What show pioneered the cliff hanger ending?

Submitted by GrumpigPlays t3_1220eec in television

So I have recently been rewatching the sopranos and I have noticed that for a tv drama the concept of a cliff hanger is as not used as much, where as today it feels like you can’t watch a tv show without every episode ending on a cliffhanger.

You may hate this or be a fan of it like me as it make binge watching shows a lot easier, but regardless what was the first show to start this trend? Is it possible it was breaking bad? I haven’t rewatched the wire recently, but I don’t remember many cliff hangers there.

Does anyone have any ideas?

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the_original_Retro t1_jdo6yw2 wrote

It goes all the way back to before television. A ton of radio "serial" shows had cliffhangers at their ends so you would want to turn into next week's episode to see how the heck the hero survived.

It predates TV, and predates TV series. There are hundreds in USA alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old-time_radio_programs

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omnilynx t1_jdpra9x wrote

Hate to one-up you but it goes back before radio, too. Serial novels, published in newspapers and magazines, have been doing episodic cliffhangers since at least Dumas and Dickens' time.

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the_original_Retro t1_jdqhsi2 wrote

Agreed, with the caveat that I was being adhering to OP's wording.

Their question was what "show" pioneered the cliff-hanger ending, so I took my answer from that context.

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hedronist t1_jdo976b wrote

I loved Flash Gordon (1936 serial) when I was a kid. Every episode -- every episode -- ended with a situation where you just knew that Flash (or one of the other principal characters) were dead, dead, dead.

And the next week would start with a slightly different camera angle so you could see how they escaped.

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GrumpigPlays OP t1_jdodkyc wrote

That’s really cool I’ll have to check some episodes out. That sounds way ahead of its time and I love stuff like that

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stile99 t1_jdodh6s wrote

>what was the first show to start this trend? Is it possible it was breaking bad?

No, not even remotely possible. By the 60s it was so much an established trope that Batman lampooned it.

Every. Single. Episode.

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goatjugsoup t1_jdocren wrote

From tvtropes.org

>Named for the old Saturday matinée film serials which would frequently leave a character literally hanging from the side of a cliff, revealing how the character escaped in the next episode.

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Monapomona t1_jdpc8u3 wrote

Not saying it pioneered the cliff hanger, but Dallas “Who Shot JR” was likely the most well known and quintessential.

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GrumpigPlays OP t1_jdpcjgf wrote

What i gathered from all the responses is that Dallas probably was the first show for cliff hangers to make a major impact on the majority of tv show watchers.

Then I’m pretty sure the show Lost is was plunged it into absolutely everything afterwords. Someone mentioned how much people would talk about the Lost cliffhangers while it was airing and with how popular it was I can see it being what made in so mainstream

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Nobodycares2022 t1_jdop9xi wrote

The show , Soap, pretty much ended every episode on a cliffhanger.

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crashfrog t1_jdo856y wrote

Does anyone know the trope namer for this? What was the first episodic drama to end with a guy literally hanging from a cliff?

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AmnesiaInnocent t1_jdo8ox7 wrote

According to Wikipedia, the term came the serialized novel A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy which was published in a magazine (I'm guessing one chapter in each issue?) in 1872-1873. And yes, at one point the hero is left hanging of the side of a cliff.

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GrumpigPlays OP t1_jdo8cce wrote

That is an extremely good point, and I want to know now

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daninlionzden t1_jdo8uvg wrote

Not TV, but the movie the Italian job (1969) ends this exact way - all the characters on a bus about to tip over the edge of a cliff - this is the likely origin of the phrase

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ronearc t1_jdobpwx wrote

Pretty sure it goes back to 1935's The Miracle Rider starring cowboy legend Tom Mix.

But that's what my dad, who was born in '28 told me. It may go back farther and he just wasn't aware.

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RyanMRKO721 t1_jdxrikd wrote

Doctor Who had cliffhangers all the way back in the early 60s.

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Edm_vanhalen1981 t1_jdo6th8 wrote

Probably Dallas and the "Who Shot JR" cliffhanger.

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Latter_Feeling2656 t1_jdogwl6 wrote

I don't know why anyone would downvote this. Obviously, the concept of cliffhangers predates Dallas, but if you're looking at a continuous practice in US primetime, serialization is anchored right here. They had "Who Shot JR?", Dynasty followed with several cliffhanger endings, and serialized programming became more and more common in both drama and comedy throughout the 1980s.

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Edm_vanhalen1981 t1_jdoi10e wrote

Still the biggest one of my lifetime. At the time it hit every magazine, newspaper and tv show in the North America and parts of the world. This became a cultural phenomenom.

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Latter_Feeling2656 t1_jdqj35z wrote

Just to follow up, it appears the resolution episode the next season had 90 million viewers in the US. On a Friday night.

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daninlionzden t1_jdo8xxw wrote

Lost season finale cliffhangers were talked about all summer back in the mid-2000s

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GrumpigPlays OP t1_jdods5h wrote

True I completely forgot about lost, I think that might actually the be the correct answer. I wasn’t necessarily saying that tv invented cliff hangers, I was just trying to figure out what popularized them. Lost is probably what did it do good intuition.

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Scirzo t1_jdpueha wrote

Heroes

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