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Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

This chaos was totally avoidable.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Low-Impact Interlude Open Thread: “Murphy Brown” Is Being Rebooted

Low-Impact Interlude Open Thread: “Murphy Brown” Is Being Rebooted

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I love both Candice Bergen and her most prominent avatar as much as anyone, but isn’t it about time we stopped relying on 30-year-old arguments?

(On the other hand, if the news makes Mike Pence melt down in public… )

Reader Interactions

140Comments

  2. 2.

    Yutsano

    @zhena gogolia: Same. Murphy Brown was a very topical sort of show for the 80s. I mean I loved it but the themes presented back then are almost normal in this day and age.

  4. 4.

    Yutsano

    @zhena gogolia: Why do I get the feeling this is going to be completely different thematically but they’re just going to keep the characters except a much older Candice Bergen?

    Also: no Colleen? CANCEL THE WHOLE DAMN MESS!!!

  6. 6.

    zhena gogolia

    @Yutsano:

    I can’t imagine that Candice can pull off being a still-working journalist. I guess the model would be Barbara Walters or something.

  8. 8.

    M. Bouffant

    It was bad enough when the movies became virtually all franchises & prequels/sequels, & it’s not that broadcast telebision has ever been a hotbed of originality, but we already have Will & Grace & Roseanne coming back, apparently w/ as many original cast members as possible, & now this.

    Guess show biz is officially over.

  9. 9.

    Peale

    It’s like those late seasons of Are You Being Served when they all move to the country to a farm. Or Laverne moves to LA with squiggy. its not likely these folks would all be at the same news network. Even the baby she had would be too old to be “cute”

  17. 17.

    Mnemosyne

    I honestly don’t recall watching a single episode of “Murphy Brown,” but I was in college at the time, so I don’t think I was the target audience.

    I need to get the first two chapters of my novel ready for a contest and I’m kind of freaking myself out about it and thinking I may need to do a major rewrite. Ugh.

  18. 18.

    JPL

    For Big Little Lies fans, Meryl Streep has signed up to be Perry’s mom. I know Alexander Skarsgård won lots of award for his portrayal, but I hate him. Does this mean that I have to hate her. btw I still can’t watch Michael Emerson after his portrayal of William Hinks on The Practice.

  28. 28.

    NotMax

    Acquaintance worked himself up to being a Big Honcho on the original show’s production team. Shall have make a mental note to check if he’s involved in this.

  29. 29.

    Mike J

    @Mike J: I am genuinely curious if kids these days self segregate based on musical preference. The very idea of an underground scene seems to mean less when top 40 is kinda dead, but on the other hand you only ever hear about same few top 40ish performers in mass media.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    Can somebody on TV please come up with something new for a change? How many reboots do we need?

  35. 35.

    Hungry Joe

    @Steeplejack: All right — this has to be done, and since none of you guys are stepping up, I guess I will:

    Re Andrea Mitchell / “working journalist”: You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

  36. 36.

    dr. luba

    @Peale:

    its not likely these folks would all be at the same news network.

    Murphy Brown was about a 60 Minutes type of show. Did anyone ever retire from 60M, or do they all die in harness? (I ask becasue I quit watching decades ago.)

  38. 38.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Roger Moore: Hollywood seems to have the same problem, sequels, prequels and comic books are what seem to make the big bucks. I went to see the latest Star Wars installment because of all the hype it was getting. I was bored out of my mind. Mind numbing action without a pause, or any emotional impact on the participants.

  39. 39.

    NotMax

    Sample of precursor to the “new normal” on the original Murphy Brown.

    (No, not the clip with Wallace Shawn which have linked to previously.)

  41. 41.

    efgoldman

    @Peale:

    amazon and Netflix and Hulu and Vimeo need steaming content.

    Does this mean the new psycho FCC head wants to be able to have content control?

  42. 42.

    Yarrow

    LOL.

    MURPHY BROWN (2018-19)
    Episode 1: A prominent male colleague of Murphy’s is fired for sexual misconduct
    Episode 2: A prominent male colleague of Murphy’s is fired for sexual misconduct
    Episode 3: A prominent
    — Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) January 24, 2018

  45. 45.

    NotMax

    @zhena gogolia

    Will admit to watching it because am a sucker for anything with Ann Sothern. Even though only her voice was used.

    Remember the car was a Pierce-Arrow; don’t recall what year the model was.

  49. 49.

