Cliffhangers Bring Viewers Back For New Season
It had been a typical day for J.R. Ewing. Only six death threats. That night, as he worked late in his office, two gunshots were fired. J.R. (played by Larry Hagman) fell to the floor. A cleaning woman soon discovered him, and the second full season of CBS’s nighttime soap “Dallas” came to a close.
“Who shot J.R.?” asked magazine covers, comedy sketch writers and titillated viewers. The world had to wait months - until the fall season premiere on Nov. 21, 1980 - to learn the answer: Kristin, J.R.’s trampy sister-in-law, played by Mary Crosby.
What the television industry learned was the power of the cliffhanger season finale. An almost unfathomable 76 percent of all television viewers in the country tuned in to “Dallas” that night.
Since then, season finales have
never been the same. And this year there seems to be an even bigger epidemic than usual of cliffhangers and shocking revelations.
There are weddings. Martin Lawrence, the swashbuckling bachelor of Fox’s “Martin,” will marry his longtime girlfriend, Gina, in a two-part episode. The notoriously single Murphy Brown, on the CBS sitcom that bears her name, will head for the altar, as will the title characters of “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”
There are major beginnings and endings. The first new baby will be born into the blended family on ABC’s “Step by Step.” John Hemingway, the recovering alcoholic protagonist of NBC’s “John Larroquette Show” will break up with his steady, Kathryn (Alison LaPlaca).
There are death watches, a kidnapping by aliens and at least one homage. One of the starring detectives of Fox’s “New York Undercover” will be shot and gravely wounded, hovering between life and death until fall. Detective Phil Phillips (Karen Sillas) of CBS’s “Under Suspicion” has already been lying on the ground bleeding since that marginally rated series ended its season on March 10.
The submarine on NBC’s “Seaquest” will be lifted out of the water, and into outer space, by an extraterrestrial mother ship. Even Fox’s animated series “The Simpsons” is getting into the act with its finale “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” Suspects include Homer, Bart, Lisa, Principal Skinner, Grampa Simpson, Smithers and Tito Puente.
“Melrose Place” had a season ender about a bomb set off by a character returning from a militarystyle camp filmed and ready for May 22. After the recent events in Oklahoma City, the producers announced that “the best way to handle this” was under discussion. Then they decided to keep their decision a secret.
NBC’s “Sweet Justice” spent six weeks of episodes leading up to a sensational trial in which a Southern establishment lawyer (Ronny Cox) accused of his daughter’s murder, will be defended by his frequent courtroom opponent (Cicely Tyson), a civil rights firebrand.
Such flip-flops are common in this age of anxiety - and of quick cancellations. But as veteran television watchers may remember, it has not always been thus.
“We never dreamed of wrapping things up at the end of the season,” says Allan Burns, who produced and wrote for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (1970-77) and “Lou Grant” (1977-82), among other series.
“The networks didn’t like us doing that. I think the main reason was that they wanted to run or rerun the show’s episodes in any way they wanted to. They couldn’t do that if one episode led up to another.”
The “Dallas” phenomenon didn’t create the change alone. The trends toward summer series tryouts, reducing the need for reruns and increasing pressure to show quick ratings success in a fragmented market, have also been factors.
Today the main destabilizing agent at work is the search for higher ratings during the crucial May sweeps period; in many cases a show has desperate hopes of being picked up for the 1995-96 season before all final cancellation decisions are made.
“We’re really big on stunts during sweeps month,” says Preston Beckman, NBC’s senior vice president for program planning and scheduling. “Since most shows conclude during May sweeps, they’re a good way to generate interest in the show, to get people to talk about it over the summer.”
Why all the transitions? “If it’s a successful show, people have bought into the characters,” Beckman says. “And people are most interested in the most unique moments of those characters’ lives.” Weddings and funerals, for instance.
Ross Brown, an executive producer of “Step by Step,” says: “You could make changes in the middle of the season. But if you don’t show them a new baby, for instance, right at the end, it doesn’t gives them anything important to tune in for next season.”
With the increasing use of multiepisode plot lines in one-hour dramas, producers must resolve many of them over the course of a season - but at the risk of confusing viewers who have missed several episodes.
“That’s what you can use the big final episode for,” says Dick Wolf, the creator of both “New York Undercover” and NBC’s “Law and Order.” “If you set the table correctly, you can go out with more of a bang than a whimper. Hopefully, everything converges in some weird way.”