Honestly, if you produce a quality product, viewers will come back next season. You don’t need to “hook” them by giving us a bullshit season finale in which nothing is resolved. I’m going to watch anyway, so why not at least give me some satisfaction?
You give me my fix in episode one of every season, and then the rest of the season is all buildup to the season finale, at which point you leave everything hanging to make sure I’ll be back. You know I’ll be back for more regardless, just GIVE ME MY FUCKING FIX NOW!!!
This is why I never watch these shows on TV and just wait until they are over and get them on Netflix or just buy them (X-Files). Seriously, I am totally with you and think it’s completely frustrating that they do that.
But then again, I also think they should have planned “endings” to every sitcom (or any TV show) and not just drag it on and on and on…
Especially since their finale last season was perfect–the existing story lines were resolved, but big events were in place and there were hints at the new story lines they’d be picking up.
It’s not just Season Finale cliffhangers, but cliffhangers in general. You get mini-cliffhangers before each commercial break, medium cliffhangers at the end of each episode and huge cliffhangers with the season finale. The shows are written around this concept, and it can get extremely annoying. 24 is probably the worst offender. I’m sorry but Jack Bauer isn’t going to die, just like he didn’t die during all the previous five hundred commercial breaks.
The Office:
I’m done watching that show. Their latest attempt to make me watch that shit has backfired. I so fucking sick of Jim / Pam drama. They’re talking about how Jim missed his chance because Andy already proposed? WTF? I can’t stand this bullshit any more.
30 Rock:
This, in my opinion was done quite well. The writing for this show is really top notch, IMO. What did they do with their final episode? They made it seem as if Tina Fey was pregnant and really hammed it up to the end. Then after they revealed that she wasn’t pregnant she decides she wants to adopt a child. Point being, you don’t need to have a cliffhanger to get someone looking forward to watching the next season. I’m looking forward to 30 Rock because I like it. The new plot angle will be cool. They don’t need to wait until the first episode to do it either.
The worst offender though has been Battlestar Gallactica. BSG leaves me feeling like a battered spouse after each season. I enjoy it’s company but would rather not revisit each episode. Yet lo and behold, when BSG comes back to me saying, “Look baby, I’ve changed! I’ve got new material!” I obviously cave in. And to add insult to injury they are constantly delaying the new season too.
So put me down for “Cliffhangers are stupid” I much rather prefer them to go straight to the denouement at the end of the season, but one that clearly spells out a twist for next season. BSG has been very bad here too. They’ve ended a few seasons (at least one I’m sure) where they had a climax that was essentially inconsequential when they resumed the series.
That’s why I quit watching 24. At the end of the second season they had a bullshit plot twist where President Palmer gets infected with a flesh-eating bacteria (or something equally stupid). Then I heard they barely even referenced it at all at the beginning of season three, so I decided to not bother with any future episodes. If they’re going to toy with viewers by giving us a cliffhanger with no buildup and no context, the least they could do is actually make the damn thing matter.
Rescue Me is another show where a season-ending cliffhanger ended up hardly having any consequences to speak of - certainly nothing to justify leaving everything hanging for months at a time. It reminded me of the Goosebumps books I read when I was kid, where every chapter ended with something like “I fell…and suddenly I tasted blood!” and the next page announced, “That was because I had bitten my lip.”
Who’s the “they” in “they are talking about”? I haven’t heard anyone say that.
And while I agree that season 4 wasn’t quite as consistently good as seasons 2 and 3 (which I thought were nearly perfect), it still had an awful lot of hilarity.
“I I I I I don’t like your boyfriend. Why why why why 'cause he sucks at ping pong”.
I disagree with this. Not because the series don’t end on cliffhangers, because they do, but because they’re GOOD cliffhangers. I’ve ended each series going “What the fuck is going to happen now?!?!?!” and the next series has continued on with the story. Even better, the cliffhangers at the end of each series have gotten bigger and better each time, so that series one was :eek:, series two was :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:, series three was :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: and the midpoint of series four was :eek::(:mad::eek::dubious::(:eek::mad::eek::(.
They don’t just wave a magic wand and make the tension before the cliffhanger go away, it continues on logically. People do die, things do change permanently, the story does evolve. That, to me, is how a cliff hanger is supposed to be employed, and I think it makes the show better, not worse.
Bauer can no more die than Vlad Tepes, and for the same reason. If you watch carefully you’ll notice a complete lack of shots including his reflection.
That’s funny, I think that episode was a lot LESS “cliff-hangery” than it could have been, and less so than previous season enders of the same show.
The episode could easily have ended without revealing whether Jim proposed that night. As it is, we know that he didn’t and we know that Pam, somewhat disappointed, will be leaving soon for a summer in NYC. There wasn’t anything in the episode about Jim having “missed his chance”, it was only hinted that if he didn’t act soon Pam might figure he was never really serious.
An even more obvious cliffhanger possibility would have been ending either on the revelation that Jan is pregnant or the revelation of her baby’s paternity, but they showed Michael’s reaction to both. The only real cliffhanger aspect of the episode involved the Andy/Angela/Dwight love triangle, and that’s always been a subplot anyway.
Last season they had 15 episodes…this was only episode 13.