Who Took J.R.’s Geritol?
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Watching the premiere of Dallas (2012), I was reminded of Thomas Wolfe’s admonition: you can’t go home again
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I watched the premiere of the reprise of the 1980s primetime soap opera Dallas this week. But unlike many people’s reasons for viewing it (critical acclaim, a macabre desire to see how old the original series’ actors had become, or just plain entertainment), my reason was, shall we say, transcendental. In short, I wanted to go back to my halcyon 1980′s; the time I “came of age,” having been born in the mid-1960′s. And maybe I could even watch the late-night news afterwards and hear the soothing voice of President Reagan offering the moral clarity and self-assured belief in this country that seems all too lacking nowadays, certainly in our current President. Perhaps, before I went to sleep, I could even squeeze in a late-night call to my high-school girlfriend, who I haven’t spoken with in over 25 years.
Above: Ponce de León discovers the “Fountain of Youth”; I.M. Windee never does
But such hopes were quickly dashed as soon as the show began. For starters, the new actors resembled little of 1980′s youth. And the old actors were….well….old. Seeing the once indominatble J.R. crouched in a chair at a rest home was bad enough, but the grey Andy Rooney forests for eyebrows and the Tales from the Crypt boney hand he held out to shake the hand of his lawyer he had just dumped on immediately disabused me that I had somehow found a time-machine or fountain of youth. In short, I realized yet again that the past is the past.
I will still watch Dallas (2012) and enjoy it like the old. But unlike the old, I will watch it in the 21st century, and not the 1980s. And I will certainly not expect to see President Reagan on the news nor a nocturnal call with the girlfriend.
Alas, Thomas Wolfe was correct: you can’t go home again.
-I.M. Windee
