Gilmore Girls wasn’t the first to reenter our lives through a TV screen. The reboot/revival trend has recently become a new thing among TV shows. Netflix dropped Fuller House earlier this year and people were freaking out for months about the show. Gilmore Girls isn’t going to be the last series to make a comeback. Twin Peaks, a successful show in the early 90’s, and created by the great David Lynch, is also returning to TV.
So what is the deal with this new trend? Netflix and other online streaming companies have a lot to do with it. These are new forms of media, and wildly popular forms at that. They have to turn a profit just like the networks, so what better way to do than by taking an old network show and rebooting it online? That’s one way to market. The older episodes of Full House aren’t even on Netflix yet Fuller House found its home there. Another marketing reason why this may be is because most millennials are watching Netflix. This is the same group who watched the show growing up. Millennials are who are likely to watch the reboot, and thus the target audience.
There are tons of TV shows out there. We’re living in what’s considered one of the Golden Ages of Television. More and more people are being drawn more to TV shows than they are films. Let’s face it, staying home and watch Netflix is a lot cheaper than going to the movies. But with all the new shows out there and readily available to us, why are there so many reboots and revivals happening right now? “There’s so much product, it’s hard [for something new] to stand out,” Vulture‘s industry vet explains. “Somebody sees a new series now and it’s, ‘So what?’ There’s ten a day.”
While it’s not impossible to market new shows, as Netflix’s Stranger Things was a huge hit just days after it dropped on the site. However, it is harder to market new shows when so many are out there and readily available. A reboot gets viewers attention.
There was buzz around the release of Fuller House for months before filming even began. Who will come back? Will Mary-Kat and Ashley Olsen be involved? Who will play Michelle? The media went crazy, as did everyone else. Everyone marked their calendars for the big day, and then logged onto Netflix to binge the series. There was no need for Netflix to advertise the show because the media did it for them. Basically Netflix and the show got free publicity. This was also the case with NBC’s reboot of Coach. People already knew about the show because they’d seen it before. People wanted to relive their youth and see what their favorite characters were up to.
This is exactly what’s happening with Gilmore Girls. The show left us hanging when it ended in 2007, like Full House did when it ended in 1995. Now with this new trend, the writers and producers are getting a chance to properly finish their shows that leave them and fans satisfied. Gilmore Girls ended with Roy getting a job offer following the election tour, and Lorelai was, yet again, kind of with Luke kind of not? Since it left fans on this note, there are a lot of questions buzzing around that are making people want to tune in just so they have answers. Who will Rory choose? Will it be Dean, Jess, Logan, or someone new? Do Lorelai and Luke end up together like they were supposed to before his kid just showed up and ruined everything? What about the people of Starshollow? What have they been up to?
This is one of the reasons why so many shows are being rebooted – success. Though not ever reboot is successful, like The Munsters, Beverly Hills Cop, and In Living Color, a lot of them have been successful. With Girl Meets World, the Boy Meets World sequel, 5 million viewers tuned in when it debuted and it remained on Disney’s top ten viewed shows every week when a new episode aired. It’s not certain what restarted this trend, as many shows for years have tried rebooting their shows or doing spin-offs, but one thing’s for sure, and that’s that a lot of writers and producers are running with it.
We’re not complaining either. We’ll be right there when Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life drops, and we’ll probably watch every episode that same day. The real question is though: when are we going to get a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reboot or Friends? The world is just teasing us!
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life will release on Nov. 25 on Netflix.
Sources:
http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/styles/tout_image_612x380/public/i…
http://www.vulture.com/2015/04/tv-remake-full-house-coach-x-files.html