Television Shows That Were Cancelled After Major Cliffhangers! (1 Viewer)

[JeremyR]

I see this show mentioned here and there on the HTF and I count myself amongst its fans. It really was a quality series that deserved much more than a single season. I honestly don't remember how the series concluded, but I was very, very disappointed when it was not renewed. I know that I should not be surprised, but when a show this well written gets canceled after one year and I see some of the junk that goes on year after year, I do have to wonder. Oh well.

- Walter.

Honestly, I told my wife I thought it was too smart of a show for TV. Plain and simple, lost in the crowd of American Idol and the like that was so hot at the time.

 

[Jeffery_H]

ALF - Alf is captured, probably tortured, and never rescued.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18490_the-7-most-soul-crushing-series-finales-in-tv-history.html

That's has a pretty good write up on it, and others.

This is 100% FALSE and inaccurate information about the TV show ALF. No one apparently bothered to watch the final episode or else they would know it had a very happy and somewhat melancholy ending. The show was called "Project ALF", but was just a 2 hour movie meant to make up for the horrid end of the regular show. It mentions the Connors although the actors were not in it.

 

[joshEH]

Sliders ended with a cliffhanger. After their Timer is smashed, Remmy injects himself with a biological weapon to defeat the Kromaggs and uses a Kromagg Timer to open a weak vortex to return home. We never learn if he survives the trip and saves Earth Prime and the other Sliders are left stranded on another world. This one bothers me the most.

For me, it was that agonizing first-season cliffhanger, with Quinn shot and bleeding out -- smash-cut to end credits. At least we finally got a second season (and a resolution)...but then we got Season Three.

Also, already been mentioned a couple of times, but Caprica's end-of-season (and, as it turns out, end-of-series) cliffhanger setup was incredible, and showed what would've come had Syfy not dropped the axe. We got a bit of resolution with Blood & Chrome, but that was a one-off movie, not a full TV series.

 

[JamesSmith]

Didn't Silk Stockings, in it's last year, had a downer, cliffhanger with the new hero in the show (who played the son on Kung Fu: The Next Generation) set up by a beautiful woman?

James

 

[Oliver Ravencrest]

For me, it was that agonizing first-season cliffhanger, with Quinn shot and bleeding out -- smash-cut to end credits. At least we finally got a second season (and a resolution)...but then we got Season Three.

I still hate how they wrote Quinn out of the show at the beginning of season 5. The first season cliffhanger never bothered me because I didn't start watching the series until it started airing on the Sci-Fi Channel.

 

[Simon Massey]

Angel was kind of a cliffhanger, thought it is also how they wanted it to end, but I could have done with more closure to that especially after 7 seasons of Buffy had finished.

American Gothic was one of my favourite shows from the 90s cancelled after one season with so much potential.

 

[Nick*Z]

Dynasty

After two years as one of the highest rated 'new' shows on TV, the plugged was pulled on Dynasty's spin off - The Colbys, leaving some characters to migrate to the parent program, while others simply vanished into thin air and were never heard from again. Dynasty proper then lasted another season, at the end of which all of its main characters were placed in grave danger - Fallon (having survived and idiotic alien abduction at the end of The Colbys run) miraculously returned to earth, only to suffer in a collapsing mine shaft, and Alexis, and, Sable taking a plummet off a second story hotel balcony. Rumor is the producers fully expected Dynasty to be picked up for another season and were frankly, stunned when the announcement was made immediately thereafter that the show was, indeed, cancelled.

After much consternation and a lot of ill will, the producers were given a chance to bring back the characters for 1991's Dynasty: The Reunion - one of the most badly bungled attempts to draw clarity from the chaos and return the series to its roots. Al Corley, the actor who had originated the part, inexplicably came back as Steven Carrington - a part played for the last five years of Dynasty by Jack Coleman - the shift in actor explained as 'major reconstructive' surgery after a terrible off shore oil rig explosion. Exactly, how the new Steven miraculously morphed back into the old Steven was never explained away. And Dynasty: The Reunion also chose to completely ignore the aforementioned Season cliffhanger. Instead it created a brand new narrative, introducing a host of new characters while jettisoning both Adam, his troubled wife, and Sable from the mix. The plot made little sense and the resolution to 'The Reunion' didn't gel or end satisfactorily either. To date, Dynasty: The Reunion has NEVER been made available on home video. From a completionist's standpoint, its about time that it did!

