CS Daily Archive > The Big Picture > 04/04/05

The Big Picture:
24 and the Art of the Cliffhanger

by ari eisner

Ari Eisner takes a look at the modern history of the cliffhanger, and how 24 uses these moments not just to keep their audience rooted in their seats, but to expand the universe of what can go right (and wrong) in Jack Bauer's world.

There's a rule, often applied to comedy, that goes "Always leave 'em wanting more." In truth, this tenet is relevant to all narrative art. Without the desire to see/read/hear more, there is no audience. The cliffhanger, a term that dates back to the days of the 1930s Saturday afternoon serials, refers to a scenario in which the main characters were literally left hanging on the edge of a cliff at the end of each weekly chapter. Since then, the term has been applied to any circumstance or incident in which the upshot remains uncertain until the last tension-filled moment.

The initial key in creating this prolonged, extremely tense melodrama is the foundation on which all writing is based: an audience must genuinely care for the characters. Since this isn't an article detailing the steps necessary to create empathetic characters, for brevity's sake, making them someone we like is always a good place to start. The cliffhanging scenario itself is where it gets tricky. It should follow that old, annoying dichotomy: things need to be set in a situation we've never before seen, yet at the same time, are familiar (or familiar enough so that the audience can project themselves into the moment). Once that's established, the idea is to stretch that scene out, ending it just before the viewer's suspension of disbelief has dissipated. And then, of course, to create a new scenario, under even greater dire consequences.

In movies, writers are more inclined to use internal cliffhangers, where the story has to be told within the confines of the picture's running time. There's a delicate balance that needs to be struck however, in the amount of time between when the internal cliffhanger is established and how soon after our stalwart hero/heroine can manage to fight/think/talk their way out of it. The Star Wars films solve this problem by creating a number of different cliffhangers through simultaneous storylines that cut back and forth between each. During the climax (or actually, climaxes) of Return of the Jedi (that's right, I'm using that episode of the original trilogy as an example), there's a crosscutting between three different subplots that ends the movie; the space attack on the Death Star, the ground battle on Endor and the lightsaber fight between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. As each scene reaches a high point, we're immediately taken to another plotline, where a previous crisis is resolved and a new one is created. It's here that the movie lets the action drive the narrative to a finish. The result is an audience-pleasing sensory assault so good it almost makes us forget about those pesky Ewoks. When this final act sequence is contrasted to the four running climaxes (which follow the same editing style as Return of the Jedi) at the end of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, it's abundantly clear that cliffhangers work only when the audiences care about the story, and further, the characters involved in the threat.

In serialized dramatic television, the cliffhanging device isn't so much a preference of writers and producers as it is a necessity. Without the prospect of looming questions, there's little incentive for viewers not to flip channels during commercial breaks -- or worse, fail to return for next week's episodes (just like the 1930s). As a result, shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, and 24 endlessly employ this technique, escalating each crisis at every cliffhanging act break, only to have that tension culminate on its highest note at the end of the episode. Throw a rock and you'll hit an example in any of these shows; the Vampire Slayer's death at the end of Buffy's fifth season, Sydney Bristow discovering her mother is the leader of The Alliance in the first season finale of Alias, a biological weapon exploding lethal dust in the face of a Counter Terrorist Unit agent during season three of 24.

The problem that tends to develop is the shelf life of urgency. Audiences are savvy -- or is it jaded? -- enough to know the hero always makes it out alive, so the challenge is bringing back viewers who have with this preemptive knowledge. While there's countless ways out of any written scenario, playing fair is something writers must do to keep their audiences satisfied. And because the television viewer is so accustomed to the happy ending, many shows have been forced to push the envelope. Consider parallel events from seasons one and three of 24. In the first season, with his family's life at stake, Agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) is blackmailed into killing fellow agent Nina Meyers (Sarah Clarke). Jack forces Nina into a jacket, shoves her into his car, drives to a designated area and unceremoniously shoots her. The question looms, "Did he just do what we saw him do?" Back at headquarters, as agents try to track down Jack and Nina's whereabouts, one of them finds surveillance footage of Jack slipping the jacket on Nina, and wonders, "Why'd he give her a flak jacket?" The story then returns to a shaken but alive Nina, pulling slugs from her bulletproof overcoat.

