Crisis in the "Manor"

In the last episode of Animal Planet's fabulous "Meerkat Manor," one of the main meerkats -- Shakespeare -- had gone missing after an attack by a rival meerkat gang.

We were upset to find out this was a season-ending cliff hanger. We figured we would have to wait for the start of the new season of "Meerkat Manor" (29 September in America) to find out that -- whew! -- everything is okay.

Well, no. According to this article in the Los Angeles Times, that's not going to happen.

Fans in England, where the season started on 04 September, say that Shakespeare's disappearance continues -- and that is upsetting a lot of them. It is not so much that an animal might have died -- that is nature's way; rather, that promotions for the new season intimated that Shakespeare's fate would be revealed.

Animal Planet insists it does not know what happened to Shakespeare.

It is one thing to use such an incident as a grabber to make people come back for the next season; but, to not actually resolve the issue is unfair -- sorta like the reason so many people (us included) have dropped ABC's "Lost."