Heaven, Hell, and Reboots

March 30, 2017 by Ted Crawford

The 2016 television season came and went without getting much attention, overshadowed by the presidential election circus which sent all our friends and neighbors into painful body contortions and endless Facebook tirades. So I guess it was the appropriate time for FOX to launch a TV series based on the classic movie The Exorcist. This spooky rehash was one of the only shows I watched from start to finish last season. I mean, what could be better than a demon-possessed Geena Davis? Or her dirty-faced daughter floating around and talking in a man's voice for an entire episode? The series started out as a genuinely scary psychological chiller, then slowly descended into near self-parody before the 10 episode series wrapped up in December with the whole beleaguered Rance family back to normal again. Our two superstar priests, I'm guessing, will become a demon-wrangling team if there is a season two, putting the baddies on notice in a possession-of-the-week scenario. Get some popcorn.

The Exorcist: The ultimate good versus evil smackdown.

My other favorite last season was The Good Place, a quirky sitcom about the afterworld. The plot centers around Kristen Bell's character, Eleanor, arriving in heaven (which is like some kind of psychedelic amusement park) and trying to hide the fact that she doesn't deserve to be there, a funny premise with a deeper meaning that most people can probably relate to. Ted Danson plays the likable but scatterbrained angel in charge. There is also Janet, a database in human form who has access to all knowledge of the universe, or something like that. This is possibly the best sitcom since Arrested Development. There have been so many DUMB sitcoms in TV-land that it's a real joy when one comes along that doesn't insult your intelligence and make you feel like don't belong in this world. NBC has once again postponed their much-deserved eternal damnation with this one.

Supergirl, which I thought was pretty good in its first season on CBS, has taken to the skies and flown over to the CW. I still haven't summoned the courage to watch a season 2 episode. Maybe I'm thinking it will not be as good on the new network because superhero shows on CW tend to be very dry and humorless. (Not including the classic Smallville, or course.) These super-boring programs lull me into a deep sleep because the characters usually have the personality of a frying pan. Just take any daytime soap opera, put the cast in tights, and that's the basic recipe for a superhero show on CW.

Yes, there are plenty of superheroes on TV these days. In general, rebooting seems to be the modus operandi of TV networks for the last 10 years or so. Last season was no exception. In addition to The Exorcist, there was Emerald City, a gothy retelling of The Wizard of Oz; MacGyver, an updated version of the brainy secret agent guy; Riverdale, based on the Archie comic book series, and a Bauer-less 24 spinoff called 24: Legacy. Any old TV show, movie, book, comic, or fairy tale you can think of, it seems, will be rebooted as a television show at some point. Why is the happening, you ask? Are writers and producers running out of ideas? I used to think this, but now I'm starting to see the big picture. Reboots are big business. You only have to look at the movie box office returns to see that people love old familiar stories. The same way the ancient Greeks told stories that were passed down to younger generations as myths, people today love to revisit their stories from the past. They find comfort in the familiarity of these tales which help them to put there lives into some kind of context with history. In other words, TV and movie reboots are modern day myths. You read it here first.