Everything's still coming up Eighties.
Jun. 18th, 2012 02:35 pmFirst Mysterious Cities of Gold is getting a continuation thirty years after it originally ended. Not a reboot, not a remake. A genuine continuation.
And now? Dallas is getting a continuation, twenty-one years after the original series went off the air. Not a reboot, not a remake. A genuine continuation.
The new Dallas will officially count as Season 15, for those of you keeping track at home.
Oh, and Patrick Duffy and Larry Hagman are reprising their roles as Bobby Ewing and J.R. Ewing, respectively.
And I cannot stop laughing at the delightful shamelessness of this hilarious promo image.
Personally I kind of hope that this is the start of a trend. I know that everybody and their dog has been rebooting/remaking old 80's properties left and right, from cartoons to adult dramas to comics. But the idea of continuing a story rather than remaking the original is pretty cool on a lot of levels, even though we all know the risks inherent in making poorly-thought-out sequels. Bonus points for including a timeskip the way that the new Dallas apparently will. A timeskip allows the show to focus primarily on a new set of characters while still providing plenty of opportunities for the much-beloved older set of characters to make audience-pleasing appearances. This way the new show can account for the fact that the original cast has aged significantly, and account for the fact that not all of the members of the original cast are available to reprise their roles (hence the whole focus of the show shifting away from the original cast in the first place). From a storytelling perspective, it allows the original cast of characters to be minimally involved in the continuing plot without messing too much with how the storylines in the original series concluded, so that the real melodrama can be focused around the new set of characters. This neatly sidesteps one of the biggest problems with sequels in any medium - namely, that audiences don't like to see beloved older characters suffering through tons of retcons and ridiculous melodrama if we're more-or-less satisfied with how their storylines and character development arcs concluded twenty-some years ago - while still allowing the new cast to wallow in all of the ridiculous melodrama and cheesy plot twists that we love in a soap opera like Dallas. In short: Timeskips! They are almost universally a good idea in long-running soap operas, especially when a particular soap opera is about to get a new season after being off the air for over twenty years. ;)
And now? Dallas is getting a continuation, twenty-one years after the original series went off the air. Not a reboot, not a remake. A genuine continuation.
The new Dallas will officially count as Season 15, for those of you keeping track at home.
Oh, and Patrick Duffy and Larry Hagman are reprising their roles as Bobby Ewing and J.R. Ewing, respectively.
And I cannot stop laughing at the delightful shamelessness of this hilarious promo image.
Personally I kind of hope that this is the start of a trend. I know that everybody and their dog has been rebooting/remaking old 80's properties left and right, from cartoons to adult dramas to comics. But the idea of continuing a story rather than remaking the original is pretty cool on a lot of levels, even though we all know the risks inherent in making poorly-thought-out sequels. Bonus points for including a timeskip the way that the new Dallas apparently will. A timeskip allows the show to focus primarily on a new set of characters while still providing plenty of opportunities for the much-beloved older set of characters to make audience-pleasing appearances. This way the new show can account for the fact that the original cast has aged significantly, and account for the fact that not all of the members of the original cast are available to reprise their roles (hence the whole focus of the show shifting away from the original cast in the first place). From a storytelling perspective, it allows the original cast of characters to be minimally involved in the continuing plot without messing too much with how the storylines in the original series concluded, so that the real melodrama can be focused around the new set of characters. This neatly sidesteps one of the biggest problems with sequels in any medium - namely, that audiences don't like to see beloved older characters suffering through tons of retcons and ridiculous melodrama if we're more-or-less satisfied with how their storylines and character development arcs concluded twenty-some years ago - while still allowing the new cast to wallow in all of the ridiculous melodrama and cheesy plot twists that we love in a soap opera like Dallas. In short: Timeskips! They are almost universally a good idea in long-running soap operas, especially when a particular soap opera is about to get a new season after being off the air for over twenty years. ;)
