Fox News Host Laura Ingraham Doubts ‘All In The Family’ & ‘Jeffersons’ Recreations Will Work

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Putting politics aside, I don’t think it will work because the original casts were so iconic. Anyone other than Carroll O’Connor as Archie Bunker won’t work. Sherman Hemsley embodied George Jefferson. Tell me who is going to do better than Marla Gibbs as Florence.

There’s simply no need to remake these shows.
 
I’ve seldom if ever seen a decent remake of a TV show (and I’ll include Hawaii Five O, One Day at a Time, and other fairly recent shows which have both excellent actors and decent reviews). If it was a bad show, the new one will be worse. If it was a good show, the new one will manage somehow to take the best elements of the original show and do a violent cultural ‘wrench’ such that even if it still does an adequate job, it looks forced, fake, and phony. And if it was a ‘meh’ show, it will somehow become an ‘edgy’ one.

And don’t start me on animated ‘remakes’. Seriously, Scooby-Don’t. And as for Looney Toons, no matter how they slice any of the huge crop of ‘remakes’ of said classics, they’re still baloney.

My 89-year-old mother often asks “What happened to the TV from the 50s and 60s, when I could turn on the set between 8 and 10 p.m. any night of the week and find --on three channels, mind you-- all sorts of excellent programs?” (I told her I could still sing the theme song of My Mother the Car and Gilligans Island, so dreck has always been with us, although even the dreck had enough low comedy to be amusing) but I see her point. We have nothing of the order of Carol Burnett today, still less of All in the Family. . .which is why, apparently, since most people working in the field of entertainment today wouldn’t know an original thought if said could find its way into what passes for the mind and started tapdancing to Bruno Mars, we have to have another ‘remake’.

Personally I don’t know why instead of ‘remakes’ they don’t do mashups. Set all in the family in 1950 and have Mike sent to Korea to join the MASH unit.
Take the concept for Bonanza and have the Cartwrights compete for lumber rights with the characters from Here Come the Brides.

Or change some shows into musicals. Can’t you just envision: Cannon: The musical. It’s not over until the fat guy sings?

Come on people make an effort.
 
It wasn’t a TV show, but regarding your idea to make Cannon: The Musical (In Color!) did you see some kids made an Alien musical for their school? It was good enough that Sigourney Weaver sent them a message on how cool it was.
 
I remember “My Mother the Car!” But not the theme song.

Now, “Mr. Ed.” That had a song to remember. ☺️

The problem with remakes is you will undoubtedly compare them. And the remake is never better. In an effort to update, they lose the true personality of the original characters. You are correct, there can never be another Archie Bunker, or Edith! The only people that will like remakes are people that never saw the original show.
 
Everybody knows in a second life we all come back sooner or later, as anything from a pussycat to a man eating alligator. Well you all might think my story is more fiction than it’s fact, but believe it or not my mother dear decided she’d come back. . as a car. . .she’s my very own GUIDING STAR, a 1928 Porter, that’s my mother dear, she helps me through everything I do and I’m so glad she’s here. . my mother the car. . my mother the car
 
Exactly. Why not just make a contemporary comedy about similar characters if one has to be so pedestrian. Surely a comedy about the generation gap between conservative elders and liberal youngsters can be done without invoking the Bunkers. Or, considering modern society, have the fun of the liberal grannies and their conservative offspring. “Oh grandma, I really don’t want to see the slides of you dancing nekkid at Woodstock, it might interfere with my running for PTA president”.
 
Sturgeon’s Law: 90 percent of anything is junk. TV remake law: 100 percent of them are junk.
 
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You know, I’ve been thinking, I have more original ideas for shows, it appears, than the entire population of successful screenwriters in the last couple of decades. I actually enjoyed going out to LA for Jeopardy last year, too. . . Hmmm, maybe I should pitch a few of these. Imagine living in a climate where I didn’t have to wear a parka 8 months of the year. . .
 
You should! Write one with a Catholic family where they actually get the Catholic parts correct!
 
and no one can talk to a horse of course, that is of course unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed. Go right to the source and ask the horse, he’ll give you the answer that you endorse, he’s always on a steady course, talk to Mr. Ed! People yackity yack a streak and waste your time each day, but Mr. Ed will never speak. . .unless he has something to say! A horse is a horse of course of course and this one will talk till his voice is hoarse, you’ve never heard of a talking horse? Well listen to this!! I. . .am Mr Ed!
 
I’m tempted! I may get them all rigid but that will be a nice change.
 
I can just see it… A remake of Leave it to Beaver. The mom has a job. Wally is gay, The Beaver is a Republican, and Ward is out of work and takes over the cooking and cleaning. Casting anyone?
 
You know they did do not a remake but an update from the 80s, “Still the Beaver”. . .Beaver was a divorced dad. . .
 
stpurl said:
and no one can talk to a horse of course, that is of course unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed. Go right to the source and ask the horse, he’ll give you the answer that you endorse, he’s always on a steady course, talk to Mr. Ed! People yackity yack a streak and waste your time each day, but Mr. Ed will never speak. . .unless he has something to say! A horse is a horse of course of course and this one will talk till his voice is hoarse, you’ve never heard of a talking horse? Well listen to this!! I. . .am Mr Ed!
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For the young ones…

 
Fun fact: Alan Young, who played WIlbur, was also the voice in the 1980s of Farmer Smurf and Disney’s Scrooge McDuck.
 
Further fun fact: In the current reanimation of Ducktales, Scrooge McDuck is voiced by David Tennant, also famous in Dr Who as the Tenth Doctor.
 
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