TLC’s new revival of “Trading Spaces” earned the cable network its best Saturday night ratings in eight years. The “Will and Grace” reboot on NBC launched with a modest 10-episode order that quickly exploded into a run that will keep the show on the air until at least 2020. And Netflix generated abundant buzz with its new take on “Queer Eye,” causing fans both new and old to hound the streaming service for more.
Yup, it’s official. The ’00s are back, and it’s not just on television.
Alicia Vikander assumed Angelina Jolie’s role in the “Tomb Raider” reboot, the fan-funded sequel “Super Troopers 2” arrived on screens this weekend and “Incredibles 2” is due out in June. Justin Timberlake played the Super Bowl and is spending the year on tour, while emo bands Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco found second winds thanks to a new generation of fans.
One might even say the White House looks something like a reboot of “The Apprentice,” complete with an actual contestant from the show, Omarosa Manigault, getting fired from the administration in December.
“Every 20 years, this culture looks back,” said Aaron McKain, a St. Paul academic, pop culture and politics writer and former speechwriter. “In the ’70s, ‘Happy Days’ was a huge hit. In the ’90s, everyone was obsessed with the ’70s. In terms of the cycle, it makes sense.”
This new wave of early-century love joins the ever-growing, ever-booming nostalgia industry. The enormously successful return of “Roseanne” prompted a congratulatory call from the president himself and opened the floodgates for remakes. CBS has confirmed “Murphy Brown” is coming back to prime time, with new takes on “Cagney and Lacey,” “Mad About You,” “The Greatest American Hero,” “Magnum P.I.” and “Charmed” among the other possible returnees.
Fifteen of last year’s 20 biggest movies – from “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” to “Wonder Woman” – were sequels, remakes or relaunches of familiar characters. On the concert stage, just six of the top 20 best-selling tours featured acts from the new century, with U2, Guns N’ Roses and Metallica selling millions of tickets.
In a time of deep political division and global unrest, it seems people want to seek comfort in the past.
“Nostalgia is always part of our culture,” said Maggie Hennefeld, assistant professor of cultural study and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. “I think it becomes more desperate and noticeable when the s— is hitting the fan.”
Trading spaces, not concepts
“Trading Spaces” debuted in October 2000 with an easy-to-grasp, yet revolutionary, premise. Two sets of neighbors swapped houses for 48 hours, with each redecorating a single room with a $1,000 budget and the services of an interior designer and carpenter. As they were redoing their neighbors’ room, contestants had no idea what was happening in their own house.
Viewers quickly fell under the spell of the dramatic, end-of-the-episode reveals that made the show famous. Would they get a tasteful, sedate bedroom makeover or would they end up with cardboard furniture and living moss hot glued to their walls?
“So many of those room reveals were iconic,” said Jason Sarlanis, TLC’s senior vice president of development. “It set the stage for an entire genre of (reality) television and was integral to the early success of the network.”
When it came time to revive the show, producers made the decision to keep it as close to the original as possible. The only major updates are that homeowners now get a budget of $2,000 and a dedicated carpenter. (In the early seasons, a single handyman/woman handled both homes.) Many of the original stars of the show have returned, including host Paige Davis; carpenters Ty Pennington and Carter Oosterhouse; and some of the most memorable designers, from Hildi Santo-Tomas to Doug Wilson.
“’Trading Spaces’ is one of the most brilliant, and simple, formats,” Sarlanis said. “We would be fools to mess with something like that.”
One thing that has changed, however, are the contestants. “A lot of our homeowners grew up watching the show and they’re far savvier about how design works,” he said. “They’re much more educated and aware of designing and that brings a new flavor to the show.”
Cutting through the clutter of Peak TV
Another difference in the 2017 “Trading Spaces” is that there will be a whole lot less of it.
For years, networks demanded lengthy seasons of about two dozen episodes for sitcoms and dramas and even larger numbers for cable reality shows. TLC aired more than 350 episodes of “Trading Spaces” in its eight-season run. Bravo produced 100 hours of “Queer Eye” across five seasons.
For now, fans will have to make due with just eight episodes of both the “Trading Spaces” and “Queer Eye” reboots. (That said, “Queer Eye” has already been renewed and it seems certain “Trading Spaces” will follow suit.) Thank, or blame, our era of so-called Peak TV, a term coined by FX Networks CEO John Landgraf in 2015 to describe the overwhelming amount of available television content.
According to an FX research team, 487 scripted series aired on broadcast, cable and streaming outlets last year. That’s more than double the number from 2010 and nearly triple that of 2002. And that figure doesn’t include the estimated 750 reality shows that also aired in 2017.
“There’s a lot of clutter out there,” Sarlanis said. “It’s always best to leave the audience wanting more.”
The broadcast networks aren’t necessarily as patient.
