An important tool in the TV writer's kit is the mystery. Not just the Agatha Christie kind, solved within an episode, but long term mysteries about characters that take months or years to be resolved. Why does John Doe know everything except his own past? Why did a preacher's ID card impress the Alliance so much? How can the virus threatening to kill everyone on Earth be cured? The resolution of these mysteries provides a satisfying payoff for the long-term viewer.
But there's a problem. In every one of my examples (from "John Doe", "Firefly", and "Crusade" respectively), the show was cancelled before the question was answered, leaving the audience baffled. And sometimes the mystery isn't resolved even though the show continues. So, what unresolved questions and unsolved mysteries are bugging you, and what do you think the answers were?

Well, in the case of John Doe, the creators told Entertainment Weekly what happened to John Doe: he was on a fishing boat that exploded and was tossed into the sea. The scar on his chest was just metal from the crash that got imbedded in his skin. He had a near-death experience, during which he became part of an universal consciousness, learning everything but forgetting his own identity. Then, he came back... without any clothes. Hope that helps.

I had this problem with The Pretender. They ended the series, even made (I think) two TV movies about it afterward, and we still didn't get Jared reunited with his parents or any resolution to the Centre's schemes. I think that show ended with everyone far more confused than they should've been.

Changed the title so we're not pissing off the ghost of Robert Stack.

Robert Stack is dead?

Anyway, I feel like this is a cheesey one, but it stuck in my mind. Caroline and the City ended with her marrying some guy and Richard shows up at the wedding, in the balcony, holding his baby that he had with the Italian girl. He had told Caroline that he didn't want any more kids, and now he was doting on his son. She heard the baby cry, turned around and saw him and it ended with her staring up at him. I guess it was supposed to be a cliff-hanger, but it ended up being the series finale. So what the hell happened to them?

I always wish there had been a Quantum Leap movie, too. We know that Sam was going to keep on leaping, but was he ever going to get to go home again and see his wife again?

I believe it was established that Sam never got to go home. Very bittersweet finale. When shows leave me hanging, it always makes me wary of getting into new shows that might not make it.

Actually The Pretender was cancelled - to make way for XFL football. Yeah, that was a big hit. I think they're still hoping to make more movies.

I didn't realize THAT'S why The Pretender was cancelled. Wow another reason to hate the WWF and NBC.

Now that I'm starting to get into Veronica Mars, I fear that the same thing will happen as did when I was into John Doe. I'll start to like it... blahblahblahmysterycakes and cancellation without ever knowing who killed Lily and what happened to her mother.

I can buy part of that spoilered John Doe explanation, but what about that cliffhanger? The friend... that friend... sigh. I'll never get to know.

In the early years of Star Trek: The Next Generation there was a story arc about these alien worm/bug things that were inserted into the bodies (necks? brains?) of highly placed Star Fleet officers.

I thought, "Cool! Hostile Takeover!" Then they dropped the whole thing. Never did figure out what happened. Did they ever clear that up?

Robert Stack -- we need you!!

Where are Judy Winslow, Tina Pinciotte, and Chuck Cunningham?

I can't account for the first two, but check here on the Happy Days thread for a theory about Chuck. (My June 1 post, near the bottom.)

Add Bobby Martin to that list (from All My Children). He went upstairs to wax his skis sometime in the 1970s and hasn't been seen or mentioned since.

You have to wonder just what the writers were thinking on that one. I kind of get this picture in my head of the actor still sitting up there waiting for his next cue and he grows older and older.

2000 Malibu Road and Models Inc.

On 2000 M. R. you never found out who the murderer was. And what happend to Perry after she was raped, did they catch the guy????

Models Inc. I wanted know if Carrie Spencer was going to be saved from a life in white slavery.

True, but wasn't it also suggested that this was changeable--I mean, that was Sam's gig, right? To set right what once went wrong? Whatever the case, I'd love to see a TV movie about this, and have Sam setting right his own story. Sam deserves that, and while I can appreciate a bittersweet ending, the fact that Sam never got to go home again seems more than bittersweet--it just seems bitter. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed.

And there was another Pinciotti kid who was mentioned but never seen-- Valerie. Apparently Midge was upset when Valerie went off to college, but she must have gotten over it. Completely. Because Valerie was never mentioned again.

brightspot writes:


The answer is yes, more or less. The entire arc was confined to the first season (episodes "Coming of Age" and "Conspiracy"), and it was wrapped up relatively effectively* and with atypical grit for Trek. I mean heads exploding and the whole nine yards.

*However, the writing staff were planning to have the critters come back in the second season and take over Starfleet, but Goddenberry vetoed it because he thought the idea of Starfleet being overthrown by nasty parasites strayed too far from his Vision, so the writers shrugged their shoulders and started setting up the Borg.

