Worst Cliffhanger Ever -- Da Vinci's Demons "Lovers" Finale

To watch STARZ, assuming you're not a pirate like me, you have to pay for cable AND throw on an extra $10 / month on top just for the channel.

So it makes sense that their shows are pretty top notch.  Hence, Spartacus.

Da Vinci's Demons isn't an epic show, but it certainly has a lot put into it, and it's written at the level you'd expect of a STARZ show.  So that last gutter-trash season 1 finale of theirs was pretty surprising.

It's not gutter trash because I'm mad at a cliffhanger.  I'm just a little appalled by how a show with a good sense of style could end in the such a poorly styled way.

The high sense of style I'm referring to largely develops in the last couple of episodes, when the show goes from being a charming piece of work to a deepening mystery.  They really built up a sense that Leo was going to take off on an epic adventure, and knowing that's where season 2 would start was the classiest cliffhanger of them all.  A good cliffhanger that essentially took all season to develop.

And then they threw it under the bus so they could end season 1 with the worst cliffhanger ever.

The final episode sets it all up for season 2... Leo even walks up to the ship he is about to depart on... and then all the sudden, the great, epic cliffhanger of season 2 is ripped away as Leo sacrifices his journey to save his friends... leaving only a hope that he'll make it back to the great adventure.

So, in hopes that it'll come back around, and feeling satisfied that Leo, at the very least, made the right choice, we watch on as Leo turns the climatic battle between the Italian families around.  

And then right in the middle of the battle, before you get a sense of what's going to happen next, other than there's about to be a fight or flight scenario, *pop*, the lights go out.

Seriously, for half a second I thought the show might have just run out of production money mid-scene.  It  had so little style it actually ruins the entire concept of a "finale".  Imagine a fireworks show building up to the finale and then right when you see it happening it just stops.

The real cliffhanger that was built up all season was ruined by a cliffhanger.  God damn.