Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Sooner or later, every TV viewer discovers the awful truth: Major characters on favorite TV shows, including those characters that one loves the most, are not necessarily permanent fixtures. You tune in one day, and your program’s flawed hero or his vulnerable best friend or an inspiring mentor or Junior’s wacky mom, etc., have pushed (or are about to be pushed) on, written out of a show and leaving the audience to cope.

Why? Sometimes actors, even starring actors on successful series, leave. Sometimes they get sick or die. Occasionally they’re sacrificed to the designs of producers trying to shake things up. Once in a while, an actor proves enough of a pain behind the scenes to become expendable.

From a viewer’s perspective, that makes television, on occasion, a medium of loss — sometimes traumatic loss. So prepare to be shattered anew as we look at examples of television’s most dramatic exits.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Joseph Marzullo/Retna

’Buffy the Vampire Slayer’

Character: Joyce Summers (Kristine Sutherland)

The story: Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) lost her strong, single mom, Joyce, in a remarkable, Feb. 27, 2001, episode (written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon) called "The Body." Joyce, a regular on the show since its 1997 debut, had always been Buffy’s anchor, even before she knew about her daughter’s calling as the Chosen One. Having been treated for a brain tumor, Joyce did not die unexpectedly. But her demise arrived with much of the suddenness and disorienting shock of a loved one’s death in real life. Joyce’s eyes were open, her body at an awkward angle on a couch. She was there ... and, yet, not there.

Behind the scenes: Season 5 of "Buffy" was the year Whedon gave his heroine loads of grief (including the goddess-villain Glory, and a pesky little sister who turned out to be the much-sought-after "key" separating dimensions). Six episodes after "The Body," Buffy herself would die (albeit temporarily) in a season finale.

The fallout: Part of the point of writing Joyce off the series was to force Buffy to face adult responsibilities, from which she never got a break despite being savior of the world many times over. The strategy worked.