by Neil Landau
In Breaking Bad, [SPOILER ALERT] when Walt’s brother-in-law, Hank Schrader (Dean Norris), realizes that Walt is actually the notorious drug kingpin “Heisenberg”—discovered via a gifted book with a revelatory inscription— it’s Hank’s “Eureka!” moment. But instead of it being in the bathtub, it’s when Hank’s on the toilet. We’re left to ponder—at midseason—what it portends for Walt now that Hank knows his secret, but Walt has no idea he knows.
In Mad Men, Betty Draper (January Jones) discovers her husband’s true identity as Dick Whitman after she unearths evidence from a locked drawer in his desk. The secret ends their once “happy” marriage.
Lack of closure. Many shows end their series with closure: a finale that answers every question and provides viewers with a sense of well being. Star-crossed lovers usually get married, and the show ends on an upbeat note. There is an opposite choice, however, but it’s difficult to pull off.
The series finale of The Sopranos literally cut to black after Meadow Soprano (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) enters a restaurant and Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) looks up. Seconds before, a man had been staring at Tony. The audience is left hanging: what is Tony’s fate? Was the man an assassin or just someone who recognized Tony? Did Tony live or die?
However, if a cliffhanger feels too ambiguous or information is withheld, there can be viewer backlash: The Sopranos series finale felt too enigmatic for most audience members. But at least it wasn’t predictable, and we’re still studying it and writing about it, so showrunner David Chase’s groundbreaking series started and finished with the same level of controversy. Win-win.
The season 1 cliffhanger of The Killing was anti-climactic and alienated many loyal viewers because the identity of Rosie’s killer was not revealed, leaving many fans frustrated by the pace of the storytelling. This series was “officially” cancelled by cable network AMC at the end of season 2—when the killer was finally revealed. Fortunately, AMC decided to grant this series a pardon. At press time, season 3 has begun with a whole new murder mystery, and showrunner Veena Sud has vowed to reveal its killer by the end of the same season. Lessons learned.
Life events. Many cliffhangers in character dramas employ various life events: marriages, affairs, divorces, engagements, break-ups, pregnancies and births to pit characters against forces in life not in their control.
In the second season of The Walking Dead, in a world of chaos due to a zombie apocalypse, Lori Grimes (Sarah Wayne Callies) discovers she is pregnant. She is torn as to whether to bring a baby into such a terrible world or to abort it.
Mini-cliffhangers. No drama would be complete without “act breaks” or mini-cliffhangers, originally designed so that when commercials aired, viewers would not change the channel. Mini-cliffhangers are important plot beats, such as a detective finding a clue that pushes the story forward.
While there aren’t any official act breaks in the cable series Homeland, we can deduce where the act breaks would be. For example, in the episode “The Vest,” the Teaser ends after the audience sees a bomb maker creating an explosive vest. The end of act 1 is Saul (Mandy Patinkin) discovering the secret that Carrie (Claire Danes) has been suffering from mania due to her bipolar disorder, which threatens her security clearance, as well as the veracity of her theories. The end of act 2 is Saul protecting Carrie’s secret from David (David Harewood). The end of act 3 is Brody (Damian Lewis) picking up the suicide vest in Gettysburg. The end of act 4 is Saul piecing together Carrie’s mish-mash of information and realizing that she was on to something: a timeline. The end of act 5 is Carrie calling Brody to tell him the CIA knows an attack is coming and she needs his help. The final cliffhanger/climax is Carrie preparing for what she thinks is a romantic visit from Brody, only to find he betrayed her: her timeline is torn down. On the cusp of solving the attack, she’s out of the CIA. Each act out raises questions, raises tension, and propels the viewer forward to find out what happens next.
Comedy cliffhangers. In a two-act sitcom, the break between acts 1 and 2 is crucial. Something has upset the balance in the world of the series and act 2 will be an effort to restore harmony (because all sitcoms have happy endings).
For a three-act sitcom, there are two act breaks and thus two minicliffhangers. In the pilot for Big Bang Theory, at the end of the cold open, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Leonard (Johnny Galecki) meet their new adorable neighbor, Penny (Kaley Cuoco). It’s central to the series, as her introduction will change their relationships forever. By the end of act 1, Leonard’s friend, Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), meets Penny and is smitten with her, too. This creates competition between Leonard and Wolowitz, which leaves us asking “who will get Penny?” The end of act 2 is a resolution of the drama, where Leonard helps Penny get “closure” after a breakup by retrieving her TV set from her ex-boyfriend’s apartment. She is now officially single, and Leonard is still smitten, setting up a long-running yearning of “will-they-or-won’t-they-get-together?”
Cliffhangers are most effective when the moment grows out of character and feels inevitable without feeling too out of the blue or unearned.
Interview: Michael Kelley
Michael Kelley Credits
Best known for:
Revenge (Executive Producer/Writer) 2011–2012
Swingtown (Executive Producer/Writer) 2008
Jericho (Supervising Producer/Writer) 2006–2007
The O.C. (Consulting Producer/Producer/Writer) 2005–2006
One Tree Hill (Co-Producer/Writer) 2003–2004
Providence (Writer) 1999–2002
NL: Chapter 19 is all about cliffhangers, so my first question for you is about the Revenge pilot. It’s so layered and intricate. What was your process in constructing that puzzle? For example, did you start with Amanda’s (Emily VanCamp) story in the past and then construct the present story for alias Emily (also Emily VanCamp) and the Graysons? What was your way in to the show?
