The Roseanne revival success (before all hell broke loose on Roseanne Barr’s Twitter account), naturally, led to a frenzy of television executives trying to figure out how to recapture lighting in a bottle with other series. This led to multiple announcements about other revivals and reboots, including Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing and the 1990s-era Mad About You, for which co-stars Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt quickly hopped aboard. However, it appears that Paul and Jamie Buchman probably won’t return to the airwaves after all?
While promoting an impending stand-up routine in Clearwater (the Florida city with the dubious reputation of being a Scientology hotspot), Reiser got real with the Tampa Bay Times while sounding slightly frustrated over business-related hangups. He seems resigned to the inevitability that the revival won’t happen:
“It’s kind of stuck in the business end of it now. Sony is trying to figure out from their end; that’s where I just walk away and go, call me when you figure it out. I don’t know what happens at that level. They make their deals with whoever they make their deals with. So we’ll see if it happens. It may not happen. It likely won’t happen. My guess is it won’t happen.”
This “likely” outcome would probably be for the best. The show, while beloved to many, was never a ratings smash. In addition, it might be logistically difficult to restore the characters to a realistic timeline after the show’s finale revealed that Paul and Jamie separated and then conveniently decided they hadn’t stopped loving each other, possibly so that writers could avoid angering loyal viewers of the show’s seven-season run. Surely it’s possible to reverse-engineer some workaround and fine-tune the timeline, but it might be a stretch.
In addition, the revival announcement indicated that Buchmans’ daughter, Mabel, would factor into the updated story as a teenager, and the show would “follow Paul and Jamie in the wake of their 17-year-old daughter Mabel’s college acceptance.” Obviously, Janeane Garofalo wouldn’t be able to return as a teen character, and without her, what’s the point of a revival?
(Via Tampa Bay Times)
