Episodic television is a tough proposition, especially with today’s expectation of arc-driven storytelling, something which I blame on the seminal and excellent long-ago crime drama ‘Wiseguy.’ Any more, it seems that every new show has to have a hook, a mystery, or a built-in mythology to get greenlit, which leads to unpleasantness when shows get cancelled. ‘The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ and ‘Tru Calling’ went out on unresolved cliffhangers, but even when a show enough notice to wrap things up, they still leave the occasional errant polar bear string untied, which in turn begs a query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is still waiting for Marvel to finish reprinting frickin’ Miracleman already, asking: What’s the most frustrating cliffhanger (resolved or unresolved) of all time?
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Halo 2 video game on Xbox. It ends halfway through of alien invasion with main character in a derelict spaceship. Since its a video game, part 3 development took years and it was on completely different system, 360.
Farscape, before the miniseries. I’d read the show was ending, set’s had been destroyed. And it ends with main characters being disintegrated and a “To Be Continued…”
“The Name of the Doctor” ended with Clara’s essence fragmented and scattered across the Doctor’s timeline and promised in writing “to be continued” on the day of the 50th Anniversary Special. That never was to be, instead things just jumped into a new story set at some nebulous point after an unseen resolution.
Will baseball’s Ozzie Smith ever escape the Springfield Mystery Spot?