MK: I did construct Amanda’s story to start. I needed to know exactly what the inciting incident was and I needed to know emotionally my entry into the story. Because if you aren’t behind your protagonist as an audience, you won’t understand what she’s there to do—especially in a story as dark as revenge. Then you’ve lost them out of the gate. The imagining began with what happened to this little girl and her family and her father. Then, you start branching off from there. Well, if this happened to her father, how did he fall in with this woman and what was his part in what happened to this family? I had a terrific assistant at the time who now writes on my show, and he and I very quickly sat down and started talking about it and calling it “The Countess of Monte Cristo.” So we just called it “The Countess” before we called it “The Revenge of Emily Thorne,” then it just became Revenge. Since we were taking this from Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, we knew we had a twenty-year linear story of Amanda coming back to haunt the people that messed them over. So, to answer your question, you have to begin with the mythology.
NL: And, besides having the rooting value for Amanda/Emily because she was wronged, it seems like in each of the stories, at least in season 1, there are present stakes as well. Most of these people are continuing to perpetrate these sins against current people. Like the financial guy she ruined—all these people are bad people, essentially. So, you’re righting the wrongs from the past, but there’s also a corrective force in present scenes.
MK: Yeah, that was something that I also wanted to be clear about with this character. She’s evolving into a Batman-style character where she’s righting the wrongs—the bigger wrongs—not just the wrongs done to her. And that’s, to me, a big part of season 2. I always said that the rule of thumb that the audience needs to understand is that the punishment is always going to fit the crime. So, for example, the guy you were talking about—the crooked investor—gets his comeuppance and loses everything. But, she’s not going to throw somebody off a cliffor scratch their car.
NL: That’s right—the show is about karma. You reap what you sow.
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MK: The show is also about the cliffhanger. It’s all the same thing because I need where we’re building to. I need a theme for each season, and so organically, you want the cliffhanger to be rooted in the kind of story you’re telling.
NL: So, there’s a theme for the whole season that you are doing over twenty-two episodes, and then also a thematic within each episode. There’s obviously the franchise element in season 1: where she crosses off someone on her revenge list by drawing an “X” over their photo at the end of each episode. Is that going to continue in season 2?
MK: You have a game plan when you set out to tell these stories—especially these deep serial types of stories. I liken it to a trip across the country where you know where you’re headed and you have the destination all mapped out. You know that you’re going from New York to California, but you’re allowed to go wherever you want across the country. I just want to make sure that I’m always very clear about where I’m headed and the themes that I choose help me with that. I started the first episode of season 1 with a Confucius quote.
NL: Yes—“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”
MK: I wanted that to carry through to the season finale. We’re blowing up a plane with Victoria [Madeline Stowe] on it. These events were set in motion, and you can argue that they were set in motion by the people who did the evil things all the way back then. But, also Emily has a hand in it. And all the evidence that could exonerate her father is gone. Her raison d’être is no more. So, these two things, these two deaths have occurred, and I wanted to honor that. I just chose a quote for season 2’s opener by Henri-Frederic Amiel: “Destiny has two ways of crushing us: by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.”
NL: So, it’s always a double-edged sword.
MK: That’s right. That’s the fun of telling these stories. A reaction—some you can predict and some you cannot.
NL: I want to talk to you about some of the narrative devices that you built in to the story. You have the box that she finds with her father’s journal. You have the double infinity symbol. You have voice-over and flashback. Were these things all in place from the beginning? Did you always intend to use voice-over? She calls the box and the journals a “roadmap for revenge,” but it doesn’t ever quite turn out the way she’s expecting.
MK: We did have all those devices in place. Serial drama can be difficult for people in this day and age to engage with right out of the gate. Especially in network television because so often people get burned and show’s get cancelled. But, when you’re embarking on a journey of a cable series, you have faith that they won’t cancel it—that you can dole out the story a little slower. That you’ll be granted a second season. Fans of that genre are usually more rewarded in cable than in broadcast where they could feel more burned. So, I wanted to make sure there were elements of the show that you could come into as a viewer that weren’t completely enwrapped in the serial nature of the story. Plus, now that we have so many formats, you can catch up. I wanted to make each show feel like it had a containment. At least in the beginning. So, when I start with Emily’s voice-over, it’s her telling us what happened as a little girl and that this is not a story about forgiveness. She’s telling a story that’s already happened; she is the narrator. Voice-over is one of the hardest things to write. It always takes the most time and is the most frustrating, and I’m usually rewriting it all the way up until air. Sometimes it doesn’t fit the picture that you wanted it to fit. A great example of that is the episode where the dog Sammy died (that episode is called “Grief”), and I didn’t land on the voice-over until the final mix which is really cutting it close. As far as the rest of the conventions, the double infinity symbol, that’s just an immediate emotional connection to what she has lost. I think if you don’t remind your audience of what has been lost, then you just might think that this girl is a psychotic bitch that can’t be controlled. This is why we take the viewer back to foster care and all the adults who lied to her and show just how kind and pure the relationship with her father was—and the fact that she’s missing a mother as well—which we will obviously get into in season 2.
