Shows That Need a Reboot

I’d like to see a costume drama mini-series of “An American Tragedy” (although the movie “A Place in the Sun” is pretty good).

There was already a reboot in 2009. It was deeply uninteresting.

I want to see a Whedonesque sequel that refers to - and somehow makes as much sense as possible out of - the original series.

And if you had read my entry carefully you would have seen that I already said that.

Well, except for occasional stuff like Rey Curtis’ troubled marriage.

If they did revive Law & Order, they’d probably double down on marital problems, wayward children, failed in vitro fertilization efforts and the like. Julia Roberts (who to my recollection was in a couple of episodes) could be brought back as a tough-but-caring squad captain.

I blame memory erasure.

By the end nearly every episode was “ripped from the headlines” case. It’s fun watching re-runs now and going “oh yeah, I think I remember that news story.”

I assume you mean the traditional problem of most musicals, that the action stops when someone randomly breaks into song? Yeah, the music has to be good enough for that to work. Which my wife and I thought it generally was with Cop Rock, but, again, we were the only ones who thought so!

Some musicals manage it just fine - Sondheim is excellent at moving the plot and/or character development along during songs. But Cop Rock was purely “everything stops during the song” - often including other characters just standing there watching someone sing - which meant that plots were simplistic and/or took multiple episodes to resolve.

The songs were pretty catchy in themselves but man, they made the show drag.

It’s kinda fun to spot the little nuggets of the L&O characters private lives, but I’m glad they don’t overdo it. I just saw an episode last night with Max Greevey visiting Capt. Cragen at home, and we briefly see Cragen’s wife. I read somewhere that Lennie Briscoe’s death was referenced three times in the Law&Order-verse; once by each of his three partners. I’ve seen two of those.

Or worse, it would be on RFD-TV or TNN or some other country-centric channel, and it would be turned around with stomach turning glurge about how the rural life is so great, and how Oliver and Lisa gradually come around to love this fictional country life.

The original centered more on a fish out of water story with the added bit of having really weird and surreal country people- Hooterville was not portrayed as “normal” in any way- rural or otherwise. My worry would be that they’d ditch that angle and make the country characters and settings perfect and idyllic, and the city slickers would be the weirdos.

In other words, The Andy Griffith Show.

Not that it really matters, but Perfect Strangers is streaming on Hulu or Netflix, I watched the first few episodes a few weeks ago.

But the writer can create whatever background they want. There’s no reason why they couldn’t put them on a farm and have them interact with little more than a small handful of people that aren’t like that.
A great example where the background was curated to the show was Schitt’s Creek (and also a good example of a fish out of water story). One thing I noticed throughout the show is that no one ever gave David a hard time about his lifestyle. His parents and family being 100% accepting makes sense. Stevie was pretty open minded, as were many of the other characters, but Roland? I always expected Roland to, at the very least, make fun of him for what he was wearing.
In an interview with Dan Levy, he made his intentions very clear. He explained that it seems like every show that has non-straight/cis character, at some point, has them go through an arc where it’s a problem. Usually a problem with other people bullying them. Dan said, and I paraphrase/quote “There will be no judgement in Schitt’s Creek”.

TLDR, you can set a show in a stereotypical redneck GOP area, without the characters being stereotypical redneck GOPs.

You’re absolutely right! Apparently it was. People in the 80s did not enjoy dining on this very fine cheese.

But since just about everything else from the 80s has been dredged up, reheated in a microwave and served up on a plate, why not more exotic fare? Keep him all Automan-y with his 80sness, but throw him in today’s world. Without going all post-modern about it, I think there’s a lot of room for a genuinely interesting show.

But for heaven’s sake, not Manimal.

I remember two:

Rey told Van Buren, at his wife’s funeral, how he talked to Lennie “at the end”.

Logan (in Criminal Intent, to his new date) tells how Lennie comes to him in a dream, “I’m not dead, Mike!”

What was Ed’s?

How about the show Reboot. Its 3D animation is looking pretty dated these days.

Blockquote

Carter Country

Schitt’s Creek. - David’s ‘lifestyle’? do you mean his fashion sense? Because if you mean ‘gay gay gay’ - for the billionth time - ‘HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT A LIFESTYLE’. I am straight, I live my life, but it is not a ‘lifestyle’ - I just AM.

The American sent overseas plot was done (albeit not with the immigrant as a family member) with the short-lived sitcom Outsourced, about an American executive sent to India to run his company’s call center.

That sort of fish out of water comedy could be good, but you’d have to be careful that the portrayal of the foreign characters doesn’t come across as racist – some of my Indian-American acquaintances had that complaint about Outsourced.

It was in Ed’s last episode. He talks about getting back into gambling after Lennie died.