Dexter/Tear Jerker

For a show where the main character is a Serial Killer and death is often treated flippantly and with very black humor, Dexter can be surprising in its ability to invoke tears. Here's a list.

• Dexter's flashback to what happened to him as a child, when he is faced with a crime scene that triggers the repressed memory of seeing his mother murdered with a chainsaw in front of him when he was three, and being left in a shipping container with her body for days. The look on his face when he is overwhelmed by the full realization of what happened is heartbreaking. No wonder he's so messed up.
• At the end of season one, when Dexter is weeping in the corner after slitting his biological brother's throat, waiting for the Ice Truck Killer to die in the season one finale.
• Deb's breakdown in the parking lot after Lundy is shot.
• Dexter coming home in the season four finale to find his wife, Rita, dead in a bathtub full of her own blood, after she'd been murdered by the Trinity Killer, and his own infant son, Harrison, sitting in the blood crying, echoing Dexter's own childhood trauma.
• The euthanasia scene in season 3.
• The end of Season 4, Dexter kills the Trinity Killer and comes home to finding Rita dead in her bathtub, the entire bathroom covered in her blood with Harrison crying whilst sitting in the blood. Dexter instantly grabs Harrison and runs outside, the expression of grief on his face sells it.
• In the first episode of Season 5, when Dexter realises just how much he misses Rita, and turns up to her funeral - shellshocked and late - to give a heartbreaking speech about how much she meant to him.
• In season 5, when Lumen says goodbye to Dexter. One of the few times beyond his brothers death in season 1 that Dexter has nearly teared up