Don't Leave Me Hangin', Bro

It's a mystery to me.

I have a few summer TV series I watch. In fact, my favorite show is a summer series on USA Network: "Suits." 

Ah, the cast of "Suits."

 Like what I watch during the winter season, I DVR everything in the summer, never watching in real time. Consequently, I watch some stuff that I wouldn't otherwise watch if I had to pick and choose one show between two or three on in the same time slot. Not to mention that there are only a handful of shows that I like enough to actually make a point of being in front of the TV for.

But because I can record hours of TV each week, I watch some things that, in all honesty, I could live without. One of those summer shows is "The Glades."

It's a fish-out-of-water premise of a wise-ass Chicago cop suddenly finding himself in some sort of special investigative unit of the Florida State Police. He has a girl friend and a Hispanic sidekick who is the medical examiner. Blah, blah, blah...

It's just fun escapism. The episode plots are as thin as a communion wafer. Basically the cop -- Jim Longworth as played by Matt Passmore -- is a younger, more rude, better dressed version of Columbo. He hounds people at inconvenient times and embarrasses them at every turn. I noticed this season that every episode, on the thinnest of evidence, he arrests two or three of the wrong people -- often in public or in front of a crowd -- before finally stumbling over the guilty party by episode's end. If this were real life, his office would be sued two or three times an episode for false arrest.

Oh, and do cops still tell people they've questioned not to leave town? This guy does once or twice an episode.

It's not Masterpiece Theater. But it is something to watch while chowing down on a grilled chicken breast and sipping a glass of white.

The fourth season of "The Glades" just wrapped up with a cliff hanger. Passmore's character, on the way to his own wedding, is shot in the house he just bought for his bride. We are left wondering if the wedding was canceled, whether he lived or died, who shot him and whether his bride's mother finally made it into town. So many unsolved mysteries.

Yeah, but the biggest mystery is how A&E could approve the cliff-hanger script and then cancel the show the day after it aired three weeks later. What, the clowns at A&E didn't know they were going to cancel the show? I find that hard to believe.

Now, granted it's not exactly a who-shot-JR sort of moment that had half of America on edge, but there are probably a half million of us who would like to see a few loose ends tied up.

The season and the series could have been wrapped with the wedding and everyone living happily ever after. But noooooo...

I am left with two unanswered questions: Who shot that annoying jackass Jim Longworth? and On what TV show will my buddy Wayne Pasik now get to be an extra playing a cop?

Nothing so sad as an out-of-work cop.

 Damn A&E.