The Best Thing About Blogging – Originality

Tonight in Canada, a television show from the 1980’s returns with much the same cast, only older. Dallas, one of the biggest night-time dramas in the era of big hair, neon colors, and parachute pants has been re-done, in a “new” series which premiers tonight on BRAVO.

Hollywood – and most of the mainstream media – seems to be chock out of ideas, because they keep re-hashing the same old ones in an attempt to draw us into their movies and television shows.

Classic television hits Hawaii Five-Oh, Charles Angels, The Smurfs, The Dukes of Hazard, The A-Team, Starsky and Hutch, even MacGyver were all re-made – the latter in the form of a comedy spoof McGruber. 

Aren’t there any original ideas anymore? 

Yes there are – and you don’t have to pay outrageously high prices for a movie and an oversized bag of stale popcorn to enjoy them.

Thankfully bloggers are coming up with really original content, or else we’d really have nothing interesting to pass the time.

The blogosphere is full of well written, interesting, and original content on everything from current affairs, space, science, technology, fashion and more.

Granted, you probably won’t see big blockbuster movie action on a blog, but at least you’ll be entertained and informed about something that really is new – not labeled as new, but just recycled by lazy writers that don’t want to take risks.

And that’s what it all comes down too. Risk. It costs millions to create a television show, and even more to create a movie, so many writers opt for the easy way out, and instead of trying something new, they fall back on past hits.

That’s why a TV show from the 1980’s is being revised over 20 years later yet being sold as “new.”

Television viewership is down, so too are movie attendance figures. Many blame the Internet, podcasts, television on-demand and other digital media.

I beg to differ – although the Internet and digital media do have a role in taking us away from TV and the movies, that’s not the primary reason.

Nope.

It’s lazy writers afraid to take risks.

Although I enjoyed watching television shows in the 1980’s, I’ve been there and done that. I don’t need or want to watch the same characters living out the same old plot lines, as they get old and grey. 

Are we going to have a geriatric version of Dallas, as the cast continues to age?

I can see the plot thicken, as JR desperately tries to find out who stole his dentures. They can make it a two-part season finally, much as they did in the 1980’s original version of the show, when they ran the “Who Shot JR” episode. Only in the “new” revised series, JR mumbles something incomprehensible, as he points to the jar that usually stores his dentures. Oh my god! It’s empty!

Who stole JR’s dentures?

Tune in next season to find out.