Post by ajk on Jan 18, 2023 0:04:59 GMT -5
Anybody else watch the first two episodes of the Night Court revival this evening? Meant to start a thread about this some time ago. Curious to know if anybody else watched it and what they thought of it.
Night Court is one of my very favorite shows ever and by coincidence over the past year I've been slowly rewatching the entire series on DVDs. When they announced they were doing a revival I was extremely apprehensive about it, for fear that it would just be using the original for video clickbait and not live up to anything close to it. Hearing that they got John Larroquette to be in it, that was sort of a relief because he always was terrific in the original. But he's only one actor....
So the first two episodes weren't terrible, and they actually did show the proper respect and appreciation for the original. And the original did take some time to completely find its footing. So I'll stick with this one. But I didn't get the impression that it could reach anywhere near the level that the original did.
Larroquette is by far the best actor of the bunch; he makes the others look ordinary. Right now the idea of Dan Fielding turning public defender, that's the one really interesting thing they've given us so far. Frankly that could carry the series all by itself, it has so much potential and Larroquette is so good.
The rest of it, well...enh. The new judge is one of the supporting actresses from The Big Bang Theory. Her character doesn't really feel like that interesting of a lead character so far. She talks way too fast sometimes (Seriously slow down! Sheesh!) and she doesn't have that aura of command or presence that a lead needs to have. Hopefully she'll grow into it. The others, okay they checked the proper boxes--woman prosecutor, black bailiff, Asian clerk--but they all felt pretty generic and they too have some growing-into-it to do.
And it didn't feel like the writing really caught the over-the-top craziness of the original, not at all. Example: They brought back Clarence the stuffed armadillo for the judge's office. Nice touch. But all they did was get some boxes out of storage, open one up, and Hey it's Clarence! YAWN...What would have been true to the original is, when the custodian was trying to clear those birds out of the courtroom and knocking into the ceiling, Clarence falls out of the rafters for no explainable reason and lands right on the bench in front of the judge. That would have been exactly the kind of oddball touch that was true to the original and everybody would have loved it. And it would have been a sign-from-above kind of thing that would have played beautifully into the deceased judge's daughter taking his place.
I don't expect them to do the original, part two. It was done once already--unbeatably well--and besides, in the PC 2020s you could never get away with some of the stuff the origianal did. But the original succeeded by being totally unconventional, and it just won't work to put the name Night Court on something safe and conventional. So we wait and hope for the best as things develop.
Night Court is one of my very favorite shows ever and by coincidence over the past year I've been slowly rewatching the entire series on DVDs. When they announced they were doing a revival I was extremely apprehensive about it, for fear that it would just be using the original for video clickbait and not live up to anything close to it. Hearing that they got John Larroquette to be in it, that was sort of a relief because he always was terrific in the original. But he's only one actor....
So the first two episodes weren't terrible, and they actually did show the proper respect and appreciation for the original. And the original did take some time to completely find its footing. So I'll stick with this one. But I didn't get the impression that it could reach anywhere near the level that the original did.
Larroquette is by far the best actor of the bunch; he makes the others look ordinary. Right now the idea of Dan Fielding turning public defender, that's the one really interesting thing they've given us so far. Frankly that could carry the series all by itself, it has so much potential and Larroquette is so good.
The rest of it, well...enh. The new judge is one of the supporting actresses from The Big Bang Theory. Her character doesn't really feel like that interesting of a lead character so far. She talks way too fast sometimes (Seriously slow down! Sheesh!) and she doesn't have that aura of command or presence that a lead needs to have. Hopefully she'll grow into it. The others, okay they checked the proper boxes--woman prosecutor, black bailiff, Asian clerk--but they all felt pretty generic and they too have some growing-into-it to do.
And it didn't feel like the writing really caught the over-the-top craziness of the original, not at all. Example: They brought back Clarence the stuffed armadillo for the judge's office. Nice touch. But all they did was get some boxes out of storage, open one up, and Hey it's Clarence! YAWN...What would have been true to the original is, when the custodian was trying to clear those birds out of the courtroom and knocking into the ceiling, Clarence falls out of the rafters for no explainable reason and lands right on the bench in front of the judge. That would have been exactly the kind of oddball touch that was true to the original and everybody would have loved it. And it would have been a sign-from-above kind of thing that would have played beautifully into the deceased judge's daughter taking his place.
I don't expect them to do the original, part two. It was done once already--unbeatably well--and besides, in the PC 2020s you could never get away with some of the stuff the origianal did. But the original succeeded by being totally unconventional, and it just won't work to put the name Night Court on something safe and conventional. So we wait and hope for the best as things develop.
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