On March 21, 1980, Dallas wrapped up its third season with a doozy of cliffhanger, when J.R. Ewing (Larry Hagman) was gunned down in his workplace by an unseen assailant. For months, viewers had been left on the sting of their seats questioning: Who Shot J.R.? Patrick Duffy, who performed J.R.’s brother, Bobby Ewing, remembers considering the twist was on model for the course by which the present was heading. “We had been used to the goings-on within the writers’ room and in [producer] Leonard Katzman’s govt workplace, of dropping little bombshells all by means of the primary two years of the present,” Duffy remembers.