 

[JeremyR]

The re-boot of Dallas certainly ended on a Cliffhanger. The show never really recovered from the death of Larry Hagman, but it still would have been nice to get some closure.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

COPPER. The first half of the final episode resolved all of the ongoing storylines, but the second half started a bunch of new ones!

I try to forget the second half of that episode.

 

[Stan]

Dynasty

After two years as one of the highest rated 'new' shows on TV, the plugged was pulled on Dynasty's spin off - The Colbys, leaving some characters to migrate to the parent program, while others simply vanished into thin air and were never heard from again. Dynasty proper then lasted another season, at the end of which all of its main characters were placed in grave danger - Fallon (having survived and idiotic alien abduction at the end of The Colbys run) miraculously returned to earth, only to suffer in a collapsing mine shaft, and Alexis, and, Sable taking a plummet off a second story hotel balcony. Rumor is the producers fully expected Dynasty to be picked up for another season and were frankly, stunned when the announcement was made immediately thereafter that the show was, indeed, cancelled.

After much consternation and a lot of ill will, the producers were given a chance to bring back the characters for 1991's Dynasty: The Reunion - one of the most badly bungled attempts to draw clarity from the chaos and return the series to its roots. Al Corley, the actor who had originated the part, inexplicably came back as Steven Carrington - a part played for the last five years of Dynasty by Jack Coleman - the shift in actor explained as 'major reconstructive' surgery after a terrible off shore oil rig explosion. Exactly, how the new Steven miraculously morphed back into the old Steven was never explained away. And Dynasty: The Reunion also chose to completely ignore the aforementioned Season cliffhanger. Instead it created a brand new narrative, introducing a host of new characters while jettisoning both Adam, his troubled wife, and Sable from the mix. The plot made little sense and the resolution to 'The Reunion' didn't gel or end satisfactorily either. To date, Dynasty: The Reunion has NEVER been made available on home video. From a completionist's standpoint, its about time that it did!

Even though I was much younger, recognized crap immediately. Why those shows were made, some succeeded, some didn't, I'll never understand. Back in the "big hair" days, men and women, and the ridiculous shoulder pads, hilarious to watch now.

For whatever reason, long before DVRs, I kept up with the shows. Don't recall any major cliffhanger moments, but then again, I viewed them more as comedies, and we're talking 25+ years old, completely forgettable. Over the top doesn't even begin to describe them. They were never going to be classics. Most of the shows of that era were awful when you look back.

 

[Tony Bensley]

Sad as the news is of the cancellation of CASTLE, it at least appears to be a good example of how to protect a series from ending on a cliffhanger, as noted at the very end of the following article: http://www.msn.com/en-ca/tv/news/ca...tfelt-note/ar-BBt10mk?li=AAggNb9&ocid=UE01DHP

It's too bad that more shows don't follow this tact!

CHEERS!

 

[Nick*Z]

Stan:

Believe it or not, Dynasty set a trend in hair styles and clothing and caught the popular zeitgeist of the eighties spend/spend like there's no tomorrow. If you find it cliche today it's only because a post 9-11 America has really lost their verve for creating light and frothy confections that celebrate the gaudy and bawdy high spirited-ness and turned inward to a theater of death which continues to infest, infect and devolve our present day perspective on what passes for normal. Shows like Dexter, The Walking Dead, Once Upon A Time, Grimm, etc. et al have taken us to very dark and scary places. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with them as a counterpoint to what you've perceived as idiotic and silly story telling. It's your prerogative to think so. It's mine to suggest we've gone too far down the proverbial rabbit hole in the other - and by my way of thinking - very wrong direction.

