Best & worst season-ending cliff-hangers [Open Spoilers]

So I’ve almost got caught up with Battlestar Galactica on Netflix. I’ve watched through the end of season three - in which the cliffhanger involved four characters realizing they were Cylon sleeper agents, a character thought killed coming back from the dead claiming to know the way to Earth, and a lite-rock version of “All Along the Watchtower” - which left me thinking WTF??? (If that song is going to make it’s way across the cosmic ether to enter the brains of the sleeper Cylons, couldn’t at least a GOOD version of the song be transmitted?)

To be fair, Baltar’s trial, the revelation about Roslin, and Lee’s defense of Baltar were quite interesting. But the mystical elements of this show seemed to getting strained & overdone at this point. And I couldn’t help thinking how much better the previous two cliffhangers were (Sharon gunning down Adama, and the occupation of New Caprica).

That then got me to thinking about cliffhangers in general, and which ones were the most effective (made me want to make a point of watching the fall premiere to see how it worked out), and which ones just plain sucked (made me never want to see the show again).

Personal favorite cliffhanger - Buffy “dying.” Not that there was any doubt in my mind that she would be ressurrected, but it was more a question of “how are they gonna write their way out of that?” It also was a plot twist that actually dramatically impacted (Willow turning to dark magic in order to restore Buffy, who it turned out did NOT want to be ressurected.)

Least favorite: Agent Cooper getting shot at pointblank range in his hotel room (end of “Twin Peaks” season one). Did anyone in his/her right mind not think that an FBI agent who had just returned from a major raid on a brothel/international drug smuggling stop would NOT be wearing a bullet-proof vest under his cummerbund?

Dude. You want to ask the mods to puts “OPEN SPOILERS” in your thread title there.

ETA - before you say “Well it was obvious”, I came in expecting boxes.

Old people tell me that the Who Shot JR cliffhanger was a great one. (Though the resolution was bunk. Or so I hear.)

Who shot Mr. Burns was the superior “who shot” cliffhanger. :slight_smile:

Good: Light beaming up from a hole in the ground.

Bad: Doctors in a fairy tale.(the cliff hanger being “is that it?”)

My apologies. I was trying to be vague about what I wrote, but not vague enough apparently. Moderators, could you please add “open spoilers” to the title?

Best: Farscape Season 3.

Crichton’s left in space alone(for the second time). He says, “**You have got to be kidding me.” **The fact he comments on this being essentially the same cliff hanger as season one is brilliant.

Worst: First Wave Season 2.

Main character, who is clearly signed for a third season, “dies”. It’s so obvious what the deal is.

Ayup, that it were. That was way back when we called the Internets “Hinkleyville” and just hooked up your TV screen to a typewriter and all there was on it was a Pong game and some staticky mess sounded like cats going at it and some “Are Greg Evigan and Eric Estrada gay?” threads.

Actually it does make me nostalgic- I remember the huge discussions (almost fights) over “Who Shot J.R.?” in my 9th grade lunch room over it with students who would never have spoken due to socioeconomic/racial/age/etc. differences getting into heated debates. “Nah-uh, you’re just stupid! Suellen couldn’t have shot that man her ass was at the airport drunk!” “M-hmmm what she said! I’ll tell you who it was, was Miss Ellie!” “Bullshit! How she’s gonna shoot her own son? It was that little yellow headed Lucy slut if you wanna know the truth!”

DALLAS also had the infamous “How did [dead] Bobby get into Pam’s shower?” cliffhanger.
Worst cliffhanger ever was around the same time and was on SOAP. Jessica was in front of a firing squad (and you heard the shots), Chester was about to shoot his illegitimate son Danny, Burt was about to be clobbered by a bad guy, Billy Crystal was trapped in a past-life persona that was about to tell him why he was gay, etc., and the show ended- forever. Never had a resolution (except a sorta kinda mention of Jessica on an episode of the spin-off Benson).