In January 2017, NBC ordered 10 episodes of “Will and Grace” and increased that number to 12 and later 16. More than a month before the revival debuted, NBC asked for a 13-episode second season. Last month, NBC bumped that number to 18 and renewed it for an 18-episode third season as well.
ABC followed a similar path with “Roseanne,” adding another episode to the eight it ordered for the first season before production began. Just days after it premiered to blockbuster ratings last month, the network greenlit another 13-episode season.
The ‘reminiscence bump’
Given the sheer volume of televised content out there, the reboot makes sense for producers, said Hennefeld. For starters, the familiarity of the brand gives it an instant leg up on the competition. “The concept is in place, we’re already involved with the characters and you don’t have to create a whole new fictional universe.”
The age of those making the decisions matters as well, said Bridget Robinson-Riegler, a psychology professor at Augsburg University. “Most memories come from age 10 to age 30 or so,” she said. That time frame means many network executives are of an age where some of their most potent memories formed around the turn of the century, thus the oncoming tide of ’00s throwbacks. Robinson-Riegler called it the “reminiscence bump.”
“One of the main things nostalgia does is help people find meaning in life and to connect with other people,” Robinson-Riegler said. “When you’re connected to other people, life has meaning. Nostalgia makes people feel protected, loved and happy. People even feel physically warmer.”
For Megan Mullally, who plays Karen Walker on “Will and Grace,” it’s about reverting back to a happier time. “Which is even as recent as the early 2000s,” Hennefeld said. “I know I find myself longing for the pre-cellphone and computer days. The days when you were in your car and you’re just in your car, listening to the radio. No one is going to call you or contact you. That’s your alone time.”
Nostalgia for nostalgia
One of the most unusual things about nostalgia for the ’00s is that, in large part, it’s about remembering pop culture that in and of itself was looking to the past.
“If you think about culture from the early ’00s, it doesn’t seem all that distinct,” said McKain. “Take music from 1968 to 1978. You go from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin and the advent of heavy metal, punk, hip-hop, disco and new wave. Think about the pop culture of the last 10 years. Is there really anything that different?”
Television itself has always been nostalgic, said Hennefeld, pointing to a pair of acclaimed shows from the past decade. “Television transports us back to a bygone era or a lost world. Look at lavish period pieces like ‘Mad Men’ or ‘Downton Abbey.’ There’s a desire to return to the past and review another cultural era from the vantage point of our own era.
“Sitcoms in particular are so episodic in nature, it’s almost less about the story and more about the characters. We let these television families into our homes and they become part of our domestic routine.”
Revivals like “Will and Grace” give viewers the chance to revisit those cherished characters through a new lens. “We know how our own everyday life has changed, but how has it changed for Jack and Will and Grace? How do those characters fit into our current cultural landscape? It can be psychologically adaptive, a way of dealing with the disappointment of the present and the uncertainty of the future.”
On top of that, television tends to have selective memory, Hennefeld said. “On ‘Will and Grace,’ the AIDS epidemic never happened. Sept. 11 was not really part of their world. Sitcoms tend to be nostalgic for themselves in their own present moment. It’s a selective, optimistic view of a much more fraught, darker world. A lot of that tension is filtered out.”
Will nostalgia change for the next generation?
In 15 or 20 years, today’s youth may very well experience nostalgia in a different manner, said McKain.
For generations, Americans witnessed pop culture events all together, at the same time. In 1983, nearly 106 million people tuned in to the final episode of “M*A*S*H.” A decade later, the last call for “Cheers” drew more than 84 million viewers, and in 2004, nearly 66 million fans gathered around TV sets to say goodbye to the cast of “Friends.”
Granted, those were appointment television events, but the increased competition for eyeballs makes those numbers seem utterly unattainable today. Last season, “Big Bang Theory” was network television’s highest-rated show, with an average of about 19 million viewers each week. The long-running warhorse “Grey’s Anatomy” averaged around 11 million. This season, ABC’s much ballyhooed “American Idol” relaunch has posted similar numbers to its final season on Fox and struggled to make any impact beyond its core audience.
Millennials and, really anyone with a smartphone, has access to pretty much all of American culture at once, McKain said. Television and radio ratings have declined because it’s increasingly easy for people to consume pop culture at their own pace and schedule, not one dominated by networks and record labels.
“I think for a lot of kids today, they’ll look back and be nostalgic for the technology itself, rather than the content,” he said. “Like, ‘Remember when we were all using Snapchat?’”
He said the big numbers for the return of “Roseanne” suggest a nostalgia for the era for mass cultural moments.
“I think ‘Roseanne’ reminds us there used to be these larger cultural conversations that we were all a part of,” McKain said. “People want to remember that time when were are all on the same page, watching the same junk, watching the same news. We all watched the buildings come down the same way we all watched ‘American Idol.’ It was shared history and culture and politics.”
