‘Reboot’ season one review: Steven Levitan’s confusing but heartful love letter to sitcoms

The eight-episode series casts the limelight on people working behind the camera, the logistics that plague the production of a show, and the exciting life on a TV set... but the writing fails to dig deeper

The disagreements in the writers’ rooms, rehearsals for a multi-camera show with laugh tracks, actors’ rivalries inside trailers, and the psyche behind rebooting an erstwhile favourite show are the bones of this eight-episode Hulu sitcom.

Written and directed by Steven Levitan of Modern Familyfame, the show feels like a personal love letter to the art of making sitcoms. The 14-time Emmy winner’s latest project, on the surface, feels like an exciting premise, but falls short when we dig deeper.

The show starts off with Hannah Korman (Rachel Bloom) proposing to a Hulu executive the reboot of an early 2000s sitcom — Step Right Up — featuring the original cast of the show. As a queer filmmaker who has won many accolades for her indie short film, her decision to work on a reboot comes as a surprise, but nonetheless is convincing enough for the executives at Hulu to green-light the show.

Reed Sterling (Keegan-Michael Key), the Yale Drama School graduate who fails to make it in Hollywood, Clay Barber (Johnny Knoxville), the easygoing recovering alcoholic, Bree Marie Larson (Judy Greer), the divorced former Duchess of a nordic country who is trying to make a living through her comeback on the show, and Zack (Calum Worthy) as the child actor who owns six houses and has a lot of free time, are masters of their craft with impeccable comedic timing. However, Elain Kim (Krista Marie Yu) as the anxious and nerdy vice president of comedy at Hulu takes the cake. The show’s script almost feels like a disservice to their talent considering how most of the jokes don’t quite land, which is quite unlike Levitan’s previous works. The creator, who is used to working with 22 to 24 episode-long seasons, stumbles while making this short season.

The reboot of Step Right Up kicks off with a diverse writing room. However, the show’s original creator Gordan (Paul Reiser) while sharing his opinion about the reboot says, “It is both the funniest thing you’ve ever read and you won’t laugh once”, and brings in his own set of writers who were a part of the original show to strike some balance. The young writers are politically correct, respectful of people’s identities, and champion Fleabag-esque humour, while the veterans stick to the tried and tested method of slapstick comedy tools. The conversations and debates that ensue as a result, feel forced. There is a disconnect when it comes to writing the younger characters with most of them functioning as caricatures. Probably Reboot could have used some diversity in its own off-screen writers’ room.

It is unclear whether Reboot is a satire on the sitcoms of the early 2000s or a nostalgic trip to their sets. The emotionally-charged season finale takes a step towards redeeming the show and artfully ties up some loose ends while underlining that the series, at the end, is about the love for TV. It successfully casts the limelight on the people working behind the camera, the logistics that plague the production of the show, and the exciting life on a TV set. The friendship the older characters, especially Bree and Clay, share might move you to shed a tear or two. But a second season might give Levitan the much-needed second chance to engineer his redemption.

Reboot is currently streaming on Disney+ Hotstar