Last year’s Ugly Betty was pretty good as well- car accident, stranded in Mexico, etc… Unfortunately the show is having a hard time rebuilding its momentum since teh writer’s strike hiatus.

Sampiro, do you remember the “I shot JR” tee-shirts? :smiley:

(I had one. Or so I hear. Oh what the hell. I’m old and everybody knows it.)

I found the Farscape cliffhangers to be particularly effective in the “There’s no way in hell they get out of this one…” mold.

"I am Locutus of Borg…"

That one wasn’t really the fault of the writers/producers. The show was supposed to come back for another season, but religious fundamentalists put the thumb screws on the network and got the show yanked off the air.

Katherine Helmond (who played Jessica) said in an interview that the script for the first episode of the cancelled season would have begun with her being rescued. Her boyfriend revolutionary (the guy who played Chano on “Barney Miller”) had filled the guns with blanks. Then, one by one, a parade of her friends & family (who were all in on the rescue operation) would come out of hiding. (This was already kind of a running gag - several characters had been rescued from sticky situations in the same manner.)

YES!! That’s the first one I though of!

Not quite a cliffhanger, but Battlestar Galactica moving all the action to New Caprica at the end of Season 2 (I think it was S2 anyway) was truly a jaw dropping development.

Speaking of Dallas, the worst cliffhanger has got to be “It was all a dream/Bobby is in the shower”. Horrible.

Lost - Season 3 is a classic as far as I’m concerned.

Its that old “I kind of saw that coming, but dismissed it because… because…”

I third “Locutus of Borg” for best cliffhanger.

For worst, I’d say the second-season finale of King of the Hill. There was only one expendable character, for cryin’ out loud. And IIRC, that was also the season when Fox thought they were faking people out by pretending the show was going to move to L.A. Yeahright.

Now, can I mention episodes that would have made good cliffhangers but weren’t used as such? Becky and Mark eloping on Roseanne would have worked just as well if not better had the two-part episode bookended the fourth and fifth season. The whole reason they did that was because Lecy Goranson was leaving the show, so the last shot of them driving off would have been symbolic. (Although granted, the writers might not have known she was leaving before filming ended for the season.)

The one that had me yelling, “Why isn’t this the season finale?” was on Murphy Brown. Spoiler just in case: The episode concerns a story about Evil Tobacco being suppressed. Naturally, it looks like Murphy might quit. Instead it’s Jim who, right after introducing the show, has an epiphany. He tells the audience, live on air, that he won’t support censorship. “Therefore, I hereby resign [gasps all around] as senior anchor. This will be my final episode of FYI. Good night.” Unclips his mike and walks off the set.

It was resolved, in a way, in the next episode, and fully resolved in the season finale. But imagine the impact if it had been the season finale. That’s what makes a cliffhanger: not the question of how it will be resolved, but the :eek: factor when the gun goes off or Picard turns around with Borg gear on his head. You remember that all summer, and you tune in in the fall hoping that the resolution will be equally impressive.

Unfortunately, it rarely is. And that gives rise to another question: best and worst resolutions to a cliffhanger. I don’t know if that deserves its own thread. I will say, OTTOMH, that the best resolution was “Who Shot Mr. Burns pt. 2”. Not sure about the worst.

I put “Who Shot J.R.”, “Who Shot Mr. Burns” and “The Best of Both Worlds” (I am Locutus) in a class by themselves. Everything else comes up short.

Me too.

OTOH, the first one I thought of for the “worst” category was “Descent”, with Picard & Company put in a predicament after they followed the series of neon signs reading “THIS WAY TO OBVIOUS TRAP”. (Admittedly, the neon signs weren’t actually depicted, but they might as well have been.)

He was wearing a vest, but he pulled up the very bottom of it after returning to the hotel because a wood tick had crawled underneath and he was trying to get rid of it. The wood tick ended up getting shot too. The vest stopped all but that one bullet that hit him low where he’d pulled it up. All this was discussed in the next season’s premiere.