CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 06/02/06

To Be Continued:
The Seven Best Dramatic
Season-Ending Cliffhangers on DVD

By jason davis

"To be continued" -- whether the words are superimposed on the screen or merely implied by the episode they don't fully conclude, they're a virtual guarantee keeping a TV audience hooked throughout the long summer months. As the 2005-6 season comes to a close, join CS Weekly in recalling seven shows that left you on the edge of your seat until fall.

Though the two-part television story has a long history stretching back to late-'60s productions like Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, the concept of a season-ending cliffhanger is a relatively new development in American TV drama. The primetime soap opera Dallas, centering on the machinations of unscrupulous oil baron J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) is widely regarded as the beginning of what would develop into a standard television trope over the next two decades. Typically designed to jeopardize a leading character the audience has grown to love (or hate, in the case of J.R.), cliffhangers have come to symbolize the culmination of a year's viewing while providing a springboard for new and intriguing developments the following season. Though the essential element of uncertainty created by a dramatic event is always present, the style and structure of a season finale is often what sets an individual show's entry out among the past. Spoilers abound, so proceed with caution.

"A House Divided" (Dallas)
Written by Rena Down
Aired: March 21, 1980, on CBS
Dallas invented the primetime cliffhanger with its third-season finale in which the despicable J.R. Ewing was gunned down by an unknown assailant. Throughout the series, Ewing's underhanded dealings had been the bane of his wealthy Texas oil family, but "A House Divided" found the tensions being tightened even further as every character found a reason to hate the show's anti-hero. Combining the mystery of the unseen shooter with the uncertainty of Ewing's survival, Dallas rocketed to the center of the American pop-cultural landscape. "Who shot J.R.?" was printed on, relatively speaking, every medium imaginable, and speculation ran rampant with everyone from J.R.'s morally upright brother Bobby (Patrick Duffy) to his long-suffering wife Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) being pegged as the assassin. When the series resumed after a seven-and-a-half month hiatus, the writers took advantage of their two-pronged set-up by revealing J.R.'s survival in the season premiere but holding the identity of his would-be killer, sister-in-law Kristin Shephard (Mary Crosby), until several episodes into the season.

First-Season Finale (Twin Peaks)
Written & Directed by Mark Frost
Aired: May 23, 1990, on ABC
Building upon the model created by Dallas, Twin Peaks, as much a parody of primetime soap operas a dramatic serial in its own right, hyperbolized the cliffhanger to hitherto unimaginable proportions. No characters were safe from jeopardy as the allegedly quiet lumber town endured a mill fire, one suicide, two murders, and three attempted murders all in one hour-long episode. Audiences eager to learn who'd murdered prom queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) found their anticipation compounded by the cornucopia of cliffhangers offered by an episode culminating with an homage to Dallas: the shooting of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in his hotel room. Whereas most season finales exist to secure an audience for the following season's premiere, Twin Peaks' served the double function of keeping the audience in anticipation and clearing the table for creators Frost and David Lynch to re-imagine the series in the next season's premiere. By the end of the cliffhanger, the two key suspects in Palmer's homicide are dead and a plethora of new mysteries have been seeded to set the stage for season two.

"The Best of Both Worlds" (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Written by Michael Piller
Aired: June 18, 1990, in syndication
Coming into its own after two years of chaos, Star Trek: The Next Generation found a helmsman for its third season in writer-producer Michael Piller. Despite the high quality achieved throughout the year, Piller's first year on the job will always be remembered for its finale. Introduced a year before, the cybernetic Borg arrived on the scene with their relentless drive to create uniformity and destroy individuality -- goals diametrically opposed to the Federation and the utopian lifestyle envisioned by Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Having previously established the near-invulnerability of his antagonists, Piller's "The Best of Both Worlds" took full advantage of its adversary and upped the ante by having the malevolent beings kidnap Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). When the crew of the Enterprise attempted to regain their commanding officer, the landing party discovered that Picard himself had been assimilated -- he was Borg. With the show's hero, and all his knowledge of Star Fleet defenses, at the enemy's disposal, viewers were shocked when Captain William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) opened fire on his former superior, securing the cliffhanger phenomena in genre programming as well as mainstream TV.

"Becoming, Part 2" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Written & Directed by Joss Whedon
Aired: May 19, 1998, on the WB
Creator Joss Whedon, wary of shows cancelled after jaw-dropping cliffhangers, took great pains to finish each season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the year's villain vanquished and Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her friends riding off into the metaphorical sunset. This propensity for closure didn't stop Whedon from pouring a bit of salt into dramatic wounds before suturing them up. The emotional ramifications of "Becoming, Part 2" are as epic as the battle that would claim Buffy's life three years later. Throughout the latter part of the season, Buffy's vampire lover Angel (David Boreanaz) had reverted to his demonic nature, torturing and murdering Buffy's friends. As the finale looms, Angel procured a fossilized demon capable of destroying the world, and Buffy was forced to sate the demon's hunger with Angel's blood. Not only was Buffy forced to kill the love of her life, but a magic spell returned Angel's soul -- his essential goodness -- at the moment of her strike, forcing the vampire slayer to finish the deed with Angel's face awash in confusion and pain. Add to the mix Buffy's mother (Kristine Sutherland) discovering her daughter's mystical calling and Buffy's subsequent, self-imposed exile from Sunnydale, and there could be no question that the aftermath of the finale would be felt throughout the following year.

