Give me a break. The reboot of Murphy Brown has kept all the worse of the original and dumped all the best. I have tried to watch it all the way through an episode but about ten minutes in I’m so tired of being hit over the head with the obvious that I want to scream. Talk about heavy handed. Whatever happened to the joy of subtlety?
Murphy Brown seems intent on making fun of everything happening in DC but has forgotten how to make it funny. The show is too busy indulging in self-congratulations on how “hip” and “in the know” it is, it forgets it needs both a plot and some likeable characters. Instead, we get characters who seem to come to us after being frozen in time and thawed out for the show. They haven’t been allowed to grow old or wise or change. Something that is silly and funny for a young person comes across as pathetic in characters of a certain age. And this whole cast is of a certain age.
Miles is still just running around screaming that his career is going to end because of Murphy. And the other three characters just seem to be around to set up Murphy for the next snide remark about the current DC situation. I cringe when trying to watch this sad excuse for a sitcom if only because I had such high hopes for it.
In case the producers of this show didn’t notice, the reason a reboot like Will and Grace is successful is because the characters, while remaining true to their original selves, have been allowed to grow and mature. Murphy’s only change is that her son is now grown up. And, quite honestly, the dialog between Murphy and her son is some of the most cringe-worthy in the whole show – as long as you discount the embarrassment of Murphy Brown trying to sneak into a press conference in the White House.
Back in the day, Lucille Ball tried for a comeback when she was well into her sixties as that same goofy character she’d played for so many years. But the audience didn’t take to the sight of an old lady flailing around on a ladder or acting so stupid. The sitcom failed spectacularly.
The same fate should befall this reboot before it destroys all memory of how good the original was.