There is a tendency these days to build upon success, what used to be known in the old days as riding someone else’s coattails, and we see this particularly in the area of television drama. CSI worked in Vegas, so it’s set to play in Miami and New York. Law & Order breeds L&O SVU and Criminal Intent. And the reality shows of course are breeding like rabbits.
So I figure that Fox’s Breaking Bad about a chemistry teacher who, upon learning he has terminal cancer, decides to supplement his current low paying salary and provide for his family by using his expertise in the field to have his own meth lab.
Well, this show’s a goodie so we’ll have to imagine that the following variations are already in the works:
An English Professor discovers that he is facing early onset Alzheimers and plans to write a couple best selling novels before his eventual loss of memory and mental capacity; the humanities devotee could never stoop to selling academic papers which would pay well but not well enough. He does well with his first and second novel, but just as he’s starting to hit his stride and get the big bucks, his short term memory loss becomes more insidious and without realizing it, he starts writing from long term memory, and produces outstanding work that unfortunately has already been written by Faulkner, Marquez and McCarthy.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology