Anyone following the entertainment industry, especially in recent years, will notice one thing. Hollywood loves to make the old new again. It seems like every day there is a new reboot of an old TV series, a reimagining of a movie franchise, spin-offs targeting side characters, etc. While some are just blatant money grabs, they are successful with audiences. As long as viewers continue to take an interest in nostalgia, studios will continue to release remakes and revivals.
After so many reboots, it makes sense that someone would have the idea to parody the reboot process itself. Which brings us to Hulu’s new comedy, aptly titled Restart. Keegan-Michael Key, Johnny Knoxville, Judy Greer and Calum Worthy portray the cast members of an early 2000s sitcom titled come on. When a new writer wants to bring back his show, the cast must reunite and resolve their differences to create the new show.
Of course, the world of entertainment has changed significantly over the past two decades. Streaming didn’t exist back then, and Netflix still mailed DVDs. Does anyone remember that? Restart effectively denounces the cultural clash that comes from balancing old-fashioned sitcom humor with newer, modern comedic ideals.
Old vs New Writing
When you reboot a series that aired 20 years ago, modernizing the humor is often one of the biggest challenges. Restart portrays this through the dynamics 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.
Gordon’s ideas are traditionally “sitcommy” with pratfalls and popcorn stuffed into a dryer, to name a few. Hannah wants to take the old format and tell a story with it, with an emphasis 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, which are old, vulgar and over-the-top ideas, such as characters being hypnotized when a bell rings. As you can imagine, this leads to numerous clashes between the old and new writers over what’s funny (although both eventually agree that Hannah unexpectedly stumbles across a box on the floor is actually funny).
Many older sitcoms feature jokes that definitely wouldn’t fly in 2022. An important goal with rebooting is how to effectively preserve what the original work did without relying on outdated or offensive material. Gordon’s team essentially wants to make the same show as before, while Hannah’s wants to go the modern comedy-drama route. Neither approach is necessarily right or wrong.
If a reboot doesn’t change anything, it could run the risk of being dated and out-of-touch. However, if modernized too much, it might feel like a completely different show. The challenge lies in balancing these two extremes to create a worthy successor to the original possession.
The Stars’ Post-Sitcom Careers
After the end of the fictional come on, none of the leading stars saw any success. Leading actor Reed Sterling (Key) failed in his quest for theater and film, while Clay Barber (Knoxville) became a drug-addicted alcoholic who was repeatedly arrested. Bree Marie Jensen (Greer) abandoned acting entirely to marry an Eastern European duke, and child star Zack Jackson (Worthy) turned to low-budget, shallow direct-to-DVD teen movies.
Each of their trails has some real-world inspiration. Think about it, how many more sitcom actors are going to be big stars? It is becoming less and less common. Stories of actors leaving their shows to pursue film careers are common, and there are far more stories of failure than success. Plus, Knoxville’s Clay Barber evokes Charlie Sheen vibes with his arrests and substance abuse issues. And Greer’s Bree Marie Jensen may have been inspired to some extent by Meghan Markle, when she quit acting to marry European royalty. Unsurprisingly, none found post-sitcom success, and all four are available in the blink of an eye to return to the reboot.
If you’ve been typecast as a sitcom character for a long time, it can be extremely difficult to break out of that box and find other successes. RestartThe cast members demonstrate this, with each cast member representing an extreme failure after a hit roll.
a way that Restart succeeds is with his very effective use of meta humor. The best place to see this is with the show’s streaming home itself. The actual series Restart aired on Hulu, and the fictional revival of come on is also made for Hulu. Inexperienced Hulu employee Elaine Kim (Krista Marie Yu) is tasked with overseeing the production of come on. Although she admits she’s new to comedy and doesn’t really understand what’s funny, she is named vice president of Hulu’s comedy division. This may be a nod to the quality of some reboots. Some executives have no idea what’s going on on set and don’t care about the quality. As long as audiences recognize that show from their childhood, they tune in anyway.
Eagle-eyed viewers will also notice that familiarity in the set used for come on. It is same set from Tim Allen’s sitcom Last Man Standing, with some minor changes. In addition, Krista Marie Yu was a cast member of Last Man Standing as an exchange student Jen. So here Yu plays an executive who oversees a sitcom reboot that uses a set from another sitcom that she was on as a different character.
Yu admitted that using the set from this earlier sitcom was very nostalgic and super-meta at the same time. There are layers of meta references packed into this show. Last Man Standing was also technically a reboot later in its run, when ABC shut it down and Fox picked it up.
That’s just one example of the incredible meta humor in this effective broadcast of Hollywood’s reboot craze. Who knows, maybe in 20 years, Restart gets its own reboot. The meta humor is starting to write itself.