The season-ending cliff-hanger was started by the show Dallas, with their famous “Who shot J.R.?” thing that had everyone talking in the summer of 1980. No TV series had ever done that, but it’s now become the norm… because when they resolved the mystery the following season, more than 350 million people tuned in, from, all around the world. It was the highest-rated television episode in U.S. history. The Turkish parliament suspended a session so the legislators could run home in time to watch. Bookies were publishing odds as to who did it… and it was a long list, headed by some likely suspects, but rounded out by a lot of other irrelevant and/or impossible people. Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry was on the list at 10,000-1, even though he had nothing to do with the show. Ultimately, J.R.’s sister-in-law/mistress Kristin (4-1) was the guilty one, a fact finally revealed on the fourth episode of the subsequent season. Those producers knew what they were doing.

This long-weekend feels like a bit of a cliff-hanger. On our last episode, Friday, 50 new cases in B.C… and heading into a long weekend… and, since then, no updates in B.C and no update today in Ontario… so, this will all remain a cliff-hanger until tomorrow, when all the storylines get resolved. For now, the national number is totally wrong.

It occurs to me… those shows, back then… on network television, complete with commercial breaks… they’d want to keep you tuned in right to the end, so there’d often be a mini-cliffhanger before the last set of commercials. Remember that… where they’d try to sell you some useless thing, but they made it look and sound so good… Call now! Supplies are limited! Operators are Standing By!

For the moment, we’re all Standing By. Just not too close to each other.

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