(2 of 2)
The nostalgia craze lets the Big Three relive the days when they were the Only Three. The old hits had far bigger audiences than today's and so are part of our communal memory in a way that niche hits like MTV's The Osbournes may never be. Thus they have a better chance of reuniting that mass audience, as Burnett did. And given the networks' shrinking viewership, it's a smarter strategy to raid the clip vault than to spend, for instance, the roughly $85 million that ABC's upcoming Dinotopia mini-series cost.
Ironically, these specials owe a lot to cable's steady diet of reruns and where-are-they-now shows. "I couldn't be more thrilled that the networks are doing this now," says Larry W. Jones, the general manager of TV Land and Nick at Nite. "They're blowing our horn." TV Land and company may also have broadened the specials' demographics by bringing a new, young audience to them. Says Moore: "It amazes me how many people come up and say something to me about Mary Richards, whether they are 7 or 77 years old."
The core audience for the specials, though, tends to be baby boomers, the first generation nurtured on TV. "You have this population that's seeing themselves in the mirror differently than ever before, and they sense the time flipping by," says Harry Hamlin, who returns to his starring role in NBC's L.A. Law movie, in which the series' sexy solicitors return with a decade's growth of crow's feet and a new set of improbably quirky plot twists.
The networks are cannily letting their current shows bask in the blue glow of TV's past glory too. NBC, in full peacock-proud mode, is throwing itself a birthday bash May 5--chockablock with current stars--and toasting 20 years of must-see sitcoms in a May 20 special. It's also stunt casting Cheers alums on Frasier, St. Elsewhere docs on Scrubs and Hill Street Blues flatfoots on Third Watch (to make some arrests for impersonating a quality cop drama, we hope). CBS, meanwhile, canonized Everybody Loves Raymond with a nostalgia special at the grand old age of 6 and recruited Kevin James to play host at its Honeymooners encomium--implying that the King of Queens star is Jackie Gleason's long-lost outer-borough heir.
But as self-serving as TV's nostalgia jag may be, it also confers a kind of historical weight on a sometimes ephemeral medium. TV defines us, much as we may sometimes hate it for that: M.T.M. and Laverne & Shirley celebrated white- and blue-collar workingwomen for the feminist era; Cosby catapulted an upscale African-American family into white living rooms; M*A*S*H articulated our anxiety about the Vietnam War by way of Korea. At some level we know this, even if we're just tuning in to check out Corbin Bernsen's laugh lines.
The networks may trip down memory lane next fall too. The WB is thinking about a remake of The Lone Ranger (though a revival of The Fugitive bombed on CBS two years ago), and NBC is considering Rerun, on which classic sitcom episodes would be re-enacted by a troupe of actors--presumably, young, cute actors. But just to be safe, Buddy Ebsen, you might want to call your agent.
--With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and Heather Won Tesoriero/New York