Review: 'Murphy Brown' - 09/27/2018

While bringing back "Roseanne" or even the more recent series "Last Man Standing" made some level of sense to me, I've had real doubts about whether reviving "Murphy Brown" was a wise move. Oh, I understand the cast all think it's a great idea and certainly Diane English has a lot to say. But unlike some other comedies of that era, "Murphy Brown" has had a pretty low profile in recent years. It hasn't been available for streaming and until the recent rise of the diginets reruns haven't aired nationally in a decade or more. So would anyone under 40 even have any sense of the show or the characters?

The good news about last night's premiere episode of the revived "Murphy Brown" is that the cast still knows how to wring a laugh out of even the most flaccid of punchlines. But the show has so many problems that quite frankly could have easily been solved early in the production process.

The episode shows the impact Donald Trump's election had on the now unemployed Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen), Corky Sherwood (Faith Ford) and Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto). They all meet up at Phil's, now run by his sister Phyllis after Phil's death. They rant, make some jokes about hot flashes & pussy hats and before you know it, Murphy has accepted an offer to do a cable news morning show. And of course, they need a producer, so they track down Miles, who is hiding hermit-like in his Watergate apartment after a two-year stint producing "The View" sent him to a mental institution. And to complicate matters, Murphy's son Avery (Jake McDorman) is a journalist who just accepted an offer by the conservative Wolf Network. Who could have predicted it would be in the same timeslot as his mother? And he's living with her as well!

There is a core of a good show hidden inside the carnival funhouse of cliches and tired political tropes that make up episode one of the new "Murphy Brown." The idea of the Murphy hosting a "Morning Joe-type" cable news show has a lot of promise and that brief on-air segment where she's sparring with President Trump on Twitter is funny. But so much else is lazy and/or unbelievable.

They've brought back the running gag about Murphy's endless procession of assistants, but they decide to have her interview something the day before the premiere of her show. Which is just insanely unbelievable. Then they bring in Hillary Clinton to interview and have her pretend to be someone named "Hillary, with one L." She does a procession of hacky email jokes and other groan-worthy lines, so once you get past the surprise of seeing Hillary on the show, viewers are left with 90 seconds of uncomfortable moans.

Part of the problem with the new "Murphy Brown" is that the faux morning show just isn't believable. Which is a problem since audiences are much more sophisticated about how television works than they were a couple of decades before. It's hard to imagine any morning show crew that would have the "you went out on a date with Trump" conversation off the air. And the running gag about Corky's hormone levels that led her to open up her blouse and fan it on-air wasn't just devoid of jokes, it seemed like a bit recycled from some discarded "Benny Hill" sketch.

There are entirely too many "My, we're old/kids these days" jokes (or attempts thereof). And is there anything more predictable than making the show's social media person young and tech-savvy. You know what would have been funnier? Casting an older person with mad tech skills and using people's expectations of old people & technology as a basis for ongoing jokes. 

You can't judge any TV comedy by one episode and there is certainly a lot of talent on "Murphy Brown." But so much of the writing is predictable and wooden. America needs a good political comedy and Lord knows cable news could use a kick in the ass. But based on the premiere, "Murphy Brown" is more of the problem than the solution. It's fine to bring back well-loved characters and shows because they're comfortable. But it's death when you also make them predictable.