“Who shot J.R.?” was an advertising catchphrase created in 1980 by CBS to promote the television series “Dallas.”  This was a reference to the fictional mystery surrounding a murder attempt against arch-villain J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) in the show’s third-season finale.  The mystery and its catchphrase became a global phenomenon, with international odds-makers setting odds on the culprit.  The mystery was not resolved until the fourth episode of the fourth season titled “Who Done It?” which aired eight months later, one of the most watched television broadcasts in history.  This catchphrase has had a strong legacy in pop culture, since this format helped popularize the cliffhanger ending for many television series that followed.  In the final scene of the 1979–80 season, J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) heard a noise outside his office, walked out to the corridor to look, and was shot twice by an unseen assailant.  The episode was broadcast on March 21, 1980.  Viewers had to wait all summer to learn whether J.R. would survive, and which of his many enemies was responsible.  J.R. Ewing was a villain on the series who regularly double-crossed business associates, who plotted against his own family, and who called his wife Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) a slut.  He had her committed to a sanatorium so he could take custody of their infant son John Ross.  Almost all the other characters on the show were potential suspects.  Margaret and I used to watch this show.  The answer came eight months later, on November 21, 1980.  The person who pulled the trigger was Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby), J.R.’s scheming sister-in-law and mistress who shot him in a fit of anger.  J.R. did not press charges, as Kristin claimed she was pregnant with his child because of their affair.  Hagman was the star of this show, so he had demanded a raise.  CBS decided to replace him. However, he returned to work with a new contract that paid him $100,000 per episode and royalties from the J.R. Ewing merchandise.  A strike by the Writers Guild of America began in July that delayed the production of most new network shows by eight weeks.  During the delay, CBS showed reruns of early Dallas episodes featuring J.R. Ewing, helping the show’s many new fans better understand his character.  There were T-shirts printed with “Who Shot J.R.?”  The media hype over the series was unprecedented.  During the 1980 presidential election, the Republicans distributed campaign buttons that claimed “A Democrat shot J.R.”  Betting parlors worldwide established odds and took bets as to which character had pulled the trigger.  Every actor was filmed shooting J.R. to keep the identity of the actual shooter a secret. International bookmakers created a set of odds for the possible culprits.  Oddsmakers in Las Vegas jokingly placed Tom Landry, the then-coach of the Dallas Cowboys football team, at 500-to-1 odds.  Similarly, former Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach was placed at 1000-to-1 odds.  This “Who Done It?” episode was, at the time, the highest-rated television episode in U.S. history with a Nielsen rating of 53.3 and a 76% share, as an estimated 83 million people watched the episode, more than the number of voters in that year’s presidential election.  The previous record for a TV episode had been the 1967 finale for “The Fugitive.”  It was beaten in 1983 by the final TV episode of “M*A*S*H.”  This “Dallas” episode was an international event, with more than 350 million people tuning in to find out who shot J.R.  This episode was credited with helping CNN, which began airing in June 1980, to get off the ground.  For the next five years “Dallas” was either the number 1 or number 2 most watched TV show in America.  In Larry Hagman’s final episode of the 2012 sequel, “Dallas,” which aired on March 4, 2013, J.R. was shot again, this time fatally, because doctors told Larry Hagman that he had only days to live.  What do you remember about JR Ewing?