I had forgotten that “Frasier,” which graced the airwaves of network TV from from 1993 to 2004, was being brought back in a reboot on the Paramount+ streaming channel until I saw a promo for it yesterday. I was never a big fan of the original, though I appreciated its habit of frequently employing classic farce complete with slamming doors, so I was not and am not planning on tuning in to the zombie version. However, the disgusted review of the new “Frasier” by James Poniewozik in the New York Times reminded me of how icky these exercises always are are and how frequently the practice is resorted to now.
To be clear, I am not counting re-boots that involve completely recasting the show and simply slapping the old title on it to suck in suckers for a bait and switch. That practice is clearly unethical—it’s dishonest and disrespectful to the original and its key artists—but that isn’t what this post is about. Such rip-offs include the current “Hawaii 5-0” without Jack Lord and “Magnum P.I.” without Tom Selleck, the new, inferior “The Equalizer” (gender and color switched) as well as the infamous attempt to re-boot the original “Perry Mason” with, ugh, Monte Markham in place of Raymond Burr. No, I’m thinking about when a show that had been deemed to have run its course many years ago is revived with some of the same cast members, all older, less vigorous, and apparently desperate for work, and with lesser writers often peddling current biases. Poniewozik writes, in part,
Frasier Crane becomes the latest classic character to set sail for a mediocre, anticlimactic return…the new “Frasier” joins “Night Court” as a revival that surrounds one returning lead with new sidekicks who, if you squint, might pass for versions of the old gang…The result is something that feels less like Season 12 of “Frasier” or Season 1 of a new series than a sort of museum of itself — be sure to visit the gift shop! — weighed down with knickknacks and nostalgia….But it has the purgatorial feel of a sitcom that returned without a purpose beyond “More of that guy I like, please”…You could forgive the lack of ideas if there were at least a few laughs. But this reproduction has the predictable beats of a mothballed 20th-century sitcom…the revival industry is not in the business of interesting.As I’ve written before, there’s an inherent sadness to bringing back a sitcom after years or decades, the twinge of time passing.
It’s more than just a twinge. These things make me feel old (and I almost never feel old) by forcing me to watch the ravages of time without any compensations except mandatory nostalgia, which wears out quickly. I have watched a lot of TV as I often point out, and I racked my brains: has there ever been one of these revivals that was any good at all, much less as good as the original?
Let me search my memory banks again…the new “CSI: Las Vegas, featuring the three main leads from the old CSI looking like hell? Nope. The new, vastly inferior “Law and Order”? No. The briefly revived and almost as quickly put to sleep “Criminal Minds”? God, no. “Will and Grace?” No. “Roseanne”? Well, I couldn’t stand the original, so it doesn’t matter. “Murphy Brown”? Horrible. “Full House,” which Disney revived as “Fuller House”? Really bad. The “Boy Meets World” revival series, “Girl Meets World”? It was about as good as the “Brady Bunch” zombie, “The Bradys,” which lasted one month in 1990. “The Saved by the Bell” re-do that made you realize how seldom child actors grow into good adult actors? Ugh. Then there was the sad “Columbo” return, with Peter Falk slower, less funny and given inferior scripts. That one reminded me of the depressing “Maverick” with an older James Garner, apparently in the middle of a movie slump.
There have been others, but this is depressing me. If there was a single time the original cast was brought back,whole or in part, to try to do what they did well the first time and it was worth the trouble, I missed it.
So back to the original query, “What’s unethical about bringing back old TV shows from the mothballs?”
- It’s incompetent. Clearly, TV writers have joined Hollywood studios in having no creativity or originality at all, except in burst as rare as eclipses.
- It’s insulting, which is a breach of respect. These scavengers obviously believe that audiences are uncritical sheep without standards or taste—you know, like the producers of these crummy shows. All we need is a title we remember fondly and familiar, if wrinkled, face.
- It’s lazy. Do the work, take the risk, come up with new ideas, workshop them, find the perfect cast. That’s how the original hit was created. Repeat the process, don’t recycle the result.
- It’s cowardly.
And as for the actors like Kelsey Grammer and Candace Bergen who allow themselves to be exploited for such cynical exercises I can only say: Show some self -respect and respect for the audiences that gave you a hit. Just say no. Are you really that desperate?
Ethics Alarms 
Cobra Kai is the exception that proves the rule.
Yes. That was another good one.
-Jut
By this logic, recasting plays are unethical.
I dont really track this.
Are cover songs unethical?
So, you didn’t read the post, right? The analogy with what the post is about would be reviving “A Streetcar Named Desire” when Marlon Brando was sixty and 275 pounds. An analogy that actually happened was the revival of “Annie Get Your Gun” when Ethel Merman was 58 years old, in a role she originated 20 years earlier, and she was even too old to play Annie Oakley then. But people just wanted to hear the songs
“Roseanne”? Well, I couldn’t stand the original, so it doesn’t matter.
Well, this was about the only one I have watched because I was familiar with the original.
It holds up in a few ways.
You have almost the whole cast from before coming back.
The tone and writing feels very close to the original.
