The show My Own Worst Enemy aired its last episode today. It only ran for 9 episodes, and the final episode was a cliff-hanger the resolution of which we’ll never see.
I didn’t think it was that great of a show, but it was okay, and I would have liked to see how the writers wanted to end it.
Anyway, what other shows in the past have ended like this, with no resolution? I remember one from many years ago called “Nowhere Man,” about a photographer who discovered one day that no one knew him anymore–not even his erstwhile wife–and some sort of mysterious organization was now out to get him. To this day I wonder where they were going with that show.
I’m sure there have been plenty of shows fitting this description.
The most recent that I’m aware of is Las Vegas, which ended its fifth season with a cliffhanger and a number of unresolved story lines. I have heard rumors that TNT (which is running the show in syndication) and NBC are in negotiations to for TNT to pick up the seriers and air new episodes, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
ABC treated Day Break like that; I think they aired maybe seven of twelve episodes filmed. I got a box set of the 12 episodes, which make a complete story but leave room for continuation; well worth watching.
I was curious about what direction they were taking My Own Worst Enemy; last week (the hostage rescue episode) it seemed like they were trying to get us to forget how evil the fictional government agency involved is.
In fact I did briefly think about this while writing the thread title, but I decided (I now see incorrectly! :dubious: )no one was likely to call it a “spoiler” when you tell them a story literally fails to have an ending.
A spoiler is something that reveals the plot of a work. Saying the work remains unfinished tells you nothing about its plot. It is hard for me to imagine someone for whom the drama of a show consists even in part in the question “will this show finish out its run or not?” Granted, that can be part of an external drama about the show, but it’s not part of the drama of the show. And I take “spoiler” to be a term applying to matters concerning the drama of the show.
One of the classic examples of this was the sitcom Soap. Unlike most sitcoms in the 70s, it had arcs and continuing story lines a plenty. In the final episode…
One character (a suicidal Chester) walks in on his second wife and his nephew (who’s really his son), catching them in bed, and prepares to kill them both. Another character (Burt) is about to walk into an ambush set up by his political enemies, and a third (Jessica) is in front of a firing squad in a third-world country.
Two years later, in the spin-off Benson Jessica appeared in a dream and announced that she had, indeed, been executed. Nothing about the other cliffhangers.
Well, not a dream, exactly. She appeared as an apparition that only Benson could see and hear. And she mentioned that she was in a coma and the Tates were seeking to have her declared legally dead.
In 1990, the Fox adaptation of Alien Nation ended its one and only season with a cliffhanger. While the producers clearly expected the series to be renewed, a budget crunch at the network led to its cancellation. In 1994, the cliffhanger was finally resolved in a TV movie, Dark Horizon, which was followed by four more Alien Nation tele-flicks.
IIRC It did get a complete season - it just left things open for the imaginary second season (though from what I heard the planned resolutions were pretty lame)
In 1978, they do, thanks to a large tidal wave. And it was the Professor that realized the wave was coming and lashed all the huts together, making a floating liferaft. The group is rescued by the Coast Guard.
