March 21, 1980
J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), the
character millions loved to hate on TV’s popular nighttime drama Dallas, was shot.
The shooting made the season finale, titled A House Divided, one of television’s
most famous cliffhangers and left America wondering “Who shot J.R.?” Dallas fans waited for the next eight
months to have that question answered because the season premiere of Dallas was delayed due to a Screen
Actors Guild strike. That summer, the question “Who Shot J.R.?” entered the national
lexicon. Fan’s wore T-shirts printed with "Who Shot J.R.?" and "I
Shot J.R.". A session of the Turkish parliament was suspended to allow legislators a chance to get
home in time to view the Dallas
episode. Betting parlors worldwide took bets as to which one of the 10 or so
principal characters had actually pulled the trigger. J.R. had many enemies and
audiences were hard-pressed to guess who was responsible for the shooting.
The person who pulled the
trigger was revealed to be J.R.’s sister in law/mistress Kristin Shepard (Mary
Crosby) in the "Who
Done It?"
episode which aired on November 21, 1980. It was, at the time, the highest rated television episode in US history. It had a Nielsen
rating of 53.3 and a 76% share, and
it was estimated that 83,000,000 people watched the episode. The previous
record for a TV episode, not counting the final installment of the miniseries Roots, had been the 1967 finale for The Fugitive. "Who Shot J.R.?" now sits second on the
list, being beaten in 1983 by the final episode of M*A*S*H but still remains the highest rated non-finale
episode of a TV series.
J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman), the character millions loved to hate on TV’s popular nighttime drama Dallas, was shot.
The person who pulled the trigger was revealed to be J.R.’s sister in law/mistress Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby) in the "Who Done It?" episode which aired on November 21, 1980. It was, at the time, the highest rated television episode in US history. It had a Nielsen rating of 53.3 and a 76% share, and it was estimated that 83,000,000 people watched the episode. The previous record for a TV episode, not counting the final installment of the miniseries Roots, had been the 1967 finale for The Fugitive. "Who Shot J.R.?" now sits second on the list, being beaten in 1983 by the final episode of M*A*S*H but still remains the highest rated non-finale episode of a TV series.
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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