[QUOTE=Scoundrel Swanswater]
That would make for some very bad television : 24 episodes of psych counselling?
[/quote]
Since the implication is that “Cooper” is actually BOB and that the real Cooper is trapped in the Black Lodge, the story arc is whether Cooper can escape from the Lodbe sooner than the 25 (?) years that he dreamed he was trapped there, and what BOB-as-Cooper would be able to do while freed from the Lodge.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the second season, but off the top of my head:
Did Audrey survive the explosion at the bank? (I was in an AOL interview room with Sherilyn Fenn and she said the plan was yes, but it’s not canon)
Did the others in the bank vault survive the explosion? (IIRC, Pete, Catherine and Andrew were there)
Who’s really Donna’s father?
Did Leo survive the death trap?
Will Ben Horn survive the injuries inflicted by Dr Heywood?
Who’s the real father of Lucy’s baby? (and would she ever give birth on the show, since each episode was one day and a full-term pregnancy would take over ten seasons)
What will be the fate of Ghostwood Estates?
What’s the secret of the Owl Cave?
If the owls are not what they seem, what are they?
Sports Night got wrapped up as did Quantum Leap. I wasn’t thrilled with the first ending, but it did end - and I hated the Quantum Leap ending, but it also ended.
Remember WENN got cancelled in a horrible fashion with three cliffhangers that will never be resolved.
[QUOTE=Cartooniverse]
I’ll chime in with one that is not a fictional television show.
For a lot of us who watched t.v. on the weekends in the 1960’s and 1970’s, ABC’s Wide World of Sports was an oasis of really very cool amateur sporting events ( wrist wrestling? cliff diving? ) in a sea of slickly produced professional sports franchises.
I shot the last 4 years of W.W.o.S in the studio in NYC, from January to mid-August. When we did the last show in August of the year it ended, we all knew it was very likely the show was cancelled forever. Nothing remarkable was done that weekend to note the passing of a very original kind of show. That poor skiier, Vinko Bogataj fell week after week after week for us. ( He only suffered a concussion, for all of that fearful ski-flailing ).
We just wrapped the show that day, and felt awful as we left. TV-7 was never the same…
Cartooniverse
[/QUOTE]
“Spanning the globe, to bring you the constant variety of sport. The thrill of victory…and the agony of defeat.”
Since no one mentioned it, did St Elsewhere really have an ending?
Going to the other extreme, a show that definitley had closure was the short-lived “I Married Dora” from about 15 years ago. The show lasted about 6 episodes and on the final episode, “Dad” (I don’t really know the character’s name), is leaving for work in another country. His family, saying good-bye at the airport is getting very sad and they make remarks such as “he’s really leaving”, “the planes taking off”, and so on. All of a sudden the star reappears and his family is incredibly overjoyed.
Someone asks “What happened” and the reply is “It’s been cancelled.”
“You mean the flight?”
“No, the show”.
Then everybody comes out of character to say a farewell to the viewers. Not exactly a defining moment in television history but still a “neat” way to end a show.
[QUOTE=Otto]
Since the implication is that “Cooper” is actually BOB and that the real Cooper is trapped in the Black Lodge, the story arc is whether Cooper can escape from the Lodbe sooner than the 25 (?) years that he dreamed he was trapped there, and what BOB-as-Cooper would be able to do while freed from the Lodge.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the second season, but off the top of my head:
Did Audrey survive the explosion at the bank? (I was in an AOL interview room with Sherilyn Fenn and she said the plan was yes, but it’s not canon)
Did the others in the bank vault survive the explosion? (IIRC, Pete, Catherine and Andrew were there)
Who’s really Donna’s father?
Did Leo survive the death trap?
Will Ben Horn survive the injuries inflicted by Dr Heywood?
Who’s the real father of Lucy’s baby? (and would she ever give birth on the show, since each episode was one day and a full-term pregnancy would take over ten seasons)
What will be the fate of Ghostwood Estates?
What’s the secret of the Owl Cave?
If the owls are not what they seem, what are they?
[/QUOTE]
Wow.
There are people who actually watched more than the first couple of episodes of the second season of Twin Peaks?
[QUOTE=Scumpup]
Stephen King’s Golden Years originally aired as a summer replacement series with a limited number of episodes and was supposed to have a final episode that wrapped up the story. For reasons that I have forgotten, if I ever knew them, it was cancelled with the final episode unaired. I understand the complete series has since been released on DVD, but I’ve never seen it and remain ignorant of the characters’ fates.
[/QUOTE]
Are you sure about that? I was pretty young but I seem to recall Golden Years being touted as a miniseries lasting only 4 or 5 installments. I seem to recall it wrapped up at the end as best a King adaptation can.
Guys, Nowhere Man did have an ending. Most people didn’t like it, but I personally found it satisfying enough.
Spoliers below are from memory. Don’t read unless you wanna know.
Thomas Veil is a created persona. The photo of the four Che Guevara lookalikes being hanged in South America was really a photo of four congressmen being hanged in the woods near the Capitol Building which had been computer manipulated; Veil’s memories are false; all of his life is false. It was all basically a plot by the mysterious Gemini, the codename for a CIA agent, to hide the negatives of the murder of the congressmen. Gemini supposes that if they create the Tom Veil character he will run like hell and distract attention from the true negative which he (Gemini) has hidden in a safehouse out in the country. In the end Tom Veil comes to the safehouse and… discoveres that he was Gemini.
Or something like that. Fade out. The End?
Lawrence Hertzog, the creator and producer, has admitted he was basically making up shit as he went, and didn’t have a longterm plan for the series.
[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
Actually the first season of LOTL ended with the family simultaneously leaving and arriving, so it formed a cycle, since they didn’t know if the series was going to be renewed.
This I learned from the excellent commentary on the DVD. I only bought the first season, so I don’t know how the show actually ended in Season 3. Even as a kid, I stopped watching during that last season. I had thought I’d buy Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD, but when I finished Season 1, every single memory I had of the show (other than bad ones from season 3) had played out before my eyes, so I figured, “Why bother?”
[/QUOTE]
Actually, Season 2 is not bad. Not as good as the David Gerrold-produced first season, but it does have a few interesting eps, especially Theodore Sturgeon’s, whose title escapes me (it’s the famous one with the frisbee and the words in the dirt saying “Holly, don’t.”).
Season 3 was awful; there was no wrapup, just another dumb episode where someone (an Indian played by the embarrassed Ned Romero, iirc) rides into the LOTL; dicks around, then leaves without the Marshalls.
saoirse
Yes I’m familiar with the final episode of “Saint Elsewhere” but is that really the ending?
How about a show that had a final episode … or did it? The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan.
Was that final episode actually the first episode? Maybe I’ll stop there because I’m sure a discussion of The Prisoner would seriously hijack this thread.