Ashes to Ashes
One or more characters mishandle the desiccated remains of a person or animal.
Spin City
Appearances
- Night Court: Season 4, episode 13, "Baby Talk" (1987). Two sisters get into a fight over the ashes of their father, Herb, and Harry has to settle it in court, but he finds the urn empty, and Art explains tha the used the "herb tea" to test the coffee maker, and Dan apparently drank the result.
- Wings: Season 2, episode 11, "A Terminal Christmas" (1990). Fay is depressed because it's her first Christmas without her late third husband, George. To help Fay get closure, the gang piles into Joe's plane to scatter George's ashes over the ocean. Joe asks Lowell to "get George" from the back of the plane, and of course, Lowell drops the jar, and it shatters, spreading George's ashes on the floor. Lowell vacuums George up with Joe's dustbuster, and Fay throws the dustbuster into the ocean.
- Murphy Brown: Season 3, episode 19, "On Another Plane (II)" (1991). While Murphy and Frank are on a plane that's about to go down, they have a vision of their joint funeral, and after the mourners clear out, the janitor knocks over Frank's urn, spilling his remains all over the floor.
- Herman's Head: Season 1, episode 20, "Sweet Obsessions" (1992). Everyone in the office is having a giving things up competition, and Louise feels left out because she has no addictions, so she decides to start chewing tobacco so she can give it up. While meeting with Mr. Waterton, Louise continually spits in a brass container she thinks is a spitoon, but it turns out to be the ashes of Mr. Waterton's mother.
- Frasier: Season 3, episode 3, "Martin Does It His Way" (1995). Niles is tasked with scattering the late Aunt Louise's ashes, and he decides to do it in a park where he once fell out of a tree and she laughed at him, but he can't get the urn open, so Frasier tries to help, and when he pops the lid off, he and Niles are both covered in her cremains.
- Spin City: Season 3, episode 3, "Gone with the Wind" (1998). On the day James gets a package from home containing the cremains of his favorite cow, the air conditioning goes out in Paul's office, and he buys a giant fan. As you can probably guess, these two things create a recipe for disaster that results in bits of "Aunt Sarah" blowing all over the office. To cover up what happened, the rest of the gang smoke cigars and drop the ashes in the urn.
- Malcolm in the Middle: Season 5, episode 10, "Hot Tub" (2004). Malcolm gets his learner's permit and jumps at any chance to drive, which causes him to get caught up in a fight between Polly and her ex-boyfriend, Danny, over a canister that contains the ashes of both Polly's mother and Danny's father. Malcolm gets fed up with their arguing, takes the canister, and dumps all the ashes out the car window.