'92 in the shade.

Already it's a record hot summer. Wild fires all over the West, and now we find that for the average American family 20 years of net worth burned up in the recession http://tinyurl.com/btjarqk  So hey, it's back 20 years to the future with Southfork and the Ewing gang! 

Dallas, which went off the air in '91, began its run in 1978, when as Alessandra Stanley notes, "it was hard to find a rich person on television."  http://tinyurl.com/7ek9w7l Dallas opened the floodgates, just as the go-go 80s' luv for all things money was about to take hold.  And that luv has paid off...at least for the rich who are richer than ever.

Critics haven't been kind to the new Dallas, which is apparently all business--that is to say, all money all the time, with none of the "fun" of its excesses.  Besides which, as Stanely sez:

There is still plenty of money in Texas, but attention, and wasteful extravagance, have shifted elsewhere, to Internet moguls, billionaires, Wall Street bond traders and Russian tycoons. They are the ones buying Park Avenue mansions, basketball teams and art.

Texans used to be big hat; now they are old hat. So, unfortunately, is “Dallas.”

The sad thing is, the rest of us are also a bit worse for wear.