Friends, it’s not that often that I find a show on streaming that really tickles my fancy. There’s a lot of stuff out there, and most of it is aimed squarely at a younger generation. That’s perfectly ok, but it does mean that this particular column ends up being a bit pessimistic sometimes.
Well, I finally have the chance to report on a show I really like, something that works almost perfectly for different generations. It’s called Reboot, and several episodes are now streaming on Hulu with more coming every week.
Here’s the pitch
Reboot is a situation comedy based around the idea of producing a reboot of a beloved situation comedy. Yes, that’s a fairly “meta” concept, but it’s pretty valid. We’ve been in the midst of a reboot mania for several years, with some shows translating well to the modern world and others less so. Some shows, like Fuller House, revel in their retro-ness. Other shows try to take the same characters and try to make them work in 21st century situations.
The first bullseye that comes at you is the casting. The show includes sitcom veteran Paul Reiser as, well, a sitcom veteran. Rachel Bloom from My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend leads the millennial side of the house. Keegan Michael Key, Johnny Knoxville, and Judy Greer play the returning characters, and here the casting is perfect. Judy Greer was such a familiar face in the TV world in the early 2000s and she fits in perfectly here.
Rounding out the cast are a diverse group of folks who play… a diverse group of folks. My favorite is the pitch-perfect Fred Malamed who leads the “olds” side of the writers’ room. These characters seem sucked straight from The Dick van Dyke show which is just perfect.
Behind the scenes
The show is the brainchild of Steven Levitan, whose name you may remember from the decade when he helmed Modern Family. He’s the perfect one to straddle the worlds of old-time sitcom and today’s more nuanced storytelling. I want to give a special shout out to production designer Claire Bennett. Bennett captures the look and feel of every set perfectly. The writer’s room is a perfect caricature of ones we’ve seen over and over again. Most impressively, the “sitcom set” set, in other words, the set where they pretend to shoot the rebooted sitcom, is just absolute perfection. The arched doorways remind us of so many sitcoms set in Southern California in the 1970s and 1980s. The centrally located half-staircase has been used in dozens of sitcoms, most notably All in the Family. It’s perfectly presented to make you think of a real rebooted sitcom.
About that writing…
OK so I’m going to take some issue with the writing. I think it’s actually a little too classic-sitcom, and not modern enough. It also groups every GenXer and boomer into the “utterly clueless” category, and I don’t terribly like that. But given that the millennials and Zoomers don’t fare much better, I’m inclined to accept it. For all its pretentions of lampooning reboots and being meta and being modern, Reboot is at its heart a fairly classically-constructed sitcom, with ridiculous situations and dialogue that no one would actually say. There are plenty of well-timed moments where you’re supposed to laugh, and nothing comes off as hard to digest.
Still, I don’t think that Reboot is trying to be anything other than what it is. Unlike Kevin Can **** Himself, to which this show will probably be compared, it’s not trying to destroy the sitcom form. Like Modern Family, it’s just trying to move the needle a little bit in the direction in needs to move. These are still characters with deep affection for each other, played by a cast that probably has deep affection for each other. It’s not likely to win an Emmy, despite Hollywood’s fondness for shows about itself. On the other hand, it is probably — just like the shows it tries to lampoon — cheap to produce, fun to watch, and a reliable way to wind down at the end of the day.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Reboot is available on Hulu.
