Calling the upcoming show Perfect Strangers a reboot is done so by the thinnest of threads since the inspiration taken from the original show is about all that’s going to be used it would appear, which might make a lot of fans say ‘huh?’. Calling this new show with Robin Thede and London Hughes a reboot appears to be little more than a way to save the show from being called out for using a title that would be recognized by quite a few people since the gender and race-flipped show might appeal to a good number of people, but isn’t exactly what a lot of folks would count as a reboot. That particular argument could take a while though so it’s not really worth getting into at the moment. Instead, it’s enough to point out that the new show is going to be featuring both women as half-sisters that only find out about each other when they find out that they’ve each inherited a one-bedroom apartment that sits atop a yoga studio. As premises go it’s not the worst, apart from the idea that it should have probably been turned into a show that’s not a reboot but an old idea being given a new look.
I get it, a lot of people will say that this is the idea of a reboot, but the truth is that there’s so little to connect this show to the original that featured distant cousins Larry and Balki, who were played by Mark Linn-Baker and Bronson Pinchot respectively, that the title of reboot feels suspect. There’s nothing really bad to say about the upcoming show since it could be something that might attract a lot of positive attention, but labeling it as a reboot by the thinnest of threads is a little bit opportunistic since it was likely that calling it by the same name would get a lot of people excited to see what might happen with another chapter of a favorite show from back in the day.
It might even be a good idea to have Mark and Pinchot show up for a brief cameo here or there, but it’s also likely that it won’t happen since like it or not there are probably a few people that might have an issue with this, even it would be a better way to link the new show with the old idea, creating a passing of the torch moment that a lot of people can’t help but like. Even if folks had an issue with it the reminder that one show came first and essentially made it possible for the reboot would be a nice reminder that retconning fictional shows is kind of an annoyance that a lot of people have grown tired of over the years since things don’t always get better when we try to gloss over what’s no longer popular with what people might be attracted to today. But with that in mind, it’s time to look forward to the show and try to guess what’s going to happen and how things are going to proceed forward. It’s very likely that the old comedic routines that were used in the original show won’t be used again.
If they are it wouldn’t be much of a surprise, and it wouldn’t even be surprising if people call this ‘new’ and ‘innovative’. At this point, one can’t help but wonder when the audience is going to heave a collective sigh and ask when ‘new’ material is actually going to be something new that won’t find itself leaning on past shows and ideas to push off in order to get themselves going. Plenty of shows have come out in the last several decades that were new and didn’t need to rely on other shows to make it. But these days the originality is apparently being limited more and more as old ideas are being revamped and in some ways pushed to the side while new shows continue to use their names and ideas without crediting them for their start. A cameo with the original stars, if they’d be willing to come back for a short appearance, would go a long way to acceptance, but until that happens this might as well be a new show leeching the title from an old one.
It could be a fun show, there’s no doubt of this, and it could be worth the effort to try and watch it. But as silly as it sounds, the idea of calling this a reboot is worth saying something about since it would likely have a better time with a different title and no connection at all to the original show. That’s an opinion of course, but it’s one that several people might agree with, right before the lot of us sit down to see what the show is all about.
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