    Kathleen

    @JPL: I just got hooked on that series and spent a Sunday binge watching. Powerful performances. I just saw Streep and Kidman in The Hours and was blown away. Look forward to see them paired again!

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    Travel to the U.S. has been on the decline ever since President Donald Trump took office, and new data shows the slump translates to a cost of $4.6 billion in lost spending and 40,000 jobs.

    The latest data from the National Travel and Tourism Office shows a 3.3 percent drop in travel spending and a 4 percent decline in inbound travel.

    The downturn has also caused America to lose its spot as the world’s second-most popular destination for foreign travel, ceding to Spain. (France is in first place). Source

  53. 53.

    No Drought No More

    I once thought Dan Quayle was as Indiana batshit crazy as they possibly came, until I got to know Mike Pence. “Oh my my, oh hell yes..”.

    Also: I’m reading the Year of Decision by Bernard DeVoto. The following passage describes the forebodings of two well known New Englanders in January of 1846 concerning the nation’s future. Longfellow had written a “poet’s premonition” four years before, and had repeated it in conversation with his friend. Their prescience was profound:

    “There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,
    Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,
    Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,
    And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,
    Till the vast temple of our liberties
    A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies”.

    [DeVoto]: Walking to Boston with Longfellow, hoping to lighten his dull mood, James Russell Lowell felt the pillars of the Commonweal begin to shake. It was a literary achievement of [President] Polk’s election that it had stiffened a dilettante into a serious writer. Lowell had written when the democrats triumphed:

    “Careless seems the Great Avenger; history’s pages but record
    One death-grapple in the darkness ‘twixt old systems and the Word;
    Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
    Yet that scaffold sways the future and, behind the dim Unknown,
    Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own”.

  54. 54.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax:

    The latest data from the National Travel and Tourism Office shows a 3.3 percent drop in travel spending and a 4 percent decline in inbound travel.

    Surely you’re not surprised. Every fucking thing he touches or has touched turns to shit.

  55. 55.

    ThresherK

    If they have an episode about White Liberal Guilt, this time can they refrain from using “White Liberal Guilt” as actual dialogue?

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    @D Myer:

    Maybe our ideal should not be that people have to work until they die, even if the job is a glamorous one like journalism.

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kathleen:

    I think it was Comedy Central that once had a commercial with a woman who was excited that her yellow power suit from the 80s still fit, except that she had to go through the metal detector sideways because of how wide the shoulder pads were. ?

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    Nothing to sneeze at. So much winning, chapter 9,673.

    It’s the height of an especially bad flu season, but the maker of Kleenex plans to close factories because it says facial-tissue sales are wheezing.

    Kimberly-Clark, which also produces Huggies diapers, Kotex feminine hygiene products, Cottonelle toilet paper and Scott paper towels, plans to cut up to 5,500 jobs and close or sell about 10 plants. The Dallas-based company blamed sluggish sales and a bloated production base.
    [snip]
    The move comes after competitors slashed prices on tissues, damaging Kleenex sales in North America.

    Savings from the recent federal tax cut would help fund the cost reductions. It “provides us the flexibility” to do so, Chief Financial Officer Maria Henry said on a conference call.

    The job cuts represent about 12% to 13% of the company’s workforce. The company said it would expand production at “several” other sites.

    Kimberly-Clark declined to disclose the locations affected by the maneuvers. The company has operations in some 56 countries and about 43,000 employees, according to its website. Source

  64. 64.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @zhena gogolia:

    And Colleen Dewhurst is dead.

    I cried when it happened, I’m crying again now. Absolutely loved her!

    (Trivia: Dewhurst’s film debut was as an inmate in a mental asylum in the 1959 Audrey Hepburn vehicle The Nun’s Story.)

  66. 66.

    geg6

    I loved Murphy Brown. And Designing Women. Linda Bloodworth Thomason owned comedy then like Shonda Rhimes owns melodrama today.

  68. 68.

    Shana

    And they’ll never be able to update Jim Dial’s righteous rant about the service at the shoe department of Hecht’s a long gone DC area department store.

  69. 69.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    Obama isn’t the president anymore

    Huh? Say what now? (Frantically looks up Rod Serling’s phone number.)

    ;)

  75. 75.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Kathleen:

    I still have clothes from the 80’s in my closet.

    I bet two-thirds of the dudes on here will read that and say “so?”

  76. 76.

    Redshift

    @Roger Moore:

    Can somebody on TV please come up with something new for a change? How many reboots do we need?

