35 years ago, the Texas oil baron J.R. Ewing was working late at his office when he was shot twice by a mysterious assailant. J.R. crumpled to the ground with his fate unknown, and every member of the cast a plausible suspect in the shooting. With that, the third season of CBS's Dallas concluded, but at the same time, it also graduated from hit network show to nationwide phenomenon.
The end-of-season cliffhanger, deployed so effectively in 1980 that “Who Shot J.R.?” became a national catchphrase, is a brilliant and oft-used television device. But in a fractured TV landscape that no longer takes the summer off, it's a ploy that struggles to punch with the weight it once did. Dallas aired during the golden era of the “big three” TV networks, when there was no way to binge-watch and catch up with the hit of the moment. So its third season finale was an innovative gambit—the cliffhanger was the stuff of serialized soaps and Charles Dickens, not the world of episodic television, where mysteries were tidily solved every week.
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