Hollywood's TV Writers Discover Midlife Crisis

Midlife crisis is officially the go-to plot point for this fall's new TV season, providing comedy (we think) in two new series and the basis for fish-out-of-water backstories in two others.

Midlife crisis is good for a laugh ...

• Help Me Help You: "Ted Danson stars as Dr. Bill Hoffman, a Manhattan psychotherapist who masks his mid-life crisis while in the company of clients, then unleashes it once the session is done." - SignOnSanDiego.com
• Twenty Good Years: "Jeffrey Tambor and John Lithgow play a pair of older men suffering a late-stage midlife crisis" - Canada.com

... and is a convenient answer to the question, "how'd that fish get so far out of the water?"

• Men In Trees: Anne Heche is a bestselling self-help author who "... after having her mid-life crisis in the tiny Alaskan town of mythical Elmo (yes, you can think mythical town Cicely, Alaska, from Northern Exposure), she bonds with the local characters and impulsively decides she should stay." - Cincinnati Post
• Shark: "James Woods stars in “Shark” as a cutthroat lawyer (…sigh) who has a midlife crisis and switches sides, becoming a low-paid prosecutor." - C-ville.com

If these shows survive to midseason, our newly invented Academy of Midlife Crisis Arts and Sciences will have to present the best with a Dudley, LifeTwo's award for outstanding achievement (named after Dudley Moore, whose character in 10 defined midlife crisis for those ... well, now in midlife).