    Come on, there’s more new stuff and more good stuff these days than at any time in my life. Im not going to begrudge them the nostalgia buffs they’re trying to grab.

    Over the weekend, I watched Counterpart, the new SF spy series with JK Simmons, and an episode of Electric Dreams, the Philip K. Dick anthology series, and they were both excellent.

  79. 79.

    Mike in NC

    Never watched Murphy Brown but as a 12 year old I was smitten by Candace Bergen in The Sand Pebbles with Steve McQueen.

  80. 80.

    NotMax

    @Redshift

    Tried, really tried, to find something – anything – in Electric Dreams to justify the time elapsed while watching, and couldn’t. Decidedly meh.

    Friend who writes scripts and science fiction for a living called me up last week (hadn’t heard from him in more than a year) specifically to grumble about the series.

    YMMV.

  82. 82.

    Baud

    Was this discussed?

    Today the Democratic National Committee announced the recipients of the first wave of grants from the State Party Innovation Fund (SPIF) totaling nearly $1 million. These grants will ensure innovation and early organizing throughout the country to help elect Democrats up and down the ticket in 2018. SPIF is a first-of-its-kind, $10 million competitive grant program that incentivizes early organizing through state parties and supports efforts to engage African-American, Latino, Asian American/Pacific Islander, millennial, and rural communities.

    https://medium.com/@TheDemocrats/dnc-announces-state-party-innovation-fund-recipients-75aeb61e240e

  85. 85.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia, @Hungry Joe, @efgoldman:

    Fuck all of you guys. I report; you decide.

    And I don’t remember Murphy Brown working all that hard either. She sure had a lot of time to dick around pointlessly with her painter, her relatives, her coworkers, etc.

  86. 86.

    Ruckus

    @Mike J:
    Top 40 isn’t dead. There is a radio station in every major market that plays the same shitty top 40 songs, from 30-40 yrs ago, over and over and over and over and over and…… every day of the year. I know, that’s what is on at work. Which is why I wish it was dead. But it isn’t. It’s not even on life support.

  90. 90.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @zhena gogolia: I have fond memories of it too. Jerry Van Dyke famously turned down a much more popular sitcom to do it. I forget which.

    Crap. In looking up Van Dyke, I find he died this month.

    Anyway, Wikipedia says he was offered the role of Gilligan, and also the Don Knotts part on Andy Griffith

  93. 93.

    Gravenstone

    Jesus. Per Maddow, Manafort’s legal team apparently accidentally attached and uploaded their fucking case notes to a now published court submission.

  95. 95.

    D Myer

    @Mnemosyne: Agreed. That’s the last thing I meant to suggest. Indeed we all have a shelf life, then we’re “kicked to the curb,” where we belong.

  97. 97.

    Schlemazel

    @NotMax:
    The car was a bunch of old parts tossed together, not a real thing. I remember they claimed it was a 1928 Porter (must have been in the theme song because when I hear it in my head it is set to music)

  98. 98.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Yutsano: One episode I remember fondly is when the team goes to a team-building retreat. I suspect that one is timeless in the jokes.

    Team building and trust exercises are still a thing, right?

  103. 103.

    Ruckus

    @Mnemosyne:
    Thing is most of the old line “journalists” and “news entertainers” don’t come close to needing the money, like say a janitor would. Well except that they have to keep up the payments on the botox, tummy tucks and assorted age enhancing bullshit they do. And a few need to keep up on their liquor store payments, there would be hell to pay if they got that supply cut off.

  104. 104.

    dr. luba

    @B.B.A.: And Morley Safer and Mike Wallace worked there well into their dotage. They keep getting more and more correspondents, as few seem to leave…..

  106. 106.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Gravenstone: I went out to dinner after hell broke out three or four times this afternoon, and Maddow is reporting hell broke out two or three more times while I was out.

    Trump’s attorneys are walking back his pledge to testify under oath

  107. 107.

    raven

    @Schlemazel:

    The TV car started out as a hot rod built by Norm Grabowski. Grabowski was well known in the hot rod community and also built the Kookie T used in 77 Sunset Strip. The Grabowski car combined a 1924 Ford Model T touring body with a Chevy 283 V8 and Powerglide automatic transmission. It’s said that the car also has parts from a Maxwell and a Hudson. Grabowski sold his car to prop man Kaye Trapp. Trapp, along with special effects expert Norm Breedlove (father of land-speed record-setter Craig Breedlove) modified the car to become a “1928 Porter” for the pilot.

  108. 108.

