A hilarious, nostalgic, and innovative portrayal of a writing team trying to resurrect a 1990s sitcom while making it relevant and funny for a modern audience.

Reboot is a comedy about a group of actors, writers, and producers trying to revive a well-known and beloved sitcom a decade after the show’s end. The original actors return to reprise their roles, hoping to reinvigorate their careers and find some personal redemption. The new writer of the rebooted show battles resistance to her updated content and far more modern storyline, and the producer wants to keep using the old reliable comedic formulas for sitcom gold. All the players come together to create a brilliant and comic meta-perspective for the audience. They see the blurred lines between past and present, artistic integrity and commercial success, and the roles people play in their professional and personal lives. It’s a funny, sharp look at sitcom stereotypes in the 90s with a cast you can’t help but root for!

As someone who grew up on the sitcoms of the 1980s and ‘90s, I never considered how much they would influence my vision of family, marriage, parenting, and other aspects of adulthood. But the cultural conditioning is real! Reboot holds up a mirror to the nostalgia and absurdity of this genre while at the same time celebrating its good intentions. This show is a smart and funny reminder to me to avoid idealizing the past and appreciate the present, as bleak and different from a sitcom as it might seem at times.  

‍

Reboot is like a love letter to television comedy. There are so many clever winks to sitcom predecessors (note each episode’s title) that it’s hard to catch them all in one viewing. It’s also fun, and occasionally cringe-worthy, to see the actors and writers in Reboot realize that many of the past tropes featured regularly in our beloved sitcoms of old will not sit well with a modern audience. This is especially true for the women characters and the restricted roles they used to play compared to the complex roles they want to play—both on and off the set. Hollywood, and much of the world at large, seems unforgiving when it comes to women of a certain age, as evidenced skillfully by the complimentary packages of Spanx provided for the show’s “mother” and no one else. Thankfully, Reboot ultimately paints an optimistic picture that, while we can’t recapture the past, we can certainly build on it for a more authentic and interesting future.