TV Fans Deserve a Rope When Hanging From Cliff

So I’m still distraught about the way CBS canceled Friday night’s cool superhuman-spy-relationship hour, “Now and Again.” And I’m thinking how great it would be if CBS bankrolled at least a TV movie so we could see what happened after that season-ending cliffhanger when engineered hero Michael Wiseman escaped his handlers’ clutches with his clueless wife and kid in tow.

We’ll never know? Oh, no! But that’s what happens in TV’s current cliffhanger mania. Everybody had one last month. “ER”: Carter’s drug problem. “Once and Again”: The families poised to meet. “The X-Files”: Mulder MIA, Scully pregnant! OK, these dramas do feature continuing story lines, as do some sitcoms. “Frasier,” we can forgive if they pay off that Niles-Daphne dance already. And “Spin City,” they had to send off Michael J. Fox somehow.

But “Malcolm in the Middle”? It’s not as if we wouldn’t watch this fall if Dewey hadn’t toddled off to Chinatown following his balloon bliss. And March entry “Titus”? We hardly knew ye. With character growth antithetical to this crazed dysfunctional family, why leave Titus’ dyspeptic dad at death’s door?

At least those series are coming back. Pity the poor partisans of “The Pretender,” left in the cancellation lurch after four seasons, not knowing what happens to Jarod, Ethan and Miss Parker after the tunnel explosion. Or their Saturday night “Profiler” compadres, also with four seasons invested. Fans of “The Others” or “Get Real” might understand no closure after less than a season on the air. But “Early Edition” ran four years, “Chicago Hope” six. Don’t viewers deserve better?

The networks don’t always let producers know in time whether they’re renewed. Wrapping up what they assumed was their final season, the producers of “Magnum, P.I.” killed off Tom Selleck’s character, before, oops, the show got picked up again. (They fudged it with that dream device.) This didn’t exactly discourage the trend toward open-ended scripting. And it’s likely the folks behind “Now and Again” and “The Pretender” were hopeful their series would come back. Now they won’t, and we’re cheated of the resolution these solid suspense sagas deserve.

While those two shows in particular justify a viewers’ campaign for a more apt adieu, there’s yet another campaign worth waging--to discourage cliffhanger season-enders altogether. “The Drew Carey Show” resisted the temptation last month and finished the season with an inspired send-up of Very Special Episodes that was true to the series’ tone yet offered something special. “The Practice” tied up loose ends and pointed the way to the future with Lindsay and Bobby’s wedding, without having a fresh disaster strike.

By contrast, “The West Wing” went way too far, its wanton shooting rampage bringing back bad memories of “Dynasty’s” Moldavia massacre. The incident was out of sync with the usually reflective series and expended some extreme ammo the producers may later wish they’d held in reserve.

TV never learns until it’s taught a lesson. Remember that “South Park” cliffhanger that was supposed to reveal Cartman’s dad? Remember how the show played April Fool and substituted the scatological Terrance and Phillip cartoon? Fans rioted. Some jumped ship and never came back. The lesson: Pay off our expectations, or you’ll be sorry. Just because one show jumps off a cliff doesn’t mean everybody has to do it.