Our entertainments today are not entertaining per say but grotesque - an exultation of the insidious, bizarre, unnatural and perverse. Repeatedly we are asked to align ourselves with the likes of drug dealers/addicts (Breaking Bad, Nurse Jackie), serial killers (Dexter, Hannibal) and other bottom feeders of society as our 'protagonists'. Personally, I miss the good ole days when the bad guys were clearly delineated as unappealing and where even the prospect of having a movie based on two super heroes battling one another (Batman Vs. Superman, anyone) was as inane as it seemed too ridiculous to contemplate. Honestly, don't the good guys have better things to do than beat the snot out of one another?!?

But back to Dynasty. It sold sex, hot cars, highbrow over the top fashions and big hair; all desirable commodities of the boom/boom eighties with the optimism of a Ronald Reagan in the White House, driving a new surge in American prosperity forward with that yahoo can-do spirit. Success was weighed in the assets of a stock portfolio and how much moola you had to spend on a Saturday night without regretting it Sunday morning. Overall, we had more optimism about the future in the eighties and shows like Dynasty reflected exactly the sort of lifestyle a great many sought to emulate - either on a big scale, or in their own budgeted sphere of 'let's pretend'. It worked in its own time and was actually considered an aspiring 'norm' for the 'yuppie' sect.

I'll agree that watching such shows today, the appeal is likely thought of as coming from another planet entirely. I guess it just goes to show how far we've managed to break down morale with a little too much 'hope and change' in a land where everything has not even managed to stay the same, but actually gone more than a few steps backwards into the muck and mire of feeling bad about something, somewhere, most of the time: politics, personal finances, future job prospects, etc. We are a nation is steep decline. Our entertainments reflect this. By contrast, eighties entertainment held a mirror up to a society looking bright-eyed toward the future; aspiring for more and better and yes, excess; gaudy, bawdy, naughty, but like everything else in the eighties - leaving us more amused than confused and depressed. Personal opinion of course, but I would have this time again...at least, in some ways.

 

[atfree]

Stan:

Believe it or not, Dynasty set a trend in hair styles and clothing and caught the popular zeitgeist of the eighties spend/spend like there's no tomorrow. If you find it cliche today it's only because a post 9-11 America has really lost their verve for creating light and frothy confections that celebrate the gaudy and bawdy high spirited-ness and turned inward to a theater of death which continues to infest, infect and devolve our present day perspective on what passes for normal. Shows like Dexter, The Walking Dead, Once Upon A Time, Grimm, etc. et al have taken us to very dark and scary places. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with them as a counterpoint to what you've perceived as idiotic and silly story telling. It's your prerogative to think so. It's mine to suggest we've gone too far down the proverbial rabbit hole in the other - and by my way of thinking - very wrong direction.

Our entertainments today are not entertaining per say but grotesque - an exultation of the insidious, bizarre, unnatural and perverse. Repeatedly we are asked to align ourselves with the likes of drug dealers/addicts (Breaking Bad, Nurse Jackie), serial killers (Dexter, Hannibal) and other bottom feeders of society as our 'protagonists'. Personally, I miss the good ole days when the bad guys were clearly delineated as unappealing and where even the prospect of having a movie based on two super heroes battling one another (Batman Vs. Superman, anyone) was as inane as it seemed too ridiculous to contemplate. Honestly, don't the good guys have better things to do than beat the snot out of one another?!?

But back to Dynasty. It sold sex, hot cars, highbrow over the top fashions and big hair; all desirable commodities of the boom/boom eighties with the optimism of a Ronald Reagan in the White House, driving a new surge in American prosperity forward with that yahoo can-do spirit. Success was weighed in the assets of a stock portfolio and how much moola you had to spend on a Saturday night without regretting it Sunday morning. Overall, we had more optimism about the future in the eighties and shows like Dynasty reflected exactly the sort of lifestyle a great many sought to emulate - either on a big scale, or in their own budgeted sphere of 'let's pretend'. It worked in its own time and was actually considered an aspiring 'norm' for the 'yuppie' sect.

