After their popular video supporting Hillary Clinton launched earlier this month, the stars and creators of Will & Grace are reportedly in talks with NBC to bring the show back to primetime. An updated version of the big gay sitcom would follow a slew of 90s sitcom revivals like Girl Meets World, the reboot of Boy Meets World, and Fuller House, a renovation to the original Full House that Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen built.
Reboots are all the rage, so this was bound to happen, but can we name a few shows out of bounds to the zombie TV show plague that has taken over Hollywood? Here’s a start.
Home Improvement
We don’t need Tim Taylor and his caveman yelps back on television. You might not know this, but Tim Allen has been doing the same shtick on CBS’s Last Man Standing for the past five seasons. It’s like the 90s never ended.
Veronica’s Closet
Thanks to Scream Queens and Flaked, at age 65 Kirstie Alley is still gainfully employed (and looking amazing) so there’s no need to worry about her pension. Also Victoria’s Secret, the lingerie company that is the inspiration for Veronica’s romantic empire, is in financial trouble. The honeymoon is over, and we don’t need to stick around for the divorce.
Caroline in the City
Last we saw Caroline (Lea Thompson), she was trying to decide whether to marry Randy (Anthony Tyler Quinn) or her creative partner Richard (Malcolm Gets), who she was in a relationship with despite the fact that he was totally gay. But do we think Caroline is still in the city? Now that she’s pushing 50 she probably moved upstate and started an organic dairy farm. No one wants to see Caroline in the Country. No one.
Ellen
We already have a show called Ellen and Ms DeGeneres is doing just fine on that one, thank you very much. Also any excuse to keep co-star Jeremy Piven from returning to television is a good one.
Blossom
The hats. Oh god, don’t make me resee the hats.
The Drew Carey Show
We all know that Cleveland Rocks, I don’t think that we need to be reminded ever again. However if Drew’s nemesis, evil drag queen trapped in a woman’s body Mimi (Kathy Kinney), were to get her own show I’d be cool with that.
Madman of the People
You may not remember this Must See TV one-season wonder, but you probably didn’t remember Cupid, and that got a reboot. Here Dabney Coleman plays a newspaper columnist whose young daughter is brought in to make his column hip again. This is essentially new sitcom The Great Indoors, and it wasn’t so great either.
The Single Guy
Situated for two seasons between Friends and Seinfeld, this is one of the highest rated shows ever to get canceled. That doesn’t mean NBC should bring it back. People only watched this because it was between Friends and Seinfeld.
Just Shoot Me
I can’t think of anything more 90s than David Spade in a mock turtleneck cardigan sniping at his coworkers while leaning on his desk at a magazine. I mean, are any of these things still around? Well, I guess coworker sniping will never end.
All of them ...
I hate to sound like a troll in the comments section of every listicle ever published, but can we just stop rebooting 90s shows? The reason why people want Will & Grace or any of these shows back is because they were era-defining comedies. A reboot of a 90s comedy is not going to define the late 2010s. Though you wouldn’t think so with Netflix, Amazon, cable TV, web videos and platforms not even invented yet, there is a limited amount of television production resources. To keep spending them on rehabbing the shows that defined other eras is just keeping this era from having its own defining hits or keeping us from fully appreciating the ones that we already have. So let’s allow the Friends, Seinfeld, Martin, Roseanne and all the women of Living Single continue on with their semi-retirement. Thanks to Netflix, Amazon and Hulu we can go and revisit the past anytime we want. We don’t need it to keep rearing its ugly head in the present, no matter how funny it might be.
