To Be DIScontinued! - The Hall of Unresolved TV Cliffhangers: The 80's

ToBe DIScontinued! - The Hall of Unresolved TV Cliffhangers: The 80's
Ah, the 80's. The age of MTV, Miami Vice, and all that other retro stuff we associate with the decade. Not to mention the time when the season ending cliffhanger started to rear, ahem, its ugly side effect. Here's a list of shows that got this "treatment" in the 80's. | Main Page | The 80's | 1990-95 | 1996-2000 | 2001 On | Info Wanted Section | Quotes | Poll | Hall of Shame |

Show: Love of Life
Genre: Daytime Soap
Network: CBS
Last aired: 1980
Details: When the show premiered back in 1951, it was promoted as the exciting new story of Vanessa Dale, but its finale had another woman, Betsy Crawford, suddenly collapsing while testifying during an important trial, in which husband Ben had been falsely accused of battery. (She had just recalled a repressed memory about a boating accident that happened because someone was trying to kill a snake.) The last scene was people being told that Betsy was so ill she would probably die. (Thanks Dixon Hayes! Also, Mark Cox, for extra details.)
Note: The first known unresolved cliffhanger ever, predating Soap by a whole year.

Show: Soap
Genre: Sitcom Soap
Network: ABC
Last aired: 1981
Details: The show ended with many threads hanging. One involved Burt Campbell (Richard Mulligan) about to get ambushed by some thugs, another involved Chester Tate (Robert Mandan) about to shoot 2 persons (Danny Dallas and Annie Tate, played by Ted Wass and Nancy Dolman respectively) in bed, and the one the show ended on involved Jessica Tate (Katherine Helmond) being shot at a firing squad in South America. The last thread was "resolved" on the Soap spinoff "Benson" when Jessica's ghost appeared on one ep saying that she was in a coma in South America.

Show: Blake's 7
Genre: Sci-Fi
Network: BBC (UK)
Last aired: 1981
Episode Title: "Blake"
Details: Avon (Paul Darrow) was apparently shot by the bad guys, the Federation Squad (all they actually showed was Avon holding up a gun to fight the Squad, with gunshots heard after fadeout). At the time, he was the last crewman who was still alive (well, at least apparently... at least two of the characters would have been "just stunned" if the show'd gone on, according to the show's creator). Interestingly, the producers thought they had done the finale the previous year... the renewal for the 4th season came as a total surprise. (Thanks Meg!)

Show: Mork and Mindy
Genre: Sitcom
Network: ABC
Last aired: 1982
Episode Title: "The Mork Report"
Details: The show that launched Robin Williams' career was also the first (true) sitcom to end on a cliffhanger. It had the title characters (Williams and Pam Dawber) travelling forward through time from caveman times, not sure whether they'd end up back in 1982. (Thanks Dixon Hayes!)

Show: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Sci-Fi
Network: ITV (UK)
Last aired: 1982
Details: This rather cheesy sci-fi program from England had an appropriately cheesy 'hanger to match, where the show's title characters, investigating the happenings at a service station where it seemed that there were people from disparate times stranded there, were imprisoned in the service station's cafe (leaving them staring through a window into space in the ep's final shot). Turns out, those people were mysterious beings answering to a higher authority, with the service station being a trap especially constructed for them. (Thanks Robin!)

Show: AfterMASH
Genre: Sitcom
Network: CBS
Last aired: 1984
Details: The antics from MASH, which had just ended with a bang the previous year (the show's finale is still the biggest watched show ever), must have ran out of steam in this spinoff. The finale had Klinger (Jamie Farr) in jail and his wife (Rosalind Chao) about to give birth. (Thanks Crowmeus!)

Show: Edge of Night
Genre: Daytime Soap
Network: ABC (previously, CBS)
Last aired: 1984
Details: According to Jimmy Murphy, EON "ended with the set-up for a big mystery that was never resolved." Digging around at The Edge of Night Homepage, I discovered that the final ep featured a surrealist scene with several allusions to Alice in Wonderland involving Det. Chris Egan (Jennifer Taylor) supposedly seeing Alicia Van Dine (Chris Weatherhead) murdered at M. Hatter's antiques shop on Wonderland Lane (see???). Although the police didn't believe her when she told them, Mike Karr (Forrest Compton, previously, John Larkin and Luarence Hugo) and Calvin Stoner (Irving Allan Lee) did and organized everyone into action. Also, the final scene showed Sky Whitney (Larkin Malloy) finding the sword he used to kill Donald Hext (Ralph Byers) on his mansion's doorstep.
One nice quote from the final ep: "There's a fitting completeness to this day. I can't describe it, but it's very special." (Mike Karr, to everyone) BTW, what do "Edge of Night" and "Love of Life" have in common? Despite being of different networks, they both had Proctor and Gamble as producers... and there are TONS of actors who've appeared on both shows (inevitable, since they both ran 20+ years). Click here.

