When Dallas returns tonight (TNT, 9 p.m. ET), one of television’s most extended breaks will finally come to an end. Even by Mad Men’s standards, 21 years is an unusually long hiatus, but as Troy Patterson notes in his Slate review, Dallas has been with us the whole time in other ways: Some of the devices it pioneered have become television’s most annoying institutions.
Everyone who has screamed in aggravation when, after 22 episodes, a TV season leaves crucial details unresolved, can thank the original Dallas for the cliffhanger season finale. The show’s third season ended with J.R. lying in a pool of blood and the world’s media wondering whodunit. (It really was a global phenomenon: In Manchester, England, the always fashionable young June Thomas spent the hiatus with an “I Shot J.R.” button affixed to her Mork-inspired rainbow suspenders.) Three hundred million people tuned in nine months later to learn the answer to what they knew would one day become a classic trivia question.*
