For those who relish watching the old put the young in their place, last week was spectacular like a sparkly, diamond-encrusted cane waving grandly over a pristine lawn. Picture the kids as a scheming John Ross Ewing, and the aged as a craggy but still spry J.R. Ewing, and J.R. is holding a shaving razor to John Ross’s throat and cackling over this foolish youngster’s plan to steal the Southfork family ranch out from under his well-worn hat. That’s right, even Dallas references have cultural currency amid these recent, wrinkly finger-wagging developments, which include singer-songwriter turned professor David Lowery scorching a 21-year-old NPR intern because her music buying habits line up with practically every other 21-year-old on the planet; an elderly school bus monitor being cruelly mocked by sadistic children and subsequently turning her half-million tears into as many dollars with the help of (surprise twist!) those kid-friendly tweet machines; and Aaron Sorkin using his Jeff Daniels–shaped avatar to lecture college students about how great America was before they were born in HBO’s The Newsroom.