Age of the Geek

When to reboot
     The new television season is starting to ramp up, and while I'll probably get to a more comprehensive review of this year's offerings, there are a couple in particular that have caught my attention. In the ongoing train wreck that has been 2016, the television industry decided to throw a bitter cherry on top by pillaging some of my favorite childhood properties for their fall line-up.
     We start with "Lethal Weapon," the gold standard of buddy-cop movies. Now it's a primetime series on Fox.
     Don't expect to see Mel Gibson here though. Instead his character is now played by Clayne Crawford, who either couldn't be or wasn't asked to drop his southern accent for the role. He also puts far too much product in his hair for someone we're expected to believe is suicidal.
     Likewise, replacing Danny Glover as the perpetually "too old for this" straight man, we have Damon Waynes, who plays the character as a wisecracking cop that dresses like he just came from a 1920's jazz club.
     Outside of vaguely similar back stories for the main characters, there is very little about the show that can be traced back to the movie. Which is to be expected because outside Mel Gibson and Danny Glover's performances there really isn't much about "Lethal Weapon" that distinguishes it from any other buddy cop drama.
     The strongest connection this TV show has to the source material seems to be the font for the logo.
     But hey, at least it has that much, which brings us to "MacGyver."
     Where "Lethal Weapon" is a typical 2016 cop show that half-heartedly uses the Lethal Weapon name, CBS's new "MacGyver" is a 2016 spy show that really wants to be like the original, but fails spectacularly.
     Now I don't want to sound like a cranky old man, but who thought that "The Adventures of Baby MacGyver" was a good idea? Nothing against Lucas Till, but he is a decade younger than Richard Dean Anderson was when the original show aired in 1985.
     In spite of this, our new MacGyver is still a secret agent that uses household items to improvise a variety of tools and traps. Except now he has large supporting cast that includes, a skilled soldier, a computer genius, and a wacky roommate that doesn't know his friend spends his free time saving the world.
     Yes, MacGyver can still unlock handcuffs with a paperclip and create an electromagnet out of stripped wiring. However these feats lose their sense of astonishment when one of his teammates can hack into every camera on the west coast to track a terrorist.
     And even when MacGyver's trademark resourcefulness does come into play, it's not done well. In the pilot episode they need to flush out a terrorist in a hotel and we get to watch MacGyver's team stand in awe as he uses cleaning supplies and aluminum foil to create a bucket of smoke to set off the fire alarm.
     As opposed to simply pulling the fire alarm.
     I'm not saying that the original series didn't have some silly situations or use some questionable science, but even watching the original pilot this week I never felt like it was actively insulting my intelligence.
     There is hope at the end of the tunnel though. Sometimes TV gets it right, which brings us to "The Exorcist."
     The 1973 movie is one of the all-time greats and the new television show, judging from the pilot episode, appears to be on track to being worthy of the franchise. Unlike "Lethal Weapon" and "MacGyver," "The Exorcist" television show isn't a remake, but a sequel set in the same universe as the movie. Story connections to the original are barely present, but the atmosphere is hauntingly familiar, pun intended. Where "Lethal Weapon" feels like a generic police procedural wearing the skin of the classic movie and "MacGyver" feels like a generic spy show with Mac uncomfortably crammed in, "The Exorcist" feels like "The Exorcist."
     In spite of appearances to the contrary, I'm by no means against the idea of digging up old franchises and introducing them to a new audience. But if it's going to be done, it should be done the right way. Too often an attempt to modernize a classic story results in losing the traits that made it a classic in the first place. At that point, you may as well just try your hand at a new property.
 
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and watches bad television so you don't have to.