?. Crowley then tries to cover up that this is not a good deed, by sending Aziraphale's jailer in his place to the guillotine. The second time, Aziraphale is threatened at gunpoint by Nazi spies. Crowley runs in, hopping in pain because the church is still holy, and warns everyone that the place is going to get bombed. After all, only a demon would want to destroy such a place. Aziraphale realizes what this means — another historical building will get damaged, his would-be killers will die, and only the books will survive— and his expression changes.
• Jesus's crucifixion, though a brief scene, is shown in pretty graphic detail, with Jesus sobbing in pain - while asking his Father to forgive his murderers - as he's nailed to the cross. The humor in the scene is also deliberately understated to match how somber it is.
  • The woman in blue might be the Virgin Mary, watching her son die brutally.^note It's might because she is traditionally recognizable in art by wearing a distinctive shade of blue. However, Biblical sources disagree on whether Mary was at the Crucifixion. John is the only one to specifically mention Mary, the mother of Jesus, as there were other Marys present. Speaking of Mary, there's a woman in green who's probably Mary Magdalene.
  • Aziraphale and Crowley's exchange perfectly sums up how senseless the whole thing is:
    Crowley: What was it he said that got everyone so upset?
    Aziraphale: (sadly) "Be kind to each other."
    Crowley: Oh, yeah. That'll do it.
• "Someone's killed my best friend! Bastards! All of you!"
  • Watching Crowley stoically stride out of Aziraphale's burning bookshop after the above, and drive away looking possibly the most shaken we have ever seen him, is one heck of a gut-puncher. (And to the outro of "Somebody to Love", no less.)
  • Keeping in mind here that Crowley thinks the last thing he'll ever say to Aziraphale is "I won't even think of you!"
  • Along similar lines, David Tennant's heartbreaking line reading of "I lost my best friend..." when Crowley tells the discorporated Aziraphale why he didn't go to Alpha Centauri.
  • The whole scene between Crowley and a discorporated Aziraphale is pretty bleak. Crowley's in pieces, Aziraphale's full of regret, and even though Aziraphale manages to reassure his friend that he didn't get Hellfired out of existence, he's still stranded in limbo and unable to be of much help. Then Crowley has to break the news that the bookshop was incinerated, devastating the angel. Mr. "I'm not nice!" Crowley's voice breaks as he tells him the news.
    "Oh, Aziraphale...I'm sorry. It burned down."
  • The music reinforces the sense of melancholy — called "Is That You?" it's a sad little piano piece that reinforces that the leads are at their lowest point...before Crowley reveals that he rescued the prophecy book, the music perks up and the pair realise that they're not beaten yet.
• The destruction of Crowley's car. Yeah, it's just a car, but the line "You were a good car, rest in peace" is delivered with intense grief.
• The death of the deliveryman is just as sad as in the book. He leaves his wife alone on the weekend to deliver the packages (despite her pleas with him to stay with her), and when he gets to the instructions for delivering a message to Death, he writes "I love you Maud" on a piece of paper and then does as he's been asked.
  • In order to summon Death, you need to take a life; which in this case was his own. Thankfully, after Armageddon is averted, his timeline is reset to him being alive again, just after delivering all the parcels.
• Newt and Anathema reach the radio equipment and find a bunch of messages from people all over the world trying in vain to stop the war. No one wants to fight, everybody recognizes war is a mistake, but they're unable to stop the bombs from going off due to the Horsemen preventing them.
• Aziraphale and Crowley's situations in themselves are pretty sad, even before their respective Head Offices really start laying into them. Aziraphale is treated as an oddity as best and with sneering contempt at worst — nobody seriously thinks that he has anything worthwhile to contribute, even though he's the one angel with real experience and knowledge of Earth and humanity. Meanwhile, Crowley's simply too decent to fit in with his fellow demons, and his obvious need for camraderie, respect and freedom is extremely unlikely to be met by the denizens of Hell. In both cases, their affection for humanity and the mortal world is regarded as a serious personality flaw, and their colleagues avoid them wherever possible. No wonder they stick so closely together - each is really all that the other's got.
  • An extra kick in the gut is that, despite their fondness for humanity as a whole, neither particularly seems to go in for forming close friendships with humans (presumably because of the difference in lifespans). Crowley and Aziraphale have only recently begun seeing each other on a regular basis — prior to the 20th century, they dipped in and out of each other's lives. It paints a fairly lonely picture: ostracised by their fellow immortals, separated from the humans they live among, and only the occasional visit from the one person they could probably call a friend.
  • Crowley also has the additional obstacle of Aziraphale's Tsundere tendencies towards their friendship. He doesn't hesitate to refer to the angel as his friend, but Aziraphale is less keen to acknowledge the demon as such.
  • Aziraphale was probably too terrified to acknowledge that he and Crowley are friends. Crowley's good at talking himself out of sticky situations, he incited the Original Sin, and he's great at taking credit for all the horrible things humans have done. It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that in spite of the demons not liking Crowley, Aziraphale probably thinks that Crowley is viewed fairly highly by his higher-ups. Aziraphale, on the other hand, is known to his higher-ups as someone who misplaced a sword that the Almighty gave him. His assignment on Earth is probably seen to his fellow angels as a punishment. Considering both Crowley and Aziraphale know about their Head Office's propensity to be merciless when dealing with traitors, and Aziraphale's inability to lie well, he's probably worried that something he does is going to get them both killed.
• The fact that Aziraphale still has misplaced faith in the forces of Heaven to do the right thing and stop Armageddon. Even though his fellow angels treat him like garbage, he still holds onto hope that if he can just gather the right amount of information or present his argument correctly, they'll come around. Then Metatron bluntly confirms to his face that Heaven fully intends to fight the war in spite of any chance to avert it, destroying the Earth and billions of human lives, just to prove their side's better. You can just see Aziraphale's faith in Heaven shatter in that moment.
  • Worse, Aziraphale likely realizes that he kept vital information from Crowley, the one person who is truly on his side, All for Nothing.
• After Shadwell sees the map of Tadfield is smoking, he assumes that he carelessly sent Newton to his death, and is immediately consumed with guilt and fear. He immediately starts trying to find a way to get to Tadfield to save him. Shadwell may be a curmudgeonly bastard, but it's clear that he won't have an innocent death on his conscience.
  Shadwell: I've sent him into the jaws of doom. (...) I'm a bad man! And a worse Witchfinder Sergeant! I can't believe I let him go alone!
• Anathema goes Oh, No... Not Again! when she receives a package containing more prophecies of Agnes Nutter. As she puts it, they just stopped the end of the world and she just wants to be a normal woman with her own goals. Newt then tells her she can have both, a choice and commitment to the prophecies, and he's going to be with her, every step of the way.
• Crowley and Aziraphale's reactions to learning that each was going to be executed unceremoniously, with Aziraphale not even receiving a fair trial. (Fortunately, Agnes's prophecy warned them to switch faces.) Aziraphale decides to have fun with it while disguised as Crowley and only asks as a Last Request that he can take off his jacket before being submerged in holy water. Crowley, on the other hand, is visibly shocked that Gabriel would execute his angel without a trial. Demons in Hell will at least hold a court, and the charges against Crowley were legitimate. It's no surprise, then, that Crowley with Aziraphale's face has a stony Death Glare as he uses the hellfire to shoot it at the angels.
• The duo acknowledges that they probably will have to deal with Heaven and Hell united against them in the future. But for now they are together, Earth is safe, and Adam is a normal kid. They decide to hell and heaven with it and come out as friends, eating dinner. It's You Are Worth Hell, on Earth at least. Aziraphale actually is excited about the thought of defending their friendship.
• A happier kind of Tear Jerker is the ending, with Crowley and Aziraphale, after everything they've gone through, sat in the Ritz, finally free from both Heaven and Hell and able to live their lives peacefully together at last, all while a beautiful cover of "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square" by Tori Amos plays.
  Crowley: To the world.
  Aziraphale: To the world!
• Newt's expression as he walks out with his belongings after being fired from another job is pretty heartbreaking. He clearly knew it was going to happen before he even left for work that morning, but he had just enough hope to be crushed when it all went wrong again.