NL: There’s the mystery connected to the past with her father and Victoria, and then there’s the central question of whether she is ever going to finish this and if she is going to get caught. The revelation about her mother was a big part of the cliffhanger for the first season.
MK: It is big. I think that you want to surprise the audience and yourself, but you want to make sure it’s rooted in the larger story. With a single lead protagonist like Emily with a very clear agenda in every episode, you want her to be as prepared and driving story as possible—you don’t want her to get caught up in it. You want her to be in the driver’s seat, but you want her to get side swiped a handful of times. One of the hardest things for me to learn as a TV writer was how to keep your protagonist in an active place. I think it’s a challenge for all of us. And, now I’ve got so many strong characters from Victoria to Conrad [Henry Czerny]. Everybody has their own very specific, strong agendas, and none of the actors (nor myself) want to give up their power and their ability to lay down their own agenda.
NL: Victoria exacts her revenge—every bit as much.
MK: She does, and that was a design as well. Victoria has such a rich, untapped backstory that we haven’t even really gotten into yet, but we will. Just what built that woman. How she became what she is. When we begin season 2, you find out what happened with the plane exploding and … I don’t want to ruin it for you.
NL: So, she was on the plane, but obviously, doesn’t die.
MK: She was on the plane. The audience saw her get on that plane, but what you’ll find in season 2 that there was a larger plan for her to do a quite similar thing to what Emily did—which is to throw her old life away and start another one. And, of course, she didn’t count on her daughter Charlotte [Christa B. Allen] overdosing and needing her. But, I will tell you when you come back to season 2, Victoria’s been dead for eight weeks and nobody knows.
NL: I wanted to talk to you about pacing in relation to cliffhangers in terms of how much plot you dole out at a time. How do you make those judgment calls not to burn through story too quickly?
MK: I made a decision to burn through story very early on. I’ve worked in serial drama for most of my career and I’m a big fan of daytime soap operas. I actually hired a guy who was on One Life to Live for a long time. I think that I’m slowing things down emotionally for this season. It’s not as plot intensive because you only have so many major cards to turn over before it starts getting ridiculous.
I feel like the show lives in an emotional place when it’s firing at its highest.
I burned through a shit ton of story last year on purpose, and there’s a lot of surprises coming up in the first several episodes that for me feel like hangovers from season 1 that we need to wrap up. For me, I feel like a giant wave is about to come and wash the sand clean and we have to start rebuilding. But, we definitely made a choice and literally jumped offthat cliffhanger. I’ve seen people do that, and it’s splat on the ground. We were lucky to have enough safety measures in place on the show that a lot of shows don’t have which is the strength of our villain and of our protagonist. The strengths of those two characters: they are neither all good or all evil and the characters that surround them, they all have at least two sides to their personalities. We were able to create stakes for the audience for each character. Each major discovery did not have to be about our lead character. It could be about Victoria and her daughter or Nolan [Ross as played by Gabriel Mann], so we were finding that we got very lucky with some genuinely compelling characters, so it didn’t get ridiculous.
NL: It’s so smart and yet emotional at the same time. The Nolan Ross character—at what point did he enter the process? Because I would imagine she needed a confidant, someone to talk to, and someone who knew her secret. Someone with power as an insider in the Hamptons’ social scene who sh
e could also think of as an ally. Tell me more about the genesis of Nolan.
MK: I thought of him first as what was missing emotionally, as you said, from the story and that’s where I like to start. I think of them as siblings in many ways. They shared at least a father figure in David Clarke [James Tupper]. I was thinking how do you ask the audience to emotionally connect to this girl if no one else is willing or able to bond with her. In spite of her barbs and thorns, Nolan just sprouted out of that need for someone to be our emotional guide to why we care about Emily Thorne. You can only get so much material from a girl reading from a diary about her father or looking longingly at his picture. Her frustration and her real emotions—we needed someone to be able to see that. The truth of her rage and her betrayal, and someone who also is an outsider who feels those same things. He quickly became Robin to her Batman at least in their shenanigans, but emotionally he’s like her brother and I felt that that’s what we needed to pull in the audience.
NL: Is Revenge a five-act or six-act show?
MK: We’re six. I always treat the first act as a teaser as something that will just set up the episode. I still am a little old school. I’ll still call it a teaser, plus five. We’re being asked to come up with five or six cliffhangers an episode. Five cliffhangers to get you back from the commercial breaks and one to bring you back next week. It’s a tall order on a show like this.
NL: So, you’re going to have at least an A, B, and C story because you’ve got three basic families to service. You’ve got the blue-collar story, you’ve got the Graysons, and you have Emily.
MK: We have nine characters we owe story to every week.
NL: But, what’s so great in the pilot, is it’s all so clear, even though there are so many characters introduced. I know how hard that is to do. Within your A, B, C, maybe even D story, you’ve got your thematic title for the story. Do you try to track that through?