It's Lazy to Hate Remakes and Revivals

Lately a wave of anger and prejudice has swept through television fandom.  Like all forms of hatred, this animosity is ugly and rooted in lazy, ignorant thinking. Much of the vitriol which has been spewed demonstrates limited understanding of the allegedly abhorrent subject.  I’m talking of course about people hating on television remakes and revivals. 

In recent years, remakes and revivals have been prevalent on network, cable and streaming channels.  A remake is a re-launching of an old series with new cast, potentially a tweaked premise and often new writers. A revival brings the original cast of a series together to tell new stories about the same characters years after the show’s original run.  LETHAL WEAPON and HAWAII 5-0 are reboots which have made the network airwaves while CHARMED, MAGNUM PI, CAGNEY AND LACEY and many others are currently in development. THE X FILES and WILL AND GRACE are revivals which have recently aired, with ROSEANNE the latest series to be salvaged, scheduled to rise from the dead this March.  Studios and production companies like remakes and revivals because they already own the intellectual property on which these series are based, so they cost nothing to acquire.  Furthermore, it’s easier to get an increasingly splintered American television audience to tune into an idea if they have some familiarity with that idea.  This trend of making the old new again has received considerable backlash, from professional and armchair TV critics alike, many of whom consider the pervasiveness of remakes and revivals to be part of some brainless zombie apocalypse in which the undead run rampant, spreading idiocy over the airwaves. Adamant though these naysayers may be, those who criticize remakes and revivals do so with a lack of context, often ignoring the commercial goals and lengthy history of network television programming practices. 

Like all corporate entities, networks, studios and production companies are in the business of making money, that is their primary goal.  That’s the ‘industry’ in “entertainment industry.” They generate revenue by creating and producing scripted television and charging sponsors to run ads during the show’s broadcast or by charging subscribers a fee for access to the show  The scripted television they sell is the ‘entertainment’ in “entertainment industry.” As with any other enormous enterprise employing hundreds of thousands of people the television industry is built on reliable, steady performance and predictability. Historically, the most popular and lucrative genres of scripted  network television are procedural dramas and sitcoms. Both forms have circuitous plot structures which are predictable and formulaic.  Since its inception, network TV has not been built on innovation; rather, it has been built on predictability and stasis.  

From DRAGNET to COLUMBO to CRIMINAL MINDS, procedural dramas are weekly, self-contained stories which all operate the same way.  A crime is committed; the investigators or authority figures discover the crime; they conduct an investigation and encounter informants, some of whom are helpful, some of whom are dangerous; through the accumulation of evidence, a villain is  revealed and defeated, often in a fight sequence; an epilogue or coda returns things to the status quo ante. Whether it's a mustached millionaire in Hawaii, a pair of lady detectives, arson investigators or the sex crimes police, this formula works.  THE X FILES is this formula with supernatural investigations. HOUSE MD is this formula with medical investigations.  The characters and setting are interchangeable, the story structure will work no matter what. 

Similarly, from I LOVE LUCY to FRIENDS to THE BIG BANG THEORY, sitcoms are weekly stories about characters making mistakes which are often self-contained and always formulaic.  We meet our character in a familiar situation; an obstacle or an opportunity enters the character’s life; in pursuit of this opportunity or in an attempt to avoid the obstacle, the character makes a series of blunders which escalate in humor, tension and stakes; eventually, the character reaches a bottoming out point and has some moment of realization, seeing the error of his or her ways and learning a lesson; an epilogue or coda returns things to the status quo ante.  Whether it’s mismatched newlyweds making mistakes related to marriage, friends who can’t seem to get dating right or an office full of zany characters, this formula works. COMMUNITY is this formula. SEINFELD is this formula without the characters ever having a moment of realization.  THE GOOD PLACE is the formula with a twist at the end of each episode instead an epilogue or coda returning things to the status quo ante.   

Predictability is part of what makes these types of shows profitable. Having the same actors, camera people, writers and other show staff performing the same roles and duties for each episode every week allows these shows to be produced at an industrial pace. Predictability is also what makes these shows addictive to viewers.  Like a drag from a cigarette, the jolt from a line or way they smile at a Kramer entrance, audiences know what they're getting into each week when they tune in. These shows make money by continuing to fulfill audience expectations, which means the characters don't grow or change. Network television has never been about innovation or new ideas, it’s about providing the audience an escape from reality and continuing the illusion of this escape week in and week out no matter what.  From The Simpsons never aging to how little time the characters on FRIENDS spent at their jobs, there is nothing which more quintessentially defines scripted network television than repeating themselves and denying objective reality. Remakes and revivals are just the newest, most sophisticated way networks have found to allow audiences to repress their fears and insecurities, watch and escape. 

Remakes function as a time machine, allowing television to rewrite its own cultural history and be more inclusive. Consider Netflix’s ONE DAY AT A TIME, which took the progressive multi-camera sitcom from the 1970s about a white single mother and re-imagined it with latino characters in contemporary America.  By creating space for a minority family in this historically white narrative, ONE DAY AT A TIME became a vehicle for inclusion.  Freeform is shooting to do the same thing with its PARTY OF FIVE remake.  In the 90s version of the series, the Salingers, played by Matthew Fox, Neve Campbell, Scott Wolf and Lacy Charbert,  struggled to cope with life and the responsibility of running a restaurant after their parents’ untimely death.  In the 2018 version, created by the series’ original Creators Chris Keyser and Amy Lippman, the Buendias family will struggle to adjust to life after their parents are suddenly deported. Including minority or marginalized groups in remakes of traditionally white series allows the TV industry to demonstrate its progressiveness by acknowledging, and to the extent that they are able, correcting past exclusions.    

Revivals are an even more powerful tool for denying objective reality because they allow us to deny death, the most fundamental tenant of our lives besides taxes. We invite the characters of a television series into our most intimate of places.  We watch TV in our living rooms, surrounded by loved ones.  We watch it in bed as we drift to sleep.  If we’re really hooked on a show, we may even take it into the bathroom with us like a book we just can’t put down. Because of where we consume it and the duration of time we spend with the characters on it, we form strong connections with the characters of television series, relationships which end abruptly and, until recently, permanently upon the series’ cancellation.  The end of this relationship is why it’s so hard for some people to accept the cancellation of their favorite show: there’s legitimate grieving which must be done because we won’t be seeing these people we love every week anymore.  They are, in effect, dead to us.  Revivals allow the characters with whom we had relationships that were terminated to be figuratively resurrected, or in the case of Dan Conner on ROSEANNE, literally brought back from the dead. By denying death itself revivals create the ultimate source of escapist entertainment. Nobody’s bringing back my dead grandmother or my friend Brandt, but on network TV, I might get to see my old buddies again, even the ones I thought were long gone, like Murphy Brown. 

Anyone criticizing remakes and revivals is wasting their energy and demonstrating their ignorance about the television industry. There’s no point in hating these shows because they’re here to stay, but formulaic shows have always been a staple of network TV.  As Fred Allen succinctly put it back in the 1950s, “imitation is the sincerest form of television.”  If you find yourself overwhelmed with feelings of revulsion for these remakes and revivals, that's okay.  It doesn't mean network television has changed, it just means your tastes have outgrown network television. The good news is there are still a few hundred other shows you can watch on cable or streaming to satisfy your need for original content.