Show: V
Genre: Sci-Fi Drama
Network: NBC
Last aired: 1985
Details: The show ended on a cliffhanger with Jennifer Cooke's character (a human-alien hybrid) boarding a ship with the aliens' leader, with her human boyfriend (Jeff Yagher) sneaking on board. That ship had a bomb on it, placed by Jane Badler's character. (Thanks Odeus!)

Show: Hail to the Chief
Genre: Sitcom Soap
Network: ABC
Last aired: 1985
Details: It ended its season with the Head of the KGB (Dick Shawn) blackmailing the First Man (Ted Bessell) into getting government secrets and it being revealed that a corrupt Tele-Evangelist that had been trying to get the President (Patti Duke ... I'm not kidding here, as the series was about a female president) impeached was really a KGB agent. (Thanks Marvin!)

Show: Benson
Genre: Sitcom Soap
Network: ABC
Last aired: 1986
Details: Benson DuBois (Robert Guillaume), previously the butler on Soap, entered a governor's race against incumbent Gatling (James Noble) and some other guy. Their friendship was severed as a result. Right at the end, Gatling and Benson made up and decided to watch the election returns on TV. The TV said something like that it was known who the winner would be. However, the show ended without the winner being announced, as it froze right there.

Show: Capitol
Genre: Daytime Soap
Network: CBS
Last aired: 1987
Details: One character, Sloane Denning (Debrah Farentino), was at the firing squad in the Middle East for marrying a prince. The show ended with the squad getting ready to shoot her.
Note: First daytime show since "Edge of Night" to end on a cliffhanger.

Not a series ending cliffhanger, but something interesting (courtesy Paul Freitag): The antithises of a cliffhanger cancellation.
"The producers of Sledge Hammer! (ABC, 1986-88) were so sure they'd be cancelled at the end of the first season that they basically ended the series, blowing up the entire city it took place in, and all the characters with it, due to Sledge's (David Rasche) own incompetence. The series was renewed, and the following season took place 3 years before the first season in order to write them out of the corner."

Show: The Colbys
Genre: Night Soap
Network: ABC
Last aired: 1987
Details: Spun off Dynasty (which would itself end on a 'hanger), this spinoff ended with many of the show's major characters, like Emma Samms' Fallon, getting abducted by aliens (cheesy huh?). The Shapiros had to incorporate their return into Dynasty. (Thanks Grant!)

Show: Crime Story
Genre: Crime Drama
Network: NBC
Last aired: 1988
Episode Title: "Going Home"
Details: With Ray Luca (Anthony John Denison) attempting to escape to Mexica via plane, Vegas cop Lt. Mike Torrello (Dennis Farina) abandoned his fellow cops and jumped aboard the plane Luca was on. The ensuing fight on the plane resulted in the pilot being shot and the plane crashing into the sea. The submitter says: "I thought ending the show like that made most of it a waste of my time. It should have ended in Vegas." (Thanks Ryan Coulter!)

Show: Dynasty
Genre: Night Soap
Network: ABC
Last aired: 1989
Details: After the cast survived a big massacre one season, Alexis (Joan Collins) was accidentally pushed off a balcony with ex-husband Dex (Michael Nader) by son Adam (Gordon Thomson), Blake Carrington (John Forsythe, or "Charlie" of Charlie's Angels... his real-life son William would be part of another hung show 14 years later) was shot and bleeding (those two scenes were portrayed in the telefilm about the show, "Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure"),and wife Krystle (Linda Evans) was in a coma. Also, a crooked cop kidnapped Fallon (Emma Samms) and her baby. These threads were resolved in a reunion telefilm 2 years later, the first time a TV movie resolved an unresolved cliffhanger.

Honorable mention time:
Show:War of the World
Genre: Sci-Fi
Network: Syndicated
Cliffhanger aired: 1989
Episode Title: "Angel of Death"
Details: At the end of the first season, a synth from the planet Qar'to (a planet in the same solar system as the aliens' world, Mor-Tax) arrived on Earth and began to terminate the aliens in an effort to track down their leaders, the Advocacy, without which the underlings could not function. Appearing to be an aide to the humans in the war, the Blackwood Team embraced the droid as an ally. However, just before it/she left in promise to return with reinforcements, the synth sent a message to it/her kind (in a foreign tongue) explaining that humanity as a food source was still endangered.
While the show was actually picked up for another year, Paramount had now handed the show over to different producers who cared very little for the first season's continuity. Thus the show was heavily altered to the point where it barely resembled the first year with no explanation given to the audience, leaving many plotlines hanging, including (but not limited to) the Qar'To situation.
And no, the second/last season didn't end on a cliffhanger. In fact, despite that Season One had a TV-Movie followed by a standard 22 episodes and that the second year was doing so poor in the ratings that it had to be cut off at just 20 episodes, it did manage to end on a more conclusive note. Granted, just not a coherent one. (Thanks, Tony Thursiaz!)