I have kind of a love-hate relationship with the television industry’s tendency to reboot and revive every old show from the past. In ways that make me seem like a hypocrite. For example, every time I hear about a show getting rebooted I roll my eyes at the constant barrage of nostalgia-mining at television studios as well as Hollywood’s continued lack of creativity. On the other hand, I literally just binged the entire second season of That ’90s Show on Netflix days before I wrote this article. What can I say? The heart wants what it wants, and my heart wants to see Red Forman from That ’70s Show navigate the world of nineties teens.

So why does this contradiction exist?

Look, I’m not against the idea of bringing back old shows. Sometimes it works. But before I get into that, for the sake of clarity I should probably talk about the two types of reboots that exist, because I tend to like one kind of reboot more than the other.

First there are the reboots like Hawaii Five-0 and Lost in Space that totally recast all the characters and start the series continuity over from scratch. Those I don’t mind so much because they at least have the pretension of being something new, and that gives them even more license to go in different directions. But then there are the revivals. Like Fuller House and Frasier. These tend to be a lot less creative and a lot easier to screw up.

A reboot with a hard reset set in another universe where Thomas Magnum is played by Jay Hernandez instead of Tom Selleck is the kind of thing that has been around for a while in the TV world. Battlestar Galactica is a good example of that working really well, and sometimes I prefer the reboots to the original series, including the incredible 4-episode miniseries reboot of Roots which aired on History Channel in 2016, Kevin Smith’s new take on He-Man in the Netflix series Masters of the Universe and Hulu’s recent hit historical drama Shōgun. Other reboots in recent years that work well are DuckTales, The Wonder Years, She-Ra, Animaniacs and Kung Fu. Not that it always works. I was less enthusiastic about Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone reboot, DreamWorks Animation Television’s attempt to reboot Rocky and Bullwinkle in 2018 and a Powerpuff Girls reboot WITHOUT the involvement of series creator Craig McCracken. Still, reboots don’t normally bother me.

But revivals? These bother me a little more. The trend of reviving old shows by bringing back old cast members is something that has historically been a lot less common and I believe really ignited after Netflix decided to reboot Full House. And I grew up watching Full House! It’s a perfectly innocuous family sitcom (even if I don’t love it as much as others do) but ever since it was brought back in the form of Fuller House, TV networks have been trying to capture the nostalgia of yesteryear in a bottle way too often with attempt after attempt to revive old shows in the hopes of mining gold. And I know this is a symptom of entertainment executives becoming a lot more risk-averse in recent years (I won’t get into that because one problem at a time) but it just comes off desperate.

In the past decade they have also revived sitcoms like Will & Grace, Roseanne, Frasier, Mad About You, Murphy Brown and Night Court, but also dramas like The X-Files, Veronica Mars, Prison Break, The L-Word and Dexter. And again, I’m not denigrating all of these, because even some of these revivals I have watched and enjoyed.  Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock on Apple TV+ is totally delightful, I called Kids in the Hall on Prime Video one of my favorite shows of 2022, the reboot of Beavis and Butt-Head is just as funny as the original series (the same can be said for The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder and Clone High) and X-Men ’97 is one of the greatest superhero shows ever made. Plus The L-Word: Generation Q and Dexter: New Blood received plenty of good reviews. But it’s easy to see why people are less keen on revivals than reboots because they can be a lot more tricky to pull off. Arrested Development famously could not stick the landing on Netflix, and while the Roseanne revival (which changed its name to The Conners following Roseanne Barr’s departure) has its funny moments, it’s definitely a different show without Roseanne’s presence (even though I totally get why ABC fired her).

So what is the key to a good revival? I just think it has to feel like it exists for a good reason. X-Men: The Animated Series left off on the death of a main character back when it ended in 1997, and when X-Men ’97 literally picked up where it left off over 25 years later, they explored the aftermath of that death in ways that were more mature and more dark than they could ever get away with on Fox Kids. That is a good foundation for a revival. As for That ’90s Show, it makes me laugh just as hard as That ’70s Show made me laugh. What more could you ask for with a sitcom? If its existence feels forced like a cash grab, there’s no discernable creativity put into it, or it just plain lacks the quality of the original, it’s the difference between revisiting old friends and revisiting a graveyard.