In medias res is where the story opens in the middle of action. Is there a term for when it ends in the middle of action? It happens in some movies, but I’m thinking more of episodic stories such as TV. Say that when the credits roll, Gilligan is stuck in the top of a coconut tree, the Skipper’s hat is glued to his head, and the Howells are having a major spat, throwing large diamonds at each other. But the next episode, everything is normal and it is never explained how the previous episode’s terminal problems were resolved. (I’m thinking of something more specific than the general "reset button.)
Well, I was going to say “cliffhanger,” but it seems like you’re looking more for a term for the “reset” at the beginning of the next episode.
Even TVTropes doesn’t have a good title for this. It’s just called No Ending.
Gilligan’s Island often used the “Oh, no! Not again!” ending, when the problem they just resolved happened again.
But given that TV in that era didn’t have story arcs, and wouldn’t necessarily be shown in a set order, no one worried about continuity from show to show.
This is listed in TV Tropes as Negative Continuity.
Yeah, a lot of those in the TV Tropes link are ones that are deliberate, where the story being told is a segment of the character’s journey (like a coming-of-age story, for example), and shows the character coming of age, stepping into the next phase of their journey, and stops.
I don’t know that particular example is “No Ending”, so much as it’s “Not the entire story.” I mean, Heinlein could have written more novels about Johnny Rico as an officer during the Bug Wars, but the original “Starship Troopers” was basically a coming-of-age story and ended with Johnny having become the commander of the Roughnecks. So it had a perfectly good ending, but didn’t tell Johnny’s entire story.
Yeah, I’m thinking of ending in a cliffhanger, but everything is normal the next episode, and the problem or the resolution to it is never mentioned again.
End of episode 1: Protagonist’s car is flying into the Grand Canyon Thelma and Louise-style with him in it.
Begining of episode 2: Protagonist is contemplating wherther to have sausage or bacon with breakfast.
Except that it sounds to me like there doesn’t necessarily have to be a “next episode,” just that the story (which may be an episode, or it may be a standalone movie or book) ends in the middle of some unresolved action. As opposed to “that wraps up everything and they all lived happily ever after.”
(There’s also the kind of ending which shows the characters setting off on a new adventure after the main storyline has been all wrapped up, without really starting to get into what that new adventure is. That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’re talking about, though it may be related.)
No, I mean very specifically an ongoing series that has next episodes. Anything else isn’t in the scope of my question.
Wouldn’t the opposite of “In medias res” be a story that somehow begins at way before the protagonist’s birth? Now that I think on it a bit, that used to be the way that 19th-century novels did begin.
See Post #5; they also have “Snap Back” and a few others. Which goes to show that TV Tropes is not an authoritative source for the jargon of literary theory.
Plot structure is often thought of as something like:
1.) Exposition
2.) Rising action
3.) Climax
4.) Falling Action
5.) Resolution
What I’m thinging of are episodes that end somewhere in #4 (or even barely beyond #3) without reaching #5.
Say that in an episode of a show there are children playing in a cave and are trapped in a cave-in. The parents don’t know ehere they were and search until they hear them calling from the inside of the cave.
In one plot choice, the rest of the episode is about digging the kids out and having a tearful reunion. But in the type of show I’m thinking about, the credits would roll as soon as the kid’s voices are heard, with that assumed to be good enough and the audience can fill in the rescue details in their own minds.