Game of Thrones is far from the first show to have a cross-season cliffhanger. Way on back in the antediluvian age (1980), Dallas pushed the envelope for cross-season cliffhanger marketing with the “Who shot J.R?” craze. In the March 21 episode “A House Divided,” character J.R. Ewing was shot by an unseen assassin. The world had to wait eight whole months (can you imagine?) to find out that it was some character (who cares, right?) If you want a laugh, read this 1995 New York Times article on the effect of JR’s death fifteen years later. My favorite line:
WITH THE INCREASING use of multi-episode plot lines in one-hour dramas, producers must resolve many of them over the course of a season — but at the risk of confusing viewers who have missed several episodes.
Multi-episode plot lines? What’ll they think of next!
Off The Bookshelf 