12 TV Cancellations That Caused Horrifying Cliffhangers

Novelists are a little bit invincible. Oh sure, it's hard to write a book, and you are required to stop writing your book if you die. But barring that untimely demise, you can to see your novel through to the bitter end as long as you have enough grit to get there. What if a writer didn't get to do that? What if you built out a narrative for tens of millions of fans, only to have a couple of executives tell you it's over before anything resolved? And what if that "what if" describes the actual experience of making many TV shows?

On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by working TV writers Ben Joseph and Chase Mitchell for tales of TV cancellations that turned stories into madness. They'll dig into TV's distant past and recent hits for narratives that became baffling cliffs audiences fell off of, all because the network felt the show wasn't selling enough soap.

Footnotes:

Ben Joseph on Twitter

Chase Mitchell on Twitter

The 7 Most Soul-Crushing Series Finales in TV History (Cracked)

7 TV Finales That Went Out Of Their Way To Anger Fans (Cracked)

6 Unresolved Cliffhangers That Ruined Great TV Shows (Cracked)

5 Ridiculous Reasons Awesome TV Shows Were Canceled (Cracked)

George Washington: The Athenaeum Portrait (National Portrait Gallery)

Unhappily Ever After (IMDb)

Robbie Sinclair (Muppet Wikia)

Here's What 'The Last Man on Earth' Ending Would Have Been If The Show Hadn't Been Cancelled (SlashFilm)

final scene of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (YouTube)