Man! Like their hero Detective Brett Hopper, Day Break fans have been through the wringer. The Taye Diggs midseason replacement series was supposed to air for 13 straight weeks while ABC’s Lost was on a scheduled hiatus. Day Break under-performed ABC’s expectations and the network pulled it after only six episodes — right in the middle of the cliffhanger storyline — on December 15, 2006.

Though it wouldn’t help those without high-speed Internet access or living outside the U.S., the network said that it would release a new episode online every week. That didn’t happen and fans were left hanging for weeks and weeks. The word was that there were “unforeseen music clearance issues” that were preventing the seventh episode from being posted.

On January 14th, ABC Entertainment chief Stephen McPherson announced that the series would finally be posted online. In addition to the six previously aired episodes, four new episodes were made available on January 29th. The 11th and 12th episodes were posted in the following two weeks. The 13th and final episode should have been posted on February 19th. But that didn’t happen. Once again, fans were left hanging. With deja vu like this, many like they were stuck inside the Day Break storyline!

Well, after being delayed multiple times, the final episode entitled “What If It’s Him?” is finally available on ABC.com (click the “launch” button). It’s being reported that the holdup was once again due to music copyright issues. After all this, most people would have gladly watched the show without any music whatsoever.

As regular visitors of this site know, we’ve been hosting a petition to request that the series be released on DVD (so that everyone can see it) and to hopefully persuade execs to greenlight future Day Break projects. Though the printed petition has been sent, newcomers can still sign the petition. The package included the URL and encouraged the execs to see the impressive and continued interest. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything new.

For now, it seems Hopper’s story is over. Was it worth it? Talk about a long day! Stay tuned!