This event is complimented by a very similar circumstance in the third season. Again at the mercy of an elusive baddie, Jack is coerced into murdering CTU chief Ryan Chappelle (Paul Schulze). The previous episode ends with a demand that Jack must execute director Chapelle or face the consequences of a biological attack on the city. We're left with the question of not what will happen (of course he's not gonna assassinate his boss), but rather how will Jack think his way out of this (as he's done in every single prior episode)? The clock ticks down to the hour's end and it looks as though we're gonna be stuck with another cliffhanger. Because it's very evident there really is no way out of this. And any logical way to keep a happy ending would be a cheat. Unlike the first season, we didn't see Jack make some cryptic and obscure maneuver with Chappelle -- no Kevlar vest, no blanks in the gun. Under pressure to murder one person or let thousands of others die, Jack pulls the trigger…

… and kills his superior.

The effect is jaw-dropping, but moreover, on a subconscious level, transcending. The writers have now earned the freedom to do whatever they want, drive the story in whichever direction they feel, without predictability. Subconsciously, they have telegraphed a message to each member of the audience: No one, and nothing, is safe or sacred." 24's writers surpassed every viewer expectation and turned the show on its ear. The audience, now unable to guess another turning point like the one they just witnessed, is no longer ahead of them. The show's writers may also have learned a lesson about credibility from season two, when Jack's daughter Kim (Elisha Cuthbert) was stalked by a mountain lion at the ineffectual cliffhanger of one episode. That setup, way too silly to buy, disconnected the audience, nearly negating the significance of the character.

Like any effective writing tool, there can be overuse, and even worse, inappropriate utilization of the cliffhanger. The result is often poor storytelling that turns out to be funny for reasons it wasn't meant to be. The Happy Days episode when Fonzie water-skies over a tank housing a shark is a cliffhanger, yes, but it also spawned the now-infamous phrase "jump the shark" to denote a moment when a story (usually in a television series) completely sells out and goes downhill. As a general rule, unless it's done with a wink at the audience and a self-conscious awareness that it's using the device, sitcoms can do a lot worse than to steer clear of the cliffhanger. (Greg Brady presumably lost at sea during the "Hawaii Bound" episode of The Brady Bunch and "The Bicycle Man" cliffhanger episode of Diff'rent Strokes are two more stellar arguments for this theory.)

And then, there's the mother of all television sitcom cliffhangers that, in the summer of 1980, sent innumerable Dallas fans into such a frenzy that t-shirts and mugs were emblazoned, and three simple words were forever implanted into everyone's memory (fan or not): "Who shot J.R.?" This example's been saved for last because it hangs a lantern on the most fascinating notion about the cliffhanging device: typically the outcome of the cliffhanger isn't half as interesting as the cliffhanger itself. Because in the end, the majority of people who are familiar with that question of "who shot J.R.?" today don't know (or maybe it's more "don't care") what the answer is [for the record, it was Kristen Shepard (Mary Crosby)]. As always, it's the chase -- and not the destination -- which holds our interest.

Keeping an audience on edge is a technique that despite its long running and widespread application, doesn't appear to be anywhere near extinction. With the decreasing attention span of audiences, writers are forced, almost like characters in something of their own creation, to continually develop inventive and perilous situations in which to set their stories. But with so much overexposure for the cliffhanging device, creating these new scenarios seems to grow more daunting with every subsequent script.

Huh. That almost sounds like a cliffhanger unto itself.

Ari Eisner is an award-winning writer and director who has worked in several capacities on both sitcoms and one-hour dramas. He has written for the television show Still Standing and the print magazine Creative Screenwriting.

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