History TearJerker / DrQuinnMedicineWoman

* During a town council meeting to decide if a new teacher who uses corporal punishment should be dismissed or not, Loren is firmly in the camp of supports. However, Jake sits through the meeting with an eerily silent and angry look on his face. Then, it comes up that she is using a belt on the kids, and he becomes even more discontent. Eventually, he just walks out. Then, when Loren comes over to his barber shop, he finds Jake holed away and unwilling to talk to anyone, totally in a stew. Jake then tells him that he was subjected to hellish belt beatings by his own mother as a boy. The gist of it is she was a violent and abusive alcoholic and Jake never knew when she would use it... what would set her off...

* Jake being forced to relinquish his treasured keepsake of his father, a silver pocketwatch, as part of the reparations to the family of the Cheyenne he accidentally killed. Sully's response to his objection to give it up is even harder to swallow because of how sobering and pitiless it is. It takes on a level of DramaticIrony upon learning Jake's father ran out on the family when he was little.

* [[spoiler:The reveal that Hank has a mentally disabled son. Worse, he had a past love and sired a child through her, but the mother died. However, in exchange for being autistic, the boy is also a savant who can draw like no other. He sketches a picture of the late woman that is a perfect likeness, and Hank had nothing but the memories to remember her by. Upon seeing this photo, he sheds tears for the first and perhaps only time on-screen.]]

* The epidemic in the final season serves to kill off three major characters. [[spoiler:One of them happens to be Anthony, but he doesn't die right off the bat. Anthony, who is already an IllBoy who was at risk of dying at any time without warning, dies as a result of kidney failure brought on by exposure to the epidemic, which sealed his fate. Losing him nearly destroys Robert E and Grace's marriage when they both just shut down and stop communicating to each other, which causes Robert E to ultimately take his grievances out on a professional boxer.]]

* Mike's TraumaButton being pushed when she encounters a patient who suffered the same kind of brain aneurysm that suddenly killed her father. She later explains the circumstances of her father's death: he was eating breakfast and talking and acting just fine, but then out of nowhere, slumped down in his food and was dead instantly. AdultFear rings out extremely hard with this, because there were no warning signs it was coming except the stress of his job, and the idea that someone close to oneself could just up and die without warning is very haunting, to say the least.

** Worse, it was a downhill battle and Loren was an angsty, easily-pissed off shop owner who hates strangers. He got in the way of Dr. Mike properly treating his wife and diagnosing her illness earlier. When it became apparent that Maude was suffering from heart failure, she ordered digitalis powder to delay the onset, but eventually the supply ran out and Maude finally had a fatal heart attack in the store, with Mike and Loren and company helpless to do anything but watch. Up until then, Mike did well to bear the aches and pains of moving out to Colorado Springs. ''This'' incident sends Mike into a fit of tears. It's the first time she feels truly broken and doubts her abilities.

-->'''Loren''': I've seen you beat up lots of people before.
-->'''Jake''': [[ArmorPiercingQuestion But you never saw me hit them with a]] ''[[ArmorPiercingQuestion belt]]'', [[ArmorPiercingQuestion did you...?]]

* The epidemic in the final season serves to kill off three major characters. [[spoiler:One of them happens to be Anthony, but he doesn't die right off the bat, Anthony, who is already an IllBoy who was at risk of dying at any time without warning, dies as a result of kidney failure brought on by exposure to the epidemic, which sealed his fate. Losing him nearly destroys Robert E and Grace's marriage when they both just shut down and stop communicating to each other, which causes Robert E to ultimately take his grievances out on a professional boxer.]]
** [[spoiler:The other two are Dr. Mike's own sister, Marjorie (the crabby one who Loren got romantically involved with) and Coleen's best friend, Becky.]]

* Dr. Mike being forced to fumigate and cremate her entire clinic in "A Place to Die", because somehow, it has developed a staph infection- something that was yet to be discovered and properly identified as a malady in her time. For all she knew, her clinic was tainted, and ''everything'' was toxic, forcing her to burn her entire collection of medical records, equipment, furniture, and even keepsakes that she could never replace. The whole town came out to watch her burn up her paraphernalia like a funeral pyre in sorrow, and Mike sat there crying silently.