Reboot is a satire about making a television series in the 2020s, an era in which we're seeing a changing of the guard and a shift towards more inclusive, socially conscious television writing. The creator, Steven Levitan (Modern Family), explores this in a very literal way in scenes in the writers' room for Step Right Up. Paul Reiser, who plays the sitcom's original creator, brings in 3 old Jewish comedy writers and Bloom brings in three young writers - one black woman, one Latina and one queer white man. Predictably, they can't agree on anything and the characters fall into lazy cliches with the old Jewish men quibbling over what to have for lunch and the young "woke" writers pitching terribly unfunny, right-on jokes about the Bechdel test.
One of Reboot's failings is that its own writers' room more closely resembles one from the early 2000s than today. If it'd had a more diverse writing team, the show probably wouldn't have fallen into the very cliches it's attempting to satirise.
Unfortunately, the writers' room storyline is the driving narrative and its weakness undermines the potential of the wider premise. The story about the cast of Step Right Up reuniting 20 years after the show's been cancelled, because one of the actors pulled out to pursue a film career, has some genuinely funny moments and strong performances by Keegan Michael Key and Judy Greer. I can see possibilities for interesting relationships to develop there, but Reboot suffers from being too preoccupied with the inside showbiz gags to find the true humour in its characters.
It has a painfully obvious objective: to prove intergenerational humour exists and that old comedy writers still have value within the changing comedy landscape. But comedies about comedy are notoriously difficult to pull off and Reboot hasn't done it well. If they ditched the didactic writers' room storyline, they could have a decent show on their hands. Unfortunately, though, they've already lost Greg and unless they move past the hackneyed bits about offensive jokes and woke snowflakes, I'm probably not too far behind him.
HE SAW
As the amount of film and televisual content available to us increases exponentially, there are only two real scenarios: make the same old shows conforming to the same old conventions or start making new stuff that challenges the old. Reboot wants us to believe it's the latter, but really it's the former pretending to be the latter for marketing purposes.
Through the first two episodes, I could feel the show's sense of originality straining, but midway through episode three, the load became too great and it collapsed under the weight of its creator's presumed belief that tired jokes and stereotypes are cool and funny if you make the audience think you're subverting them.
Unusually, for a show that has multiple failings, it's possible, and even surprisingly easy, to pinpoint the exact moment Reboot dies a miserable death. The writers of the sitcom at the show's centre are arguing about whether people falling over is funny. The old Jewish writers on one side of the table say yes and the young woke writers on the other side say no. Eventually, unable to work with the Jewish stereotypes, the leader of the woke stereotypes storms out and … falls over!
The problem is not so much that it's predictable and not at all funny, but that we're expected to believe everyone in the room finds it funny. It becomes a uniting moment for the writers, whose opinions about comedy were previously irreconcilable. Suddenly, one of the young writers, who previously was hyper-aware of inclusivity and not offending anyone, is referring to one of the Jewish writers as a "whore". Everybody is suddenly having a good time and getting on together. The writer who was walking out returns to the table because, we presume, she has, after years of comedy writing, finally come to understand the genius of the pratfall.
The scene is presumably representative of the worldview of the show's creator, who was required to find a situation that he believed people of all stripes would find funny. At the precise moment he thought we would be united in joy at someone else's misfortune, I realised that this show was not for me, and hopefully - for the future of televisual entertainment - not for anyone else either.
Reboot is streaming now on Disney+
