I never finished SGU back when I first got access to it. I’ve finished both SG-1 and Atlantis countless times. I remember watching most of the SGU pilot episode and quitting. I thought it was being too overly edgy and grimdark, trying to follow in the footsteps of the Battlestar Galactica reboot. I couldn’t stand the idea of a Stargate show that was just characters being awful to each other.
Recently I tried giving it another shot and made it through the pilot episode. The characters are still abrasive to each other, but much less than I remembered, and they seem to for the most part mellow out a bit with each other as the episodes progress. I just finished the forth episode and I do want to continue. I am hoping they start actually doing something more than “the ship is falling apart we need to do something to fix it” plots, but I suppose the show really is trying to plant the setting.
It was less of a “cliffhanger” and more of just an “open ending”. Sure, the story could have gone on for additional seasons in order to resolve the overarching conflict (stuck on a ship away from Earth). But at the same time, season two did have a satisfying, optimistic ending. You were not left with a sense of “oh no, how will they get out of this immediate predicament??” like you generally get with a cliffhanger.