'Mad About You' Revival shows why a beloved sitcom from the 90s is best left in the past
For a long time, Paul Reiser -- one of the executive producers and actors on the show -- did not want to do a revival or a reboot for the beloved 90s sitcom, 'Mad About You'. However, that changed when a while ago, it was announced that a limited series revival would indeed hit our screens.
Brought to the audiences by Spectrum Originals, the revival was to be released on their On-Demand platform. Spectrum is also airing all of the original episodes of the show starring Reiser and Helen Hunt.
In its original run, the sitcom garnered numerous awards including four Golden Globe Awards and twelve Primetime Emmy Awards. The original run mainly on newlyweds Paul Buchman, a documentary filmmaker, and Jamie Stemple Buchman, a public relations specialist, as they deal with everything from humorous daily minutiae to major struggles. Towards the end, their daughter, Mabel, was born.
The first half of the limited revival series dropped on November 20th. The second half dropped on December 18th. The first half was widely panned as "unnecessary" by critics and left them not too keen for the second half. The revival started with Mabel leaving for college, and so Paul and Jamie Buchman (Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt) are left dealing with empty nest syndrome. This is brought up again towards the end of the limited revival series when Mabel quit school to go to the Pacific for a year to clean up oceans.
While the first time Jamie had issues with letting go of her daughter, the second time around, Paul is the stubborn one. But they help each other to get through it. Once that issue is dealt with, we see Jamie going back to work and going through menopause while Paul has plotlines mostly with Ira.
One of our misgivings about the revival was that it gave viewers nothing to root for. Even while Jamie said that things would get bumpy in the second half, the bumpiness felt trivially written -- a blown up fight that starts out of nothing that leads Paul and Jamie to seek marriage counseling again. However, the episodes where Paul and Jamie try to work out their issues with each other are the best of the series and reminds us why 'Mad About You' was so adored when it originally aired.
In the end, again, the story revolves too much around Mabel -- and even if you love Paul and Jamie to death, it is quite likely that you will find their daughter annoying and entitled. Had the show not focused on Mabel so much, perhaps we could have gotten better stories for Paul and Jamie.
Frighteningly enough, the title for the final episode of the revival, in part, says "Goodbye for now," but we sure hope its goodbye for good. 'Mad About You' did not need anything else for it to be still revered by fans, but its revival might leave fans wondering why they loved the original show in the first place.
All episodes of 'Mad About You' are now streaming on Spectrum's On-Demand platform.