Like the original, it continued to address serious issues. (Roseanne was afflicted with a painkiller addiction, which provided a convenient way to kill her off when she said the wrong thing; her mother’s dementia; infertility; alcoholism).
If you did not care for the original, you probably would not like this. But, if any re-boot has done it right, I bet Roseanne would be a contender.
-Jut
I enjoy Quantum Leap.
The Closer and Major Crimes were both excellent. Major Crimes was basically the exact same cast as The Closer with only the lead and one other character replaced. Of course, those shows ran back to back without the huge time gaps in between that most shows have, skirting the main issues listed in the article.
Yeah, they were essentially the same show with a replacement lead and the supporting cast unchanged, like when Lawrence Fishburne replaced William Peterson on CSI. If they had retitled the show, it would have been the exact same scenario as The Closer/Major Crimes. And, of course, there was no multi-year break in between.
The original Murphy Brown was slightly before my time, but never appealed to me. The revived Murphy Brown made me question what the original was even about. The big Thanksgiving Day “Fuck You, America” it pulled may well have killed any chance I might have given the new or original run.
I finally gave a Disney live action remake a chance, Aladdin, which is perhaps my favorite of the early 90’s Disney era. It didn’t embarrass the original, but it still felt zombie like.
Since the original was a musical, this was arguably a revival of the songs with a new cast.
However, they used computer animation to remake the musical-action sequences of the cartoon; these sequences would have been prohibitively difficult to film in the 90’s, so never would have been done past or present were it not for the cartoon. The songs were memorable in part because of the bombastic animation, but the sequences don’t make any sense outside of a cartoon. A live action original would simply not have the same features.
The one improvement, admittedly a nod to woke fadness, is the Sultan in the remake promoted his daughter, who spent years studying for the job, as his successor. In the original, a “Street Rat” got the job because by virtue of using a magic lamp to defeat the bad guy (who also used the magic lamp). As Queen, it was Jasmine’s prerogative to marry a commoner whom she loved, rather than her father’s prerogative to change the law to allow a non-noble to marry into the royal line. It was a sore spot in the original for me, even as a kid.
[I’m posting this for Rich, who is being persecuted by WordPress-—Jack]
Now I’m replying to Rich replying to me replying to Null.
Of course, movie reboots are a different issue, and they have a much better record of being decent, even good. The first Star-Trek reboot was terrific. The most obvious success is Tom Cruise’s versions of “Mission Impossible.” It is very rare when Hollywood does a remake of an old classic movie with the same star, though; I can think of only two and a half examples. Howard Hawks remade “Rio Bravo” as “El Dorado,” both with John Wayne, then did it again with “Rio Lobo,” which was considerably different from either, and also terrible. (“El Dorado” is OK, “Rio Bravo” is wonderful.) Then Clark Gable starred in “Mogambo,” a big hit, 20 years after starring in “Red Dust,” also a hit, in the same role and virtually the same story. The remake was better.
My wife was a fan of The Closer, so I saw many of the episodes. Kyra Sedgwick carried the show. The almost monotonal deadpan acting by Mary McDonnell as her replacement character hamstrung it, and the uber-annoying “Rusty” character killed it off (never mind the absurdity of a teenage gay male prostitute being given the run of a criminal investigation unit.) They could have possibly done a decent job of continuing the theme with better actors/characters, but as it was, it falls into the same basket as the rest of your examples.
Second on Rusty. The show was more like a bad spin-off—-“Joan and Chachi,” “AfterMash,” Archie’s Place”—coming on the heels of the original rather than decades after.
I don’t know if the current reboot of Law and Order is all that bad. There are some episodes that have been a stumble, and there have been some annoying woke episodes, especially in the first year back with a dreadlocked, wokified Detective Bernard lecturing his partner on how there’s no reason for any white person to use the n-word ever. It is a little bit formulaic, but the original show always was.
Maybe bringing back a now superannuated Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy wasn’t that great of an idea, since he just comes off as a zombie, as opposed to Steven Hill’s world weary sage Adam Schiff. I think they did it partly to allow Dick Wolf to break the gunsmoke record again with the original show, which he wasn’t allowed to do in 2010, possibly because he pissed someone off at NBC. He had already broken the record anyway with SVU, which has continued unbroken up to this point, and probably should be considered for being put out to pasture.
That said, it’s always very easy to grab a headline and run with it, and that’s what a lot of that show is about
The picture above looks more like it came from a reboot of Cheers. Most of Frazier was shot in his condo where he lived with his father (who I believe passed away some years ago)
Frazier was a spin-off from Cheers.
You ask the actors to show respect for the audience. Nothing could be farther from the ethos of entertainers than respect for the audience. Their sole focus is the checks that arrive.
One word: Futurama
It’s been cancelled and restarted (with the same voice cast) some 3-4 times now (depending on your definition of “cancelled”) and still holds up. They were even self-aware enough in the first episode of the most recent “Hulurama” incarnation to make it about shows that run too long, past their prime, and how taking a multi-year break from production can actually improve the show creatively.
Granted, being animated like it is, it does lack the problem of the characters visibly aging when still going more than 20 years after it started.
–Dwayne