Author: Hank Stuever / Source: Washington Post
Does the unseen hand that guides the universe also keep a firm grip on the remote control?
How else to explain “Murphy Brown’s” boisterous and welcome return to TV on the very same day a woman is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee and recount how an ultraconservative Supreme Court nominee assaulted her more than three decades ago?
No one could have possibly planned this convergence of pop culture, feminism and the fate of the judicial branch, yet here we are, wandering through a hall of news clips, sitcom memories and funhouse mirrors. What year is this? What planet is this?I don’t know anymore, but what I can tell you is that Murphy’s comeback is as reassuring and entertaining as it is timely. The series, which returns Thursday to CBS with great (and, yes, deserved) anticipation, ably harnesses the feminist anger and modern media frustrations of both its lead character and its creator, Diane English, resulting in a sitcom that’s about as blunt and politically fired up as anything we’ve seen since . . . well, since “Murphy Brown” ended its initial 10-season run in 1998.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. Two other network reboots in the past year came on almost as strong and topically on-the-nose: NBC’s “Will & Grace” arose from the dead to express its dismay at the state of the world since President Trump’s 2016 election, and, like “Murphy Brown,” endeavored to personalize the events of the past year or two for gay man Will and his BFF Grace, who seethe together in snarky disgust from their seemingly elitist perch in Manhattan.
Thriving off its resistance energy, “Will & Grace” almost seamlessly rediscovered its essential humor, building up from its politics rather than getting mired in them.Contrast that to ABC’s “Roseanne” debacle, an admirable concept (portraying an old friend in the Midwest who, in the years since we last saw her, became an ambivalent Trump supporter), but which lacked the courage of its convictions and was sandbagged by bizarrely racist tweets from its unpredictable star. We’re left now with a different show (“The Conners”) premiering next month, in which her family — vis-a-vis the show’s writers — may or may not ever speak of her (or American politics) again.
[‘Murphy Brown’ once sparked a feud with Dan Quayle. Now the reboot is courting one with Trump.]
Compared with “Roseanne,” “Murphy” succeeds simply by being more of what it originally was: fast, sharp and unwaveringly pointed. Candice Bergen plays a noticeably older though no less feisty Murphy — retired and still living in her Washington townhouse (the work there is now complete, R.I.P. Eldin) and so tormented by current politics that she agrees to come back to television, this time as the host of a new cable news show called “Murphy in the Morning” (a la MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”).
“There is such insanity out there that I became a nut job yelling at the TV,” Murphy says. “I’d rather be on TV, yelling out.”
Murphy’s son, Avery…
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