The Daily Stream: Reboot Is A Witty And Humane Lampoon Of The TV Industry
(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)
The Series: "Reboot" (2022)
Where You Can Stream It: Hulu
The Pitch: Hannah Korman (Rachel Bloom), a writer who's hot off penning her breakout indie movie and will explain the film's hilariously NSFW title to anyone who will listen, approaches Hulu with her pitch for reviving the hit 2000s sitcom "Step Right Up." Hannah's goal is to make the multi-camera comedy show edgier and more mature while bringing back the original cast, all of whom have gone their separate ways over the past 15 years. Their ranks include Reed Sterling (Keegan-Michael Key), who moved to New York to pursue a mostly-failed career in theater and film; Bree Marie Jensen (Judy Greer), who used to date Reed before leaving her acting career to marry the duke of an obscure Nordic country (whom she's now divorcing); Clay Barber (Johnny Knoxville), who's trying to stay sober after years of heavy drinking, drug use, and public scandals; and Zack Jackson (Calum Worthy), a former child actor star who's since starred in a string of high-concept direct-to-video movies.
Despite their history, the "Step Right Up" cast is ready to leave their days of dysfunction behind them under Hannah's leadership — that is, until the series' original creator Gordon Gelman (Paul Reiser), who also just so happens to be Hannah's estranged father, is brought onboard to co-run the show.
Why it's essential viewing
"Reboot" comes from "Just Shoot Me!" creator and "Modern Family" co-creator Steven Levitan, who obviously knows a thing or two about the sordid behind-the-scenes reality of the TV industry. But rather than pulling their punches or drowning the show's humor in cynicism, Levitan and his writing staff strike a healthy balance between sentiment and satire. "Reboot" sets its sights on a bevy of well-deserving targets, from the companies that can't stop trying to swallow each other to the studios that feign at adopting inclusive hiring practices only to turn around and hand all the real power to the same pack of cishet white creatives. However, the cast and the relationships between their characters are what really keep the show's stabs at farce entertaining and fresh.
Keegan-Michael Key, Judy Greer, Johnny Knoxville, and Calum Worthy are all playing familiar archetypes in "Reboot," some of which are seemingly riffs on the actors in real-life (Knoxville and Worthy in particular). Thankfully, for all the hijinks that ensue once the "Step Right Up" cast reunites, the performers behind them portray their onscreen counterparts as real people both haunted by their past mistakes and desperately trying to improve themselves and their lives with them — or, in Zack's case, finally growing up while still holding onto his earnest nature. Similarly, the roles of a capable but insecure daughter and an oblivious father stumbling towards repairing their relationship fit Rachel Bloom and Paul Reiser like a glove, even when the show is guilty of sanding down the rougher edges of that plot thread.
Reboot: into the meta-verse
Being an adult sitcom about a group of people making an adult sitcom, "Reboot" doesn't hold back on the meta-humor. Characters frequently praise one another for making callbacks to earlier jokes and, of course, there's a whole running gag about the "Step Right Up" revival being produced by Disney via Hulu. "Reboot" rarely goes for Mickey Mouse's throat or anyone else's but the bits involving in-studio politics and HR policies mostly manage to avoid feeling too much like inside baseball. Likewise, the show is pretty deft when it comes to playing the notion of "Cancel Culture" for laughs, wisely making the stars and creatives from the original run of "Step Right Up" the butt of its jests as they struggle to navigate both the modern world and workplace.
Both onscreen and offscreen, "Reboot" recognizes just how much things have changed in merely the last 15 years alone and makes the challenge of retaining what was good about TV sitcoms in the past while keeping them evolving its central focus. This extends to not only its content ("Reboot," it ought to be noted, gradually reveals itself to be a pleasantly queer comedy show), but even the series' style — a blend of single-camera photography and technical flourishes, like split screens and cross-cutting, that makes its world feel grounded yet at the same time heightened. It is, in more ways than one, a sitcom about the difficulties but the necessity of learning from history in order to carve a new and improved path forward. And isn't that what any reboot worth its salt has to do?