5 Shows That We Need An Ending For

The term “cliffhanger” was either invented by Clifford Barton Hangar to describe a suspenseful ending, or is a slang term for the old days of cheesy “Perils of Pauline” style stories where the protagonist was left hanging off a cliff. It’s probably that second one because we made the first one up. No matter who created them though, the cliffhanger has one big problem: when nobody comes back to resolve it.

Here are five shows we really, really want some closure on. And most of them were on Fox. Gee, what a shock.

5) Sliders

Granted, this show had been beaten into the floor so, so hard that by the time the final episode rolled around, there was literally only one cast member, Cleavant Derricks, who stuck around and that was probably only because the checks were still clearing. Anyway, Cleavant and our cast of replacements wind up sliding to a world that’s run by a religion called Slidology as some L. Ron Hubbard stand-in had been following them with his mind for the entire run of the series, and was probably eating popcorn and screaming “Stay in the idyllic world, you idiots!” every time he caught wind of what they were doing.

Our heroes are being chased by the Kromaggs, intelligent fascistic cavemen from an alternate universe. Look, we just report on it OK, we don’t write it. Fortunately, the gods of Deus Ex Machina reveal that the Slidologists happen to have a virus that will kill the Kromaggs handy. Because that’s…awesome? Yeah, they’re fascistic, but genocide seems a little, we don’t know, drastic.

Anyway, Cleavant injects himself with the virus, and keeps on sliding and…that’s it. So, what, did the black guy kill all the cavemen? Do the other Sliders ever get home? We never find out.

Our bet for what happened: Rembrandt kills all the Kromaggs, and is remembered as a hero, except for the few surviving Kromaggs, who are a bit bitter over their entire species being wiped out. The rest of the Sliders spend their days in an alternate Earth with better food.

4) The Lost Room

Man, we’re still bitter about this one because it was a great idea. There was a room of a hotel in Gallup, New Mexico. Something bad happened to it in 1961, something that turned every single object in the room into something else. Some stuff was just goofy; a bus ticket will send you to Gallup. Some stuff was fatal: the pen could fry you.

There were secret orders and cults trying to gather all the objects and a guy trying to find his daughter, and it actually had a great set-up for a TV series as the hero had just become one of the objects which meant he was both invincible and a collector’s item, he’d just rescued his daughter, and no less than a secret order AND a cult which had just been taken over by a character who had gone insane were on his ass. It was awesome.

Nothing…happened. Nothing…whatsoever. The network that approved “Flash Gordon” and “Sanctuary” apparently couldn’t be bothered to air a show with any promise. We wonder how Ron Moore tricked them into airing “Battlestar Galactica”.

3) Titus

Titus is only not in the running for “best sitcom ever aired” because more people didn’t watch it. Titus was great. Titus was one of the first sitcoms to be honest about what dysfunctional families were actually like and still be funny. We love this show, if for no other reason than it starred Stacy Keach as Titus’ horrible father, who still managed to be a hilarious badass.

Having managed to survive for three seasons of Fox, the producers of Titus figured they had another season in the bag. So they ended the episode with Titus agreeing to go into a mental hospital to spare everyone else some jail time (long story).

So of course the show was canceled and didn’t even get so much as a wrap-up episode. We guess it costs more to produce Temptation Island than we thought.

2) Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Ever since Terminator 3 came out and taught us that we can believe a Terminator movie can be a campy pile of suck, complete with the film composer copping an attitude about using the original’s iconic score (seriously; the guy whose biggest credit was Resident Evil threw a hissy-fit and refused to use the original, classic music), and then Salvation came along to show us it could in fact suck even harder, all we had for quality death-robots was The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

And to be fair, it did a really good job of turning James Cameron’s masterpiece into a fun, engaging TV show. They finally answered some questions that had always been bugging us, had a lot of fun plot-lines, and did a lot of neat stuff with the Terminator mythology. And the second season finale was a blowout: John Connor is in a future where nobody’s heard of freedom fighter John Connor; Cameron was deactivated; and basically it was the absolute worst time to cancel the show.

Guess what happened! Thanks, Fox!

1) Twin Peaks

For fans of the show, it’s the worst question you could ask: “How’s Annie?”

The short of it: Laura Palmer’s killer, Bob, has been cornered in the Black Lodge. Agent Cooper’s nemesis, Windom Earle, has been killed. Cooper has to escape from his evil double in the Black Lodge. He doesn’t; instead we’ve got evil Coop. Which is very, very bad news.

Also somebody’s soul is trapped in a nightstand, a few characters have been blown up, basically it’s the biggest collection of cliffhangers ever. And thanks to ABC combined with David Lynch not feeling creating an ending, nothing gets resolved.

There are hints. We see an old Cooper early on in the episode, which means his soul hasn’t left the Black Lodge, and the aforementioned Annie turns up in the movie Fire Walk With Me, which didn’t answer a damn thing.

Come on, David Lynch. Not even a comic book? Really? All the cool kids are doing it!

Honorable Mention: Arrested Development (thanks again, Fox)

By Dan Seitz