New Reality Show 'Florida Shore' Highlights Lives of Senior Community

The Hallmark Channel debuted its new reality program 'Florida Shore' yesterday morning.

The show, which highlights contemporary senior issues by following the lives of seven elderly Americans who share the same Boca Raton, Florida retirement community, airs during the 10:30am time slot between Golden Girls and Price is Right.

In the program's first episode, Dolores, a widow and former homemaker, dies.

Dolores's replacement, Myrtle, soon wears out her welcome after she is accused of cheating at cribbage, making her the unknowing target of her new neighbors' secret derision.

"She's so old, she's already got one foot in the grave," sneered co-star Ruth Witford, who is 2 years Margaret's elder, "I hear her first husband died in the war – though we haven't found out whether he fought for the North or South."

Florida Shore's producers indicate that modern healthcare, with all the issues and complications that surround it, will be a prominent theme of the show as each of its seven subjects is afflicted by some malady - ranging from Alzheimer's disease to incontinence caused by an unspecified bladder problem referred to by its owner Stanley Mortensen as 'the condition'.

"The condition that makes me excuse myself every half hour isn't anyone's business but my own," said Mortensen, "And not for nothing, but I'll take it over whatever Jerry's got. The man puts his dirty drawers in the icebox."

Yesterday's premiere episode concluded with the gang visiting a local Home Town Buffet, where they agreed that the baked fish was decent, but had too many bones, the dessert bar was too far from their table, and that the restaurant had obviously reduced the size of their plates, necessitating more 'back and forth'.