I'll agree that watching such shows today, the appeal is likely thought of as coming from another planet entirely. I guess it just goes to show how far we've managed to break down morale with a little too much 'hope and change' in a land where everything has not even managed to stay the same, but actually gone more than a few steps backwards into the muck and mire of feeling bad about something, somewhere, most of the time: politics, personal finances, future job prospects, etc. We are a nation is steep decline. Our entertainments reflect this. By contrast, eighties entertainment held a mirror up to a society looking bright-eyed toward the future; aspiring for more and better and yes, excess; gaudy, bawdy, naughty, but like everything else in the eighties - leaving us more amused than confused and depressed. Personal opinion of course, but I would have this time again...at least, in some ways.

My sentiments exactly. Nice post sir.

 

[JeremyR]

Stan:

Believe it or not, Dynasty set a trend in hair styles and clothing and caught the popular zeitgeist of the eighties spend/spend like there's no tomorrow. If you find it cliche today it's only because a post 9-11 America has really lost their verve for creating light and frothy confections that celebrate the gaudy and bawdy high spirited-ness and turned inward to a theater of death which continues to infest, infect and devolve our present day perspective on what passes for normal. Shows like Dexter, The Walking Dead, Once Upon A Time, Grimm, etc. et al have taken us to very dark and scary places. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with them as a counterpoint to what you've perceived as idiotic and silly story telling. It's your prerogative to think so. It's mine to suggest we've gone too far down the proverbial rabbit hole in the other - and by my way of thinking - very wrong direction.

Our entertainments today are not entertaining per say but grotesque - an exultation of the insidious, bizarre, unnatural and perverse. Repeatedly we are asked to align ourselves with the likes of drug dealers/addicts (Breaking Bad, Nurse Jackie), serial killers (Dexter, Hannibal) and other bottom feeders of society as our 'protagonists'. Personally, I miss the good ole days when the bad guys were clearly delineated as unappealing and where even the prospect of having a movie based on two super heroes battling one another (Batman Vs. Superman, anyone) was as inane as it seemed too ridiculous to contemplate. Honestly, don't the good guys have better things to do than beat the snot out of one another?!?

But back to Dynasty. It sold sex, hot cars, highbrow over the top fashions and big hair; all desirable commodities of the boom/boom eighties with the optimism of a Ronald Reagan in the White House, driving a new surge in American prosperity forward with that yahoo can-do spirit. Success was weighed in the assets of a stock portfolio and how much moola you had to spend on a Saturday night without regretting it Sunday morning. Overall, we had more optimism about the future in the eighties and shows like Dynasty reflected exactly the sort of lifestyle a great many sought to emulate - either on a big scale, or in their own budgeted sphere of 'let's pretend'. It worked in its own time and was actually considered an aspiring 'norm' for the 'yuppie' sect.

I'll agree that watching such shows today, the appeal is likely thought of as coming from another planet entirely. I guess it just goes to show how far we've managed to break down morale with a little too much 'hope and change' in a land where everything has not even managed to stay the same, but actually gone more than a few steps backwards into the muck and mire of feeling bad about something, somewhere, most of the time: politics, personal finances, future job prospects, etc. We are a nation is steep decline. Our entertainments reflect this. By contrast, eighties entertainment held a mirror up to a society looking bright-eyed toward the future; aspiring for more and better and yes, excess; gaudy, bawdy, naughty, but like everything else in the eighties - leaving us more amused than confused and depressed. Personal opinion of course, but I would have this time again...at least, in some ways.

Wow.. a fascinating perspective. And certainly a sign as to why shows like Dynasty, Knots Landing, Magnum P.I., and even perhaps a Dallas would struggle in today's overly cynical world. Sure those 80's shows had angst, but what you state is correct. Today's horror films also point to a similar thing. Back in the 80's simply the idea that somebody could kill you when you fell asleep was enough to un-nerve everybody causing spikes in coffee, tea, and soda sales. Now, it takes the notion that somebody is going to kidnap you, hook you up to tortuous machines, and give you 10 minutes to dig a key out of your stomach before the machine snaps your head in half. What have we done to today's young people?

 

[Nick*Z]

An injustice.

 

[TravisR]

By contrast, eighties entertainment held a mirror up to a society looking bright-eyed toward the future; aspiring for more and better...