"Twenty Five" (The West Wing)
Written by Aaron Sorkin
Aired: May 14, 2003, on NBC
Like an amendment to the Constitution, "Twenty Five" is built by a combination of what is "necessary and proper" to the creation of a dramatic narrative that holds an audience hostage over the summer. In season one's "Mr. Willis of Ohio," President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen) outlined to his teenaged daughter Zoë (Elizabeth Moss) his worst nightmare -- a scenario in which she was kidnapped and used against him by a foreign power. By the fourth-season finale, outgoing creator Aaron Sorkin had decided to pull the trigger he primed three and half years before, but there were a few more ingredients necessary to tell the story Sorkin sought to present. In the two episodes leading up to the finale, the writer politically hobbled Vice President John Hoynes (Tim Matheson) with a personal scandal that ended in his resignation. Prior to that, Bartlet had approved the assassination of a foreign dignitary-cum-terrorist. The two events coalesced, with the foreshadowed kidnapping leaving a distraught president unable to discharge his duties. In a remarkable scene, fraught with tension and nervous anticipation, Democratic President Jed Bartlet signed his resignation under Article 25 of the U.S. Constitution as Republican Speaker of the House Glenallen Walken (John Goodman) took the oath of office and the burden of the presidency, with Zoë Bartlet's survival still unresolved.

"Leave it to Beaver" (Veronica Mars)
Written by Rob Thomas & Diane Ruggiero
Aired: May 10, 2005, on UPN
Akin to its spiritual forebear, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars opted to end its freshman season not with a case of an imperiled heroine (Kristin Bell), but rather on what could be considered a "soft cliffhanger," wherein a more mundane, but dramatically important, question was posed. Throughout the season, the titular detective had sought the killer of her best friend, Lily Kane (Amanda Seyfried), while simultaneously trying to piece together the events of a missing night that culminated in her own rape. With the latter question answered in the penultimate installment, the question of Lily's killer, with a wide array of red herrings on hand, became the focus of the final episode and culminated in a revelation that would alter Veronica's admittedly limited social circle in an epic fashion. With the murderer revealed as Aaron Echolls (Harry Hamlin), her boyfriend's father, Veronica finds that the discovery may potentially destroy her relationship with said boyfriend. It is then with much consternation that the episode closes with her answering the door and saying, "I was hoping it was you," without revealing if it's the aforementioned boyfriend coming to confirm the stability of their bond or some other mystery caller portending new narrative developments.

"Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2" [Battlestar Galactica (2003)]
Written by Anne Cofell & Mark Verheiden
Aired: March 10, 2006, on the Sci Fi Channel
While the various finales thus far have included the classic tropes of endangered protagonists, emotional wounds, and new mysteries to tantalize the viewers, few shows have gone so far as to completely overturn the expectations of the audience in as audacious a fashion as the second-season ender of Battlestar Galactica. In the final moments of "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part Two," the camera dollies in on the newly elected President Gaius Baltar (James Callis), only to dissolve to the same scene one year later. The long-suffering Colonial refugees have settled on a desolate planet, protected by two aging and undermanned warships, certain that their persecution by the robotic Cylons is at an end. As the episode moves toward its conclusion, the cast of the series is reintroduced in their new, dismal existences before Cylon vessels surround the planet. Unable to defend the settlers, the two Battlestars patrolling the space above the planet retreat, leaving Baltar to surrender to mankind's greatest nemesis -- the stage is set for a very different season three. Sure, Alias had employed a similarly disorienting time cut in its second-year ender, but Galactica goes one further by chucking the format that made the series a success for two seasons and promising something new…no matter the narrative cost.

Though there is no shortage of cliffhangers to be found in modern dramatic television, shows that twist the "to be continued" hook like no series before can outwit the audience's expectations and encourage strong ratings for the season to come. Good finales pose a question. Great finales pose them in a way you've never heard them asked.

At the age of 21, Jason Davis was hit in the face with a car. He has since devoted his life to writing. His words have appeared on TBS, MSN.com, and CS Weekly, where he serves as DVD Coordinator. He lives in Burbank.

Star Trek: The Next Generation courtesy Paramount Home Video

Buffy: The Vampire Slayer courtesy 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

Battlestar Galactica (2003) courtesy Universal Home Entertainment

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