Season 2

• Crowley's situation in particular during Season 2. He and Aziraphale are no longer working for Hell or Heaven and are much closer than they used to be, but Crowley is living in his car after Shax took over his apartment, he's harassed by Shax regularly and even Beelzebub at one point, and while Aziraphale still has the bookshop and local business community to give him some structure, Crowley seems to have basically nothing going on in his own life apart from waiting for Aziraphale to call.
• The flashback sequence in "I Know Where I'm Going," where Aziraphale learns how morally gray and complex life on Earth actually is. He's horrified that Elspeth digs up corpses to sell to Mr. Dalrymple. However, he learns that this is so she gets enough money to support her and Morag. Meanwhile, he also learns that Dalrymple needs these corpses to dissect and teach his students so they can improve their surgical skills so they don't repeat a seven-year-old boy dying in an attempt to remove his tumor.
• The entire last chunk of episode 6, season 2. Aziraphale is giddy at the prospect of returning to Heaven to replace Gabriel and taking Crowley with him as an angel - not fully grasping what Crowley had done long ago, that both Heaven and Hell are toxic. In a desperate attempt to get Aziraphale to stay, Crowley kisses the angel. Aziraphale only allows himself to reciprocate briefly. They part on bad terms; Aziraphale leaving his bookshop behind and taking nothing with him, Crowley driving away slowly in his Bentley.
  • Aziraphale is visibly tearful for much of this exchange, and outright crying after the kiss. As misguided a choice as it is, a huge motivating factor for his decision was believing he and Crowley could finally be together without risking hostility from either "side", and instead he lost Crowley completely.
  • Additional kickers include Aziraphale touching his lips as if to relive the memory of the kiss, and the Bentley playing a Dark Reprise of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square".
  • In the midst of their argument, Crowley stops and asks Aziraphale to listen. The angel can't hear anything, which Crowley says was the point: "No nightingales."

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