Personally, I don't equate greed with optimism or see it as any kind of positive virtue. I'd even argue that encouraging or glamorizing greed is much worse than depicting violence. Very, very few people are ever going to commit a murder (no matter how much it's shown in pop culture) but making greed and getting more at any cost seem cool or acceptable is something that people will do. Hell, they do it already so they don't need encouragement to be greedier.

At the risk of sounding like an old man, I see it depicted in rap music today. When I was a kid, alot of rap was about anger and talking about injustice and today, it's all about telling everyone how you have more money than everyone else and that they don't have as much as you and thus aren't as good as you.

 

[jcroy]

Stan:

Believe it or not, Dynasty set a trend in hair styles and clothing and caught the popular zeitgeist of the eighties spend/spend like there's no tomorrow. If you find it cliche today it's only because a post 9-11 America has really lost their verve for creating light and frothy confections that celebrate the gaudy and bawdy high spirited-ness and turned inward to a theater of death which continues to infest, infect and devolve our present day perspective on what passes for normal. Shows like Dexter, The Walking Dead, Once Upon A Time, Grimm, etc. et al have taken us to very dark and scary places. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with them as a counterpoint to what you've perceived as idiotic and silly story telling. It's your prerogative to think so. It's mine to suggest we've gone too far down the proverbial rabbit hole in the other - and by my way of thinking - very wrong direction.

Our entertainments today are not entertaining per say but grotesque - an exultation of the insidious, bizarre, unnatural and perverse.

....

I believe this started slightly earlier than 9-11, with the first two seasons of Law & Order SVU (seasons 1 and 2 over 1999 -> 2001) and the first season of CSI (season 1 over 2000-2001).

Though I would agree that this completely accelerated into overdrive after 9-11.

 

[jcroy]

Personally, I don't equate greed with optimism or see it as any kind of positive virtue. I'd even argue that encouraging or glamorizing greed is much worse than depicting violence. Very, very few people are ever going to commit a murder (no matter how much it's shown in pop culture) but making greed and getting more at any cost seem cool or acceptable is something that people will do. Hell, they do it already so they don't need encouragement to be greedier.

Wonder how many folks took the Gordon Gekko "greed is good" message to heart, from the 1987 movie "Wall Street".

 

[jcroy]

(Going offtopic).

I can only think of two specific time periods where young people took the "greed is good" message to heart after 1987.

In recent memory, I remember some younger relatives who were caught up in the real estate boom during the mid-2000s (ie. ninja loans, etc ...). They were huge believers in writers like Robert Kiyosaki, etc ... When the real estate boom eventually crashed in late-2007 -> 2008, they ended up filing for personal bankruptcy. (ie. They were completely in over their heads).

Going back further in time, I remember some then-young folks who were caught up with the "mania" of the dotcom boom during the late-1990s. At the time I was briefly teaching community college, and came across numerous younger individuals who wanted to be the "next Bill Gates". (In another time and place, these same individuals probably would have been "premed" type students).

 

[chrislong2]

This is 100% FALSE and inaccurate information about the TV show ALF. No one apparently bothered to watch the final episode or else they would know it had a very happy and somewhat melancholy ending. The show was called "Project ALF", but was just a 2 hour movie meant to make up for the horrid end of the regular show. It mentions the Connors although the actors were not in it.

This post is a great example of what is known as IRONY. You put in big bold letters stating that another person's post about ALF is "100% FALSE" and question whether they bothered to watch the final episode, and then refer to the family in the show as the Connors, when they were the Tanners! Everyone's entitled to make a gaffe like that, but it's awful ironic when you try to make yourself seem like you know this show so well and that was has been posted was wrong...

As to your claim, your post is the "misleading" one. I own ALF and have seen the final episode, and it does indeed end on a horrible cliffhanger where you aren't sure what happens to ALF. I remember hating how it ended even as a kid watching it and wondering why they did that! Like 6 years later, they did release the "Project Alf" TV movie but it is missing the Tanners and has a completely different feel than the show to such a degree that it's hard for me to even consider them together. As the viewer you want ALF to just go on living a happy life with the Tanners like it was in the show...