Anyone who follows the entertainment industry, especially in recent years, will notice one thing. Hollywood loves making the old new again. It seems like every day, there’s a new reboot of an old TV series, a new imagining of a film franchise, spin-offs focused on side characters, etc. While some are just shameless cash grabs, they are successful with audiences. As long as viewers keep showing interest in nostalgia, studios will keep pumping out remakes and revivals.
After so many reboots, it makes sense that someone would have the idea to parody the reboot process itself. That brings us to Hulu’s new comedy, fittingly titled Reboot. Keegan-Michael Key, Johnny Knoxville, Judy Greer, and Calum Worthy portray the cast members of an early 2000s-era sitcom titled Step Right Up. When a new writer wants to bring their show back, the cast must reunite and work through their differences to create the new show.
Of course, the world of entertainment has changed significantly in the last two decades. Streaming was nonexistent back then, and Netflix still sent out DVDs in the mail. Anyone remember that? Reboot effectively satirizes the cultural clash that comes out of balancing old-style sitcom humor with newer, modern comedic ideals.
Old vs. New Writing
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When you reboot a series that aired 20 years ago, modernizing the humor is often one of the biggest challenges. Reboot portrays this through the dynamic between original creator Gordon Gelman (Paul Reiser) and his daughter, new co-showrunner Hannah Korman (Rachel Bloom). The two have barely spoken in years and have very different ideas about what passes for funny in 2022.
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Gordon’s ideas are traditionally “sitcommy” with pratfalls and popcorn stuffed in a dryer, just to name a few. Hannah wants to take the old format and tell a story with it, focusing on character development and extracting humor from situations. The writers hired by Hannah are young, diverse, and open to the show exploring social issues. In response, Gordon brings back the original writers, who are old, vulgar, and pitch way over-the-top ideas, such as characters being hypnotized whenever a bell rings. As you can imagine, this leads to numerous clashes between the old and new writers about what is funny (though both eventually agree that Hannah unexpectedly tripping over a box on the ground is actually funny).
Many older sitcoms featured jokes that definitely wouldn’t fly in 2022. A key goal with rebooting is how to effectively keep what made the original work while not relying on outdated or offensive material. Gordon’s team wants to essentially make the same show as before, while Hannah’s wants to go for the modern comedy-drama route. Neither one of these approaches are necessarily right or wrong.
If a reboot doesn’t change anything, it can risk feeling dated and out-of-touch. However, if too much is modernized, it might feel like an entirely different show. The challenge lies in balancing these two extremes to create a worthy successor to the original property.
The Stars’ Post-Sitcom Careers
After the end of the fictional Step Right Up, none of the leading stars saw any particular success. Lead star Reed Sterling (Key) failed in his pursuit of theater and film, while Clay Barber (Knoxville) found himself a drug-addicted alcoholic with repeated arrests. Bree Marie Jensen (Greer) left acting entirely to marry an Eastern European duke, and child star Zack Jackson (Worthy) pivoted to low-budget, shallow direct-to-DVD teen movies.
Each of their paths has some inspiration from the real world. Think about it, how many sitcom actors become big-name stars anymore? It’s less and less common. Stories of actors who leave their shows to pursue a film career are common, and there are far more tales of failure than success. Additionally, Knoxville’s Clay Barber evokes Charlie Sheen vibes with his arrests and substance abuse problems. And Greer’s Bree Marie Jensen may have been inspired by Meghan Markle to some degree, as she gave up acting to marry European royalty. Unsurprisingly, none found post-sitcom success, and all four are available at a moment’s notice to return to the reboot.
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When you’ve been typecast as one sitcom character for a long time, breaking out of that box and finding other successes can be exceedingly difficult. Reboot’s cast members demonstrate this, with each cast member representing some extreme failure after a hit role.
Reboot Gets Meta
One way that Reboot succeeds is with its highly effective use of meta-humor. The best place to see this is with the show’s streaming home itself. The actual series Reboot airs on Hulu, and the fictional revival of Step Right Up is also created for Hulu. The inexperienced Hulu employee Elaine Kim (Krista Marie Yu) is tasked with supervising the production of Step Right Up. Though she admits she is new to comedy and doesn’t really get what is funny, she is named the vice president of Hulu’s comedy division. This may be a tongue-in-cheek jab at the quality of some reboots. Some executives have no idea of what happens on set, nor do they care about the quality. As long as audiences recognize that show from their childhood, they’ll tune in regardless.
Eagle-eyed viewers will also notice that familiarity in the set used for Step Right Up. It is the same set from the Tim Allen sitcom Last Man Standing, with some minor modifications. Moreover, Krista Marie Yu was a cast member of Last Man Standing as exchange student Jen. So here, Yu plays an executive overseeing a reboot of a sitcom that uses a set from a different sitcom she was on as a different character.
Yu admitted that using the set from here earlier sitcom was very nostalgic and super meta at the same time. There are layers of meta-references packed in this show. Last Man Standing was also technically a reboot later in its run, as ABC axed it and Fox picked it up.
That’s just one instance of the incredible meta-humor in this effective send-up of Hollywood’s reboot craze. Who knows, maybe 20 years from now, Reboot will receive its own reboot. The meta-humor is beginning to write itself.
