LOL, he's talking with the librarian from Ghostbusters!
I'll up the ante:
W
A
"He not only could tell you what they are; he can give you their trade in value."
Night Court revival
- Thread starter Amasov
- Start date
"He not only could tell you what they are; he can give you their trade in value."
(...but not for the under-17s! 
Still hilarious though! ...)
I want that.
Thank you, thank you, Thank you for posting these! I haven't laughed so hard in weeks!
This show won't last more than a couple of episodes if it's anything like the original. Too many people looking to be offended by this kind of comedy nowadays.
Wouldn't it be great if they treated the last season as a dream and it ended with Harry and Christine together with no Bull going to space and all that nonsense? A fan can dream...
"Nonsense" was the very essence of Night Court. Seems odd to use it as a criticism.
Correct. Night Court was slapstick. It was at times live-action looney tunes and that made it great.
That being said, the final season (and some of the previous season) is my least favorite. The show just wasn't the same. Harry lost a lot of his previous sillyness/playfulness. Dan changed. For some odd reason they felt the need to bring in that ditzy stenographer and Bull's girlfriend/future wife. They added nearly nothing to the show. The writing and stories just felt different. I feel like they lost their way. That's not unusual when sitcoms get to the end of their life span.
On the subject of Dan Fielding, I would love to see the old jerk womanizer Dan back. Of course, it won't happen in this day and age. His character was such an integral part of the show and to neuter that loses something.
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I think it would be a waste of John Larroquette's brilliance just to have him rehash the schtick he did 30-39 years ago. I want to see him invent a new version of Dan Fielding, one who's evolved and matured as Larroquette has. After all, it's a completely new cast otherwise, so he would fit into it in a completely different way in any case. This isn't going to work if it's just an attempt to imitate the original. It needs to define its own identity, to be unapologetically itself in the same way that the original was. Too many revivals fail because they merely copy what the original did and fail to realize that it was the originality of the original that made it work.
My guess is that you will get your wish.
I'll see your paean to "originality" and raise you the series Cobra Kai, who's key to success has been that it is almost exactly now what the original movies were back in the eighties, stories about good kids and bullies that know karate.
Nobody who was (and i'm gonna use THE PHRASE, and I don't care what anybody thinks) a true fan of the character Dan Fielding wants to see him "evolved and matured," because the comedy that stems from the character is rooted entirely in the fact that he's an unrepentant lout. Dan Fielding is a greedy, womanizing, social-climbing, sarcastic asshole and, much like concert-goers demanding decades-old hits from their favorite groups, if John Larroquette is going to once again take on the mantle of Dan Fielding, his fans are going to want to see that Dan Fielding, not the guy he played on The Librarians.
And you're right, the character wouldn't work today, but not because it's a "rehash." It wouldn't work today because the producers of most modern pop culture dedicate their lives to either sanitizing or eliminating the type of ribald, insulting comedy that the character is famous for. Now, of course, John Larroquette is a fine actor, and I'm sure he can develop a good comedic persona within the socially conscious restrictions that are sure to be placed on the production, but that persona won't be Dan Fielding, regardless of what the scripts say.
Again, why is that desirable? What a terrible waste it would be to do a new Night Court and merely copy the old one. What a terrible, unimaginative, simple-minded piece of writing it would be to depict a man 30-40 years older but have him be completely unchanged. What a criminal waste of John Larroquette's decades of experience it would be to ask him merely to imitate the performer he was half a lifetime ago.
Not to mention that it seems likely that Dan is the district attorney in this show, since the prosecutor character played by India de Beaufort is reported to be the ADA. That makes Dan a man in a senior position of authority with a beautiful woman working as his direct subordinate, and probably a lot of other women working under him as well. It would be horrible to have him behave the same way he did as a junior prosecutor hitting on women who were his equals or not under his authority in any way.
New Coke v. Classic Coke. I'm betting more people would want Dan as he was. Like it was said before, in a concert people want to hear the old stuff as well as the new. The ADA may be the one person to hold Dan in check, but he would still be the Dan of old. If Harry Anderson were still alive would he be as fun to watch as a serious no nonsense and by-the-book judge? The show was slapstick with even more highly unrealistic characters than any other show. It's not Night Court, it's not funny, if everyone is a normal person, it's not funny. Only unrealistic characters could deal with the types of people that came in to the night court. If everyone is sanitized, it's just a procedural drama.
