Who Shot J.R.?
The question reverberated across America in the summer of 1980.
This was the heyday of network television. There was no tangle of cable and streaming platforms to compete for entertainment attention. There was no Internet or social media for instant virality.
If there was a prime-time program on ABC, CBS, or NBC, a good portion of the country’s households were tuning into it. And in early 1980, the TV show Dallas was captivating the nation’s attention.
The show about the oil-rich Ewing family was certainly dramatic. Episodes featured everything from backstabbing business deals to brazen infidelity to caricatures of Texan glamour. But the intrigue rose to a new level during the show’s third season, when an unknown assailant shot the show’s antagonist J.R. Ewing.
The season ended immediately after the shooting. The setup gave the audience half a year to wonder if J.R. would survive — and who pulled the trigger.
It was the ultimate cliffhanger. One that helped Dallas soar into the cultural stratosphere.
Yet, Who Shot J.R.? was far from a harmless plot twist. It was a master class in exploiting a key emotional weakness. One that we’re still struggling to counter, decades later.
Back when I worked in the media, I would write short news scripts for the anchors to read.
On any given newscast, there would be 12 to 20 of these scripts, featuring subjects that we hadn’t sent a reporter to cover in depth. And many of them followed The Formula.
The Formula was the protocol for reporting on developing news. In rapid succession, the script would mention what our crews knew about the event, what we didn’t know, and what we were working to get more information on.
I viewed The Formula as a necessary evil. A public progress report was never ideal, but it was still better than withholding the story entirely.
The occurrences we reported on impacted our viewers, and we competed with two other stations to share them. We’d lose the trust of the local community — and our raison d’etre — if we want radio silent until we had the full picture.
Yet, we couldn’t speculate or embellish while filling in the blanks. If we did, we’d get in legal trouble.
The Formula treaded an uneasy middle ground between these outcomes. And so, I begrudgingly threaded that needle — knowing full well that it would irritate our viewers.
You see, humans crave closure. We don’t want things to be open-ended. We want all the information as soon as possible.
Not knowing who shot J.R. — or what will happen to him — eats at us. So does ambiguity surrounding a shooting, car crash, or brush fire in our local area.
Certainty provides the best closure. But it’s often made unavailable to us.
Sometimes, this is by necessity. Police and firefighters are scrambling to make it to the scene. The ambulance is still en route to the hospital. This is what I was contending with in my news media role, and it’s why I had to leave things open-ended.
But other times, certainty is willfully withdrawn. A situation is intentionally kept open-ended, with the understanding that the ambiguity will force us into action.
Mentally, we cannot leave loose ends untied. We’re just not wired for it. So, we do what we can to fill the gap — making a move that benefits those who fed us the partial information.
This might be watching the next episode of a TV show or buying a product in a panic. In any case, the closure hawker reaps the rewards of our Pavolvian response.
Such practices can be lucrative for these proprietors. But they’re fundamentally unjust.
And it’s time to stop turning a blind eye to that point.
I sat in the exam room, waiting for the gastroenterologist.
My appointment had been set for 2 PM. But now, it was pushing 4, and I was getting antsy.
The appointment was supposed to be nothing major. A basic follow-up for an endoscopy.
But with each passing moment, doubt gripped tighter and tighter like a boa constrictor.
Was the doctor just exceptionally bad at time management? Or was there something in my results that required another look? And what would that mean for me?
Finally, the gastroenterologist entered the room. He pulled up my file on his computer, read the report quickly, and informed me I had nothing to worry about. Everything was fine and I didn’t need a follow-up appointment.
This should have been music to my ears. But on the drive back to the office, I was irate.
What nerve did this man have holding me hostage for two hours — in the middle of a workday, no less — to tell me…nothing? And if I was fine, what explained the occasional flare-ups that had me stumbling to the kitchen at 2 AM to chug Alka Seltzer? Some of those had happened between the endoscopy and this farce of an appointment. Would I ever be able to connect the dots?
To that end, what of the original problem I came in for some years back? That also spurred an endoscopy, which did not come back clean. Back then, the gastroenterologist stated that he found something in my stomach and removed it. But what was it? Had I been close to dying without that intervention? And what were the odds of it coming back?
This experience illustrates the quandary of medical care.
To treat our maladies, doctor’s must diagnose them. And that often means reconciling what they see with what we feel.
The tests — the labs, imaging, scopes, and biopsies — tell all. They indicate what, if anything, needs to be remedied — leaving doctors to chart the course to cure. The tests provide closure to our open-ended health dilemmas – one way or another.
At least that’s the intent.
But reality is quite different. Our bodies are volatile, and our issues be elusive — disappearing at the time of a blood draw or scan, only to re-emerge when a doctor is not looking.
Indeed, certainty is a much rarer commodity than doctors would have us believe. That’s why my family didn’t post a Mission Accomplished banner when my grandmother’s cancer went into remission. Instead, we crossed our fingers every day for the next 16 years, hoping the disease wouldn’t come back. Frankly, it’s a miracle that didn’t.
So, I’ve paid little heed to the gastroenterologist’s reassurance about my endoscopy. I wait each day for the other shoe to drop, in the form of another flare-up. This outcome would not be pleasant, but perhaps it would provide some actual closure.
I’ve started taking this approach with all my medical adventures now. If I get an MRI or an X-Ray, I hope that it does find something — no matter how devastating the consequences. When I meet with various specialists, I do more than state which part of my body is hurting. I make a full case for an ailment diagnosis, leaving it to them to disprove it.
This is all irrational behavior. Kooky, really. And the fact that I continue to pursue it shows just how distressing ambiguity is. To me. To all of us.
So, why do we let others gleefully hold it over our heads? Why do we let them manipulate us like marionettes? Why do we let them exploit our emotions for their own gain?
We must do better.
It’s time that we, as a society, put the clamps on open-endedness. That we stop using it as a weapon for gain, and instead treat it as a tool of last resort.
This means changes to the way we write, the way we market, and the way we engage with each other.
It will be a jarring shift, sure. But we’ll be better for it.
There was a time when the question Who Shot J.R.? mattered. May there be a time when the question Why Weren’t We Told Promptly? matters more.