The most recent unanswered cliffhanger that bothers me is the U.S. version of Touching Evil. Det. David Creegan is shot by a masked gunman and we never found out who shot him before the show was cancelled a couple of months ago. In the British version, Creegan's shooting was dealt with early on, so there was no mystery as to who shot him. The U.S. version left a lot loose ends and it would have been interesting to have had that storyline explored, but alas we will probably never know.

Thank you so much for posting the John Doe info Justin Cognito. That mystery has bugged me for awhile. The last episode shown left another cliffhanger though. Who was Digger really? At the end of the episode, John Doe removed a hooded cap from someone he was chasing and it was revealed to be Digger.

I did some more digging into the EW article and it turns out that it wasn't really Digger. It was a member of the Pheonix organization who had plastic surgery to look like Digger. The Phoenix organization thought that John Does was the Messiah and they were protecting John from another group that wanted to kill him.

I know this is going to go over a lot of people's heads, because no one has really heard of this show, but it's a japanese anime series called The Violinist of Hameln. Basically it's about this boy named Hamel who discovers he's half demon and he has to cope with it.

Towards the beginning, they have to collect members for their group, which Queen Horn refers to as "The Five Hopes." However, later on in the series, that whole idea is dropped and never mentioned again. In the manga it's explained more, but the anime was cut short due to budgetting problems.

If anybody could just explain to me how Agent Cooper ended up becoming Bob then I would be happy. No matter how many times I watch the Twin Peaks' final - I still don't get it.

LadyB, the real Agent Cooper is trapped in the Black Lodge and Bob has possessed his body like he did with Leland before him.

Along the lines of The Mysterious Disappearing Chuck Cunningham and Tiger Brady... I was watching Seinfeld the other night and George referred to his BROTHER. I feel like the Springfield Comic Book Guy even bringing it up, but there it is... Any thoughts?

"Nowhere Man"- what was the real deal with Thomas Veil and the picture?

Chuck will be back. The Happy Days 30th reunion is supposed to be out sometime later this year. I saw an interview with Henry Winkler the other day, but didn't catch an airdate if he gave one. According to the Fonz, Chuck and a lot of other short-time characters are included.

My favorite mystery - would Second Chances ever have developed a plot if the earthquake hadn't destroyed all their sets after the first few episodes aired?

Right and wasn't that Cooper stuck in the Black Lodge the same one who was with Laura and the dancing backward talking little guy in the dream sequence in Season 1? And that Cooper was basically warning his past self or something. That's how I saw it. But then again I like to forget every TP episode past the death of Leland (the final closure to the Laura mystery) ever existed.

Speaking of TV mysteries can explain to me what was the deal with the end of Push, Nevada? Didn't that end on a cliffhanger too that the audience had to figure out?

To chim in on the Star Trek Parasites. They brought them back in the recent DS9 relaunch novels and gave them a history with the Trill, which does make sense. They haven't explained just what this history is yet, so there's still a mystery about them.

Babylon 5 had a dropped storyline that bugged me. Kosh had made some sort of mental recordings of Talia. It was even alluded to in a later episode by Garibaldi after discovering Talia's secret personality as possibly helping. I wonder if the actress had not left, if it would have been used to reconstruct her original personality?

The whole thing had been staged by some shadowy government group who wanted to test the limits of belief. They implanted false memories of Veil's life, phonied up "Hidden Agenda" (the photo), hired actors to portray his wife & friends, etc. The point was to learn whether he would persist in believing his (false) memories even when confronted with evidence to the contrary--such as his wife denying him. I don't recall whether this is something Veil had volunteered for. I just remember a guy explaining it to him in the final ep.

I've got one. I know that it's not from a cancelled show or anything, but does anyone know what the hell happened to Mr. Turner on Boy Meets World? One minute Shawn was crying by his hospital bed and the next everyone was all, "Mr. Who?"

I've always wondered what happened to Jack's mentor, Barrington, who died mysteriously on the first episode of The Lyon's Den and a big to-do was made about the event on the show. Was it suicide? Was he killed? Does anyone care? Probably not.

Who beat up Mark Greene towards the end of ER's 3rd season.

We got some strong hints--a couple of disgruntled patients, the chief suspect being the brother of a young man Mark hadn't been able to save--but it just seemed to fizzle out.

Good for Roddenberry. He knew that if you were going to steal from other sources you should only steal from the best. Remember the episode of the original Star Trek where Kirk fights the Gorn? The Next Generation parasites, however, were a blatant copy of the creatures from the 1966 movie, "Zontar the Thing from Venus" right down to the little tails the creatures stuck out the back of their victim's neck for breathing.

I saw Zontar... one late night on TV in Edmonton, Canada in 1980 or 81. A few months later, SCTV, which was being filmed in Edmonton at the time, did a show long parody of the movie. The special guest star was Bonar Blaine, twin brother of Conrad Blaine, then the father on Diff'rent Strokes.