    Ruckus

    @Mike J:
    No it’s not. It was a top 40 station decades ago and it still has exactly the same fucking playlist. It wasn’t horrible the first 5000 times, but the decades have not been kind.

  109. 109.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ve seen purportedly intelligent people on TV saying that if he simply ignored any Mueller subpoena, or pled the 5th, there’d be hell to pay, politically. By now I’ve come to believe that he could wipe his ample ass with the subpoena with no political consequences. He was right: he could shoot somebody and not lose any support.

  110. 110.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Maggie Haberman @ maggieNYT
    Trump open to a path to citizenship for DACA recipients after 10 – 12 years. His statement sent White House scrambling

    Seung Min Kim
    So funny the Senate gang of six immigration plan happens to have a …. 10-12 year pathway to citizenship for them (10 for current DACA holders, 12 for other Dreamers)

  111. 111.

    Schlemazel

    If they want reboots I’d vote for Night Court, Cheers, either of the Newhart shows, Barney Miller, WKRP, Taxi. Now, none of them could be carried by their original cast but I would love to see writing that good on TV again.

  112. 112.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Schlemazel: they ought to do this in some kind of update-of-the-week format. It would be interesting to see what different writers/producers could come up with. Some sincere, some farcical.

    I loved WKRP, but with both Mr Carlson and Les Nessman (four time winner of the Buckeye Newshawk Award, and a coveted Silver Sow) gone to their reward…

  115. 115.

    Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)

    I recently recalled an old Mary Tyler Moore episode in which Ted Baxter is running for some award and to up his favorables, he prays on the air. Lou Grant goes nuts and Mary has to get between him and Ted and tactfully explain to Ted that he shouldn’t pray on the air. It was treated as a funny moment. Can you imagine a show today treating praying that way no matter where it happened?

  117. 117.

    Mike J

    @Ruckus: By definition, if the songs they play are not in the top 40, they aren’t a top 40 station. If those songs are over 20 (10? 30?) years old, it’s an oldies station. Even if they don’t act like it.

  118. 118.

    Schlemazel

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    What ever happened to Harry Anderson? Selma Diamond is gone but Moll and Marsha Warfield and the other are going strong. But, like I said, they would need to be recast for most of these

  121. 121.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: I hadn’t seen that before. I have to say I am liking the new DNC I have been seeing of the past couple of months.

  122. 122.

    Groucho48

    @schrodingers_cat:

    She was very good in Sand Pebbles and okay but condescending to Ghandi in that movie.

    That’s about all I’ve seen her in. I probably caught parts of Murphy Brown, but, was working evenings at the time, so didn’t see much TV

  123. 123.

    Shana

    @Schlemazel: Or Frank’s Place. Loved that show. I gather the reason it’s never been rerun is problems with the rights for the music they used.

  125. 125.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    I’ve never seen Murphy Brown (it’s never on ME TV), but I love her performance opposite Steve McQueen in “The Sand Pebbles”

  126. 126.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Groucho48: but then again, she was playing Margaret Bourke-White, who was a real life person, who probably was condescending.

  128. 128.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @NotMax: don’t know, but perhaps its because their shows are all mono while today’s shows are all stereo. maybe the soundbar only processes stereo.

  130. 130.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @NotMax: A lot, but not all. Arrested Development and Community aired an awful lot of their best episodes on network television, to name probably my favourite two examples. Modern Family isn’t as consistently sharp as it used to be, but it still has its moments.

  131. 131.

    Steeplejack

    @NotMax:

    MeTV is on my shit list because about four months ago they preëmptively zoomed all their shows up to widescreen aspect ratio. Really irritating for Perry Mason—my daily beacon of truth and justice in the ongoing Trump nightmare—and other oldie shows.

  133. 133.

    SFAW

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    but with both Mr Carlson and Les Nessman (four time winner of the Buckeye Newshawk Award, and a coveted Silver Sow) gone to their reward

    Umm, unless he’s died in the last 24 hours, Richard Sanders is still on this side of the grass.

  138. 138.

    Groucho48

    If we are going to bring back a “liberal” show, it should be Maude, with a character at least as acerbic as Bea Arthur and she should get an abortion around episode 6.

  139. 139.

    agorabum

    They forgot one on the list:

    President has dementia

    Trump is in the papers for being a racist clown.

    The vice president is a sexist moron from Indiana.

    A drug epidemic is sweeping the nation but being ignored.

    And Murphy Brown is set to premiere on television.

    1988 or 2018?

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