Most Powerful Display Of Grief Ever On TV

It is my own opinion that the following scene from the last episode of the epic and groundbreaking television series Battlestar Galactica ("Daybreak - Parts 2 & 3") is the most beautiful and heart-wrenching fictional display of grief ever achieved on television and compares favorably with the best of the big screen. This scene features President Laura Roslin played by Mary McDonnell experiencing a flashback to a scene that occurred in her life not too long prior to the events covered in the series. She experiences this flashback while in a cancer-induced coma which we realize at the end of the clip. Previous to the clip is a segment where she is indulged in a birthday party by her father and all three of her sisters all of whom leave her gifts and then head home after the visit but never make it. Grief and loss are perhaps the two most recurring themes in the entire series and the creators of the show in their writing sequence and Ms. McDonnell in her character's stoic and quietly dignified and yet ultimately incomprehensible yet perfectly understandable reaction to news of ultimate tragedy make this hard to watch and hard not to watch.