There is a new reboot of the former famous nighttime soap opera Dallas coming up soon on TNT, only this one has an interesting new spin on it: all the old characters are returning. Or should I say, all the old actors are returning to play their old characters. (The key word here is "old".) Yes, this tumultuous television show, groundbreaking and famous for bringing the salacious turpitude of wealthy back-stabbers and their Machiavellian machinations into American living rooms back before it was commonplace (and indeed pro forma at this point), was big when I was just a tiny tot, and all these actors/characters were already fully into adulthood (well, age-wise, anyway: they acted like petulant children, always bullying each other and so forth) at the time, which of course means they are plenty elderly by now. So perhaps this show can deal with all the hot-button issues facing the senior crowd now: longer lives, healthcare, Medicare bureaucracy (and new pushes to limit its availability to the non-wealthy), senior living, assisted care, hospice life, elder abuse, neglect by family, etc. Or maybe it could show a whole new generation of greedy ne'er-do-wells trying to cheat, bilk, scam and push their way into controlling the assets of these now senile former bullying corporate raider- & hostile takeover-type characters, finally seeing the pendulum swinging the other way, placing the shoe on the other foot (although the shoe now being an unattractive and unfashionable but quite comfortable brand of geriatric footwear), etc.
But maybe, if they plan on bringing all the old characters back doing the same stuff they were known and loved for doing, they can simply do the geriatric version of it for the new show. Like, for instance, maybe they could gulp down tumblers full of prune juice, rather than all the bourbon they used to swill. And instead of popping abusable medications like Percocet and Vicodin and Valium and Xanax, they could pop Geritol (or since they're on Medicare, perhaps the generic version: "Generitol"). And they could all roll around, hogging the hallways in their Cadillac- and Mercedes-branded wheelchairs, and beat each other over the head with walkers and such. Or maybe they could try to steal each others' Social Security checks, take over each others' retirement investments, crowd each other out of the Bingo table, etc. Oh, but fortunately for the viewers, they can all still cheat on each other and sleep with each others' wives and husbands thanks to the miracle of Viagra!
And I certainly hope the show will be sponsored by Geritol, Viagra, and the AARP!
