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Boldly going to a place we've already been By Robert Galvin Mail Tribune Jan 24, 2020 12:00 AM A A Have you spent the past 29 years as gut-punch haunted as Michael Steadman, seeing the ghost of Gary Shepard in the mirror in the days after Gary was killed in a car accident as he was driving to the hospital to give patient Nancy Weston a copy of “Through the Looking-Glass” in the wake of the joyous news that she has survived ovarian cancer? Well, if you’re the 50- or 60-something who has been stuck in this realm of suspended anticipation ... have we got news for you! (Other than that you’re in a select group of readers who got that reference without resorting to The Googles.) ABC (that’s a television network, for you streamers out there) has announced plans to produce a continuation of the addictive, yet painfully self-absorbed series “thirtysomething” — the show about the lives, loves and losses (R.I.P., Gary) of a group of painfully self-absorbed white proto-hipsters in their 20s that not only gave birth to the “-something” labeling trend, but drove copy editors insane by spelling its title in painfully self-absorbed lower case letters. To be called “thirtysomething(else)” — can a title get any more twee? — the new series will focus on the lives of the children of the Westons, the Steadmans, and their various proto-hipster supporting characters ... while members of the original cast will be around to bridge generations and entice loyalty from the 60somethings who still watch broadcast networks such as ABC. No word on whether Gary will continue to show up in Michael’s mirror; but if decidedly un-hipster characters such as Leroy Jethro Gibbs can be visited by the spirits of dead people, certainly Michael and his ever-present suspenders can as well. I know we’ve asked this question before — and, yes, the “Punky Brewster” sequel is still going to happen — but ... Holy Macanoli ... why do these characters from our past refuse to go away? The audience is as much to blame as the artists at least since the moment we stopped accepting “ and they lived happily ever after” as the end of the story. And it’s certainly not just television characters that leave us wanting just one more bite of a memorable meal. The further adventures of our heroes and villains have made millions for mystery writers and franchise-movie studios. Sometimes, you do wonder whether a character whose story ends in uncertainty actually discovers what it was they went off in search to find. Nora Helmer, for instance. Nora exits the Henrik Ibsen classic “A Doll’s House” by literally closing the door on the stifling domesticity of her home and family — a cultural sea-change that stunned the traditional patriarchies that sat in theater seats when the play premiered in 1879. A knock on that same door, 138 years later, attempts to find resolution in Nora’s departure in the sequel — 2017’s “A Doll’s House, Part 2” — which is set 15 years after the ending of the Ibsen community-theater staple. “Part 2,” which will be produced in Ashland this May by the fledgling Rogue Theatre Company, won a Tony Award for the incomparable Laurie Metcalf and can’t help but be seen as a mirror to how the same battles Nora fought for in the latter stages in the 19th century are still being waged by women today. The search for self, for resolution to personal conflicts, is behind the revival of a decidedly different character in “Star Trek: Picard,” the new series on CBS All Access that renews our acquaintances with the legendary captain of the Starship Enterprise some 17 years after his last big-screen appearance. “Picard,” however, is intended to be as much a journey to rectify the issues that have dimmed the captain’s inner light as it is a continuation of the Wagon Train In Space motif. Patrick Stewart’s character is now 92 in Trek years, and his decades of decisions have come home to roost at his family’s French winery. He has a vision — although not in a mirror — of what appears to be the ghost of now-destroyed Commander Data (if an android can be a ghost, when they don’t even dream of electric sheep), and Picard’s PTSD from his complicated relationship with the Borg Collective is never far away. Nora and Jean-Luc (now that’s a dinner table conversation) are exceptions, however, within the tsunami of characters brought back to life in the sometimes cynical attempt to enhance credibility and bottom lines. Perhaps more than “sometimes.” The continuation of such stories, though, is another kettle of fish. When Nora closes that door, or Jean-Luc is beamed away for a final time, those who would be tempted to turn the next page to see what happens next best have a clean sense of that vision thing. Back in the mid-1970s, a college undergraduate decided to follow disillusioned gunfighter Scratchy Wilson as he trudged in dinosaur steps into the deserted frontier in the closing moments of Stephen Crane’s “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.” Eventually, Wilson’s plodding brings him face to face with the doomed dentist McTeague from Frank Norris’s novel — still handcuffed in Death Valley to the corpse of Marcus Schouler. The resulting English paper was all premise and no promise — proving only that some folks have a knack for sketching exhaustive drawn-out scenarios that eventually lead nowhere and leave the reader (not to mention the undergrad) lost in the wilderness and looking for an exit line. This seems like the right spot. If you know whether the title character ever finished her list of life choices in “Emily’s Reasons Why Not,” email Mail Tribune copy desk chief Robert Galvin at [email protected] Robert Galvin