TV’s 10 Best Mysterious Story Lines

Spoon feedings of sitcoms with canned laughter and vapid reality shows are fine for dolts who want to power down their brains when they watch television, but for the rest of us, there's nothing as satisfying as an enigmatic plot that keeps our minds active, forcing us to locate and dissect clues to solve a grand mystery.

With deep thinkers in mind, NBC premieres its new mystery series, Awake, tonight at 10 p.m. The protagonist, police detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs), survives a car crash only to alternate between two realities—one in which his wife (Laura Allen) died and another in which his son (Dylan Minnette) did—every time he goes to sleep. Unsure what is real, he begins to question his own sanity.

Chances are you will go a little batty trying to figure out what's true and what's false: Which is the true reality? Is Michael imagining everything in a coma? Is it all a DMT hallucination brought on by his near-death experience or actual death? Our brain hurts (in a good way) just thinking about it.

To celebrate the debut of the boob tube's latest head-scratcher, we’re counting down TV’s 10 Best Mysterious Story Lines. Beware: There are plenty of SPOILERS ahead.

Written by Jason Serafino (@Serafinoj1)

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In the pilot episode, a comet makes its way towards Earth and lands on the planet without causing any real damage. It turns out the comet is carrying 4400 humans who were thought to have been either killed or missing over the past 58 years. None of them have aged a day since they disappeared, and some of them even return with enhanced abilities, like precognition and telepathy.

As the various members of the 4400 attempt to move on with their lives, NTAC (National Threat Assessment Command) agents Tom Baldwin (Joel Gretsch) and Diana Skouris (Jacqueline McKenzie) investigate their mysterious reappearance. Were they abducted by aliens? Are they, in fact, aliens? Is there some other force at work? Without spoiling anything, let's just say that, at the end of season one, the series throws an exceedingly clever and unexpected twist at viewers.

Millennium was a spin-off of The X-Files, and it was as brilliant as it was short-lived. It revolves around a former FBI agent named Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) who has the unusual ability to put himself in the mind of a serial killer and see the world through their eyes. This gift makes him an attractive employee for The Millennium Group, a secret society that believes the world will end in the year 2000.

Eventually, Black begins to uncover more about the group and discover its origins reached back thousands of years. Revelations about the group’s past, and its plans for the future, provide the type of conspiracy stories that any mystery junkie feeds off of. It’s a crime that the show didn’t last a few more seasons; it could have wound up as one of the better dramas in recent memory.

Narrated by a future version of Ted (Josh Radnor) as he explains to his kids, in 2030, how their parents met, the sitcom has managed to keep fans' attention for seven seasons without yet revealing the identity of Ted’s wife. Though it is a central mystery, the writers keep it on the back burner, doling out only a few key clues per season as the man's romantic history plays out, women seeming like sure bets before they take themselves out of the running. (Or do they?)

The result is a show that treats the eventual answer more like a sweet dessert at the end of a long, satisfying meal rather than the main course. The show’s humor and non-linear storytelling are the real key here. We’re not sure anyone could have predicted that one of the best TV mysteries of the decade would come from a sitcom, but that's the beauty of television.

Initially, the criminally slept-on sci-fi gem Fringe focuses on the mystery surrounding “The Pattern,” a strange series of events that all seem to be interconnected. Diseases, environmental mishaps, and numerous other incidents all comprise “The Pattern,” and they set the stage for the rest of the series.

The show eventually develops beyond "The Pattern," but the revelation of who is behind it, why, and what that reveals about reality, is excellent and remains the show's most immersive mystery, and undoubtedly its most important.

The first season of 24 (2001-2002) was filled with plot twists, action, and death, but nothing was more important than the identity of the mole who is working inside the CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit). There are plenty of red herrings thrown at audiences to keep them wondering who it is, and even if you guess the identity correctly something comes along to temporarily debunk your theory.

Like any great mystery show, when the season drew to a close, the identity of the mole is finally revealed. No spoilers here, but the revelation is wonderful not only for the person's identity but also for how they forever change agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) with their double-crossing actions.

In a mystery that lasted all summer in 1980 and bridged seasons two and three of the show, Dallas’ “Who Shot J.R.?” story line is the best example of a television cliffhanger in history. Nearly every member of the show’s cast was a suspect because they all had an axe to grind against the amoral oil tycoon, J.R. Ewing, played by Larry Hagman

When Dallas finally came back for its blockbuster third season, most fans were at the edge of their seats for the big reveal. Instead, it took three episodes to get to the truth as a series of suspects are apprehended and later dismissed. The shooter's identity and their motive are impressive, opening up a whole nasty can of worms and showing that everything is bigger in Texas, even its scandals.

Veronica Mars was such a smart, charming breath of fresh air when it debuted in 2004 that most people assumed it would become the next big hit. Unfortunately low ratings and a lack of network support led to the show getting canned after just three seasons, but that doesn’t change the fact that its first season was simply superb.

In the show, Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) is a high school student who is also a private investigator who solves mysteries with the help of her father. The overarching story line from the first season is Mars’ attempts to solve the murder of her friend, Lilly Kane (Amanda Seyfried). Along the way we’re given false-leads, a wrongfully imprisoned suspect, and plenty of tantalizing clues before the season finale left us with a shocking and tremendously satisfying conclusion.

Since the first frame of the first episode, the mystery behind the Lost island was the driving force behind the entire show. Nobody knew quite what it was or why the plane crash victims were stuck there, but everyone seemed to have their own theory on the matter. Books were written on it, websites were dedicated to it, and countless stoned college students debated their ideas for hours on end.

Through six seasons of varying quality, the show introduced numerous mysteries to its rabid fanbase, but everyone’s focus always came back to the island itself. Eventually, alternate realities and timelines muddled the main narrative somewhat, and it left some longtime fans of the show disappointed with the series finale; however, when a mystery is as long-lasting and anticipated as this one, the final reveal is always bound to fall short of some people’s expectations.

If you ask us, the more pressing mystery is how a dude like Hurley (Jorge Garcia) could stay so chunky while stranded on an island for years on end.

It’s still amazing to think that David Lynch’s Twin Peaks ever received the green light from the folks at ABC. It was abstract, surreal, and downright weird as it told the story of FBI agent Dale Cooper’s (Kyle MacLachlan) attempts to solve the murder of high school homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee).

Unlike most mysteries on TV, the evidence wasn’t always found at the crime scene or inside the victim’s house; instead, Cooper’s bizarre dreams were the source of a lot of the information. With a backwards talking midget (Michael J. Anderson) and a resurrected Palmer staring him right in the face, Cooper’s scarlet splashed nightmare became one of the show’s most famous moments.

By the end of the first season, it was possible to have theories about almost everybody in Twin Peaks murdering Palmer. Though a killer is revealed, in typical Lynch fashion, the explanation isn’t so simple, tying in the supernatural. It might not have been the explanation that most were hoping for, but that doesn’t make Twin Peaks any less of a masterpiece.

Since the start, The X-Files asked one question: How much does the government really know about alien life? During the course of the show, Agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) obsessed over a potential government conspiracy involving the existence of extraterrestrials, which all started when Mulder's sister was seemingly abducted when they were children.

The show would give little hints here and there, and it would often half-answer many questions, but ultimately a lot of the big issues were left unresolved. Despite the lingering plot threads, The X-Files was a cultural phenomenon in the '90s for good reason, as fans would tune in by the millions every week in hopes of discovering the truth. This is one of the rare mystery shows that is actually more interesting simply because so many questions are left unanswered by the end.