What happened to Drusilla in the Buffyverse? She disappears mid-season 5, and is never heard from again. On a lesser note, does crazy Slayer Dana (AtS Damage) recover? These are the only two Jossverse loose ends that I can think of, but Drusilla's disappearance just bugs me.

The concept behind Push, or at least the ratings ploy behind it, was that each of the 13 (?) episodes had a clue you had to notice, and that at the end, they'd tell you how to use those clues to win a prize. (Probably $1,000,000, being such a popular number.) Regardless, the ratings stunt didn't quite make it over all the buses before it. It crashed and burned after just a few episodes, but since they had announced a contest, they had to award the money. So, in an incredibly satisifying and compelling conclusion, they just gave us the clues that would have been in the rest of the episodes and handed out the puzzle. Because that was so much better than actually having a complete story told.

The empty 4th chair in that scene from the H:LOTS movie with Gee, Felton, and Crossetti has bothered me since I first saw it. Does Bayliss kill himself? Maybe its Kellerman? Perhaps Mike Gee? I know they left it ambiguous for a reason, but it still irks me to this day.
(And yes, I may have been too emotionally involved with that show.)

I wont even start in on The West Wing. I operate under the assumption there is a black hole that swallowed Mandy, Sam, Ainsley, etc. In fact, I personally like to think they all live on a hippie commune growing organic beets and playing in bongo circles. Also, who actually kidnapped Zoey? Way to leave that one hanging John Wells.

My So-Called Life didn't end satisfactorily for me (I know they only had one season but still....) Is Mr. Chase going to bang his ridiculously annoying restaurant partner? Now that Angela knows how Brain feels, how is that going to change their relationship? And what about Jordan? Argh.

So many TV shows, no payoff. Thank you, Big 3. NOT.

Speaking of Model's Inc. Didn't Stephanie Romanov's character die like the first episode and she comes back but is supposed to be a different character that looks like the one that died? But they never explained why they looked the same.

Apparently that was resolved, in a very soap-opera way. From this website:

In the second ep of S2 of The Shield, there was an obvious allusion to the fact that the bitch civilian auditor Lanie was bulimic. On two occasions she came out of restrooms spritzing breath spray. On one of the occasions, Dutch walked in and heard her vomiting. However, Sean Ryan never bothered following up on it. Then again, her character was intolerable so who really gives a rat's ass?

Foultemptress, cheese on. I love "Caroline in the City" and the ending has always driven me mad.

Was Paul Callan an agent of ultimate good, or ultimate evil? Was he witnessing miracles, or manifestations of demonic power? Who was his father? Now I'll never know.

Damn you, Miracles. Damn you, ABC.

Something that always bugged me:

Did the girl(can't remember her name) from the show "Playing it Straight" end up with a gay or straight guy and who was he.

The last time I remember seeing her was after Spike had gotten his chip. I think it was after Spike had fallen in love with Buffy, but before they started sleeping together. Dru was being her usual batty self and was going to help him figure out a way to work around the chip, but eventually she figured out his love for the Slayer and left. There's more to it than that, but my memory is a little foggy on this one.

Was Jeremy Piven really "Cupid" or just delusional?

Nepote, you just brought back warm fuzzy memories.

Damn you ABC. Damn you to hell.

When I think of all of my favorite tv mysteries that ABC left unsolved, I want to cry.

Remember those Taster's Choice commercials with Anthony Stewart Head and the woman who develop a relationship over the series of commercials. The last one I saw had her ex-husband coming over to her apartment, and I always wondered how they were going to resolve that. And yes, I was emotionally involved with coffee commercials.

It can never be said enough. ABC sucks. I still wonder if Once and Again's Sammler-Manning brood ever went to Australia (or whatever) or stayed home because Lily was pregnant. And what the heck the name of Jake and Tiffany's baby daughter turned out to be?

I think in England they actually ran the whole series and they got married. I don't know why they stopped here, though. I agree, give me resolution!

They left quite a few things in the air in that finale. I don't know about the other viewers but I kinda assumed that they stayed home since Lily was pregnant.



I don' think this needs to be spoiler tagged but I did it just in case. She picked Banks and he turned out to be straight.

On Dawsons Creek there was a character who was mentally ill named Andy. The name of her illness was never mentioned once. The audience only knew she was mentally ill but not what her illness was. I always wondered what it was.

I remember that too, but I don't recall them solving the puzzle either.

I was always curious about what would happen to the MSCL folks as well, mainly Rayanne and whether she would have gotten really clean and sober. Didn't that air on ABC too? If so, count me in on the chorus of 'Damn you, ABC.'

Did Joel just have the longest coma dream ever, or did he really go 20-odd years back in time on Do Over?

Did Brooke get run over on Popular?

I think there were a few unanswered questions on Grosse Pointe: like, did Dave and Marcy end up together?

Stupid WB.

The Lost World ended with every character in mortal peril, than the universe apparently folded in on itself. We never found out if anyone survived.

<---still bitter.