Page "Cliffhanger" Paragraph 18

Cliffhangers are also sometimes deliberately inserted by writers who are uncertain whether a new series or season will be commissioned, in the hope that viewers will demand to know how the situation is resolved.

Such was the case with the second season of Twin Peaks, which ended in a cliffhanger similar to the first season with a high degree of uncertainty about the fate of the protagonist, but the cliffhanger could not save the show from being canceled, resulting in the unresolved ending.

Another notable example of this case was the Sledge Hammer!

season 1 episode " The Spa Who Loved Me ", which ended with the city destroyed by a nuclear explosion followed by this caption: " To Be Continued ... Next Season?

" A second season was eventually signed, but instead of explaining the fate of the characters following the explosion, the season 2 opener took place five years prior to the incident.

The cliffhanger has become a genre staple ( especially in comics, due to the multi-part storylines becoming the norm instead of self-contained stories ).

To such a degree, in fact, that series writers no longer feel they have to be immediately resolved, or even referenced, when the next episode is shown --- for example, the last episode of the second series of Graham Linehan's The IT Crowd ended with a substantial cliffhanger that was not addressed until the third episode of series three, variously because the writer didn't feel it was " a strong enough opener ," or simply " couldn't be bothered.

" The heavily serialized television drama True Blood has become notorious for cliffhangers.

Not only do the seasons conclude with cliffhangers, but almost every episode finishes at a cliffhanger directly after or during a highly dramatic moment.