And look at the lead, she previous played a highly intelligent, beautiful women who married a lecherous womanizer, Who had her coworkers and boss scared of her, who handled - as one joke mentioned - highly contagious drug resistant bacteria and wasn't sure if she washed her hands. She was friends with an even more intelligent man who looked down on everyone, and was afraid of Penny (who until she was married didn't have a last name, and I'm not even sure if she took Leonard's name). Not to mention that her husband was in a ersatz homosexual marriage with his Raj with the two testing out out kissing through a virtual reality.device that looked like a head.
Unrealistic people living in an unrealistic worlds is funny. Dan is that character.
And look at the lead, she previous played a highly intelligent, beautiful women who married a lecherous womanizer, Who had her coworkers and boss scared of her, who handled - as one joke mentioned - highly contagious drug resistant bacteria and wasn't sure if she washed her hands. She was friends with an even more intelligent man who looked down on everyone, and was afraid of Penny (who until she was married didn't have a last name, and I'm not even sure if she took Leonard's name). Not to mention that her husband was in a ersatz homosexual marriage with his Raj with the two testing out out kissing through a virtual reality.device that looked like a head.
Unrealistic people living in an unrealistic worlds is funny. Dan is that character.
That's a reckless thing to assume before you've even been shown the alternative. It's disingenuous to cherrypick a single failed update and claim it proves they all fail. There have certainly been other updates and reinventions that succeeded. Many classic Star Trek fans assumed a Trek series without Kirk, Spock, and McCoy could never work. All that proved was that they lacked the imagination to open their minds to alternatives.
And laypeople don't always know what they want. That's why there are talented professionals who can come up with the good ideas that laypeople didn't think of. Sports team managers don't poll the audience about what plays to use. Chefs don't ask the restaurant patrons to come up with recipes. It's the job of professionals to come up with better ideas than laypeople can.
Again, I don't think you're considering what an ugly and unfunny power dynamic that would be to depict in the wake of Harvey Weinstein and his ilk. If he's her direct superior, in a position of power over her, she couldn't "hold him in check."
What are you even talking about here? Who the hell said Dan couldn't be funny? On the contrary, I'm saying that putting a serial sexual harasser in a position of high authority would not be funny. In the original series, Dan's excesses were ameliorated by the fact that the women always had the freedom to say no. So the show was able to keep him sympathetic in spite of his behavior. But if you put him a position of authority over women, one where his decisions affect their career prospects, that changes the equation radically. Having him behave the same way in that context would be far more predatory and far less sympathetic or forgivable. It would make him an outright villain rather than a redeemable cad. And that wouldn't be funny. So they'd have to find a new way for Dan to be funny in his current role.
You really should have more faith in John Larroquette to be capable of being funny in more than one way. The man is an absolute genius at both comic and dramatic acting, one of the best I've ever seen. As I keep saying, it would be a tragic waste of his talents not to let him take Dan in new directions.
We're still coming at this from opposite perspectives, where you think the fact that something was done before is a reason to do it again, while I think it's a compelling reason not to do it again.
And again, I point you to the series Cobra Kai, whose main character is the exact same hyperaggressive idiot that he was in the original Karate Kid. In fact, the way he is is the biggest factor that drives the series. Guess what? Nobody who loved the original movie is complaining.
And you ask "Why?" Because as laudable as it is for you to take the up the cause of Larroquette's and the writers' artistic sensibilities, most pop culture audiences don't see their entertainment that way. They just like to be entertained, and nine times out of ten they will still be entertained today by things that entertained them decades ago and will sometimes zealously resist any change to those things. That's the way fans are, and they have been that way forever. What do I mean by "forever?" I mean "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes and had to resurrect him because his fans wouldn't read anything else" forever.
So if you say you're reviving the comedy series Night Court, you are more likely to get a response out people who were fans of the original than you are to get a response from people to whom Night Court is virgin territory - which is the point of rebooting material with a built in fan base. The problem comes when that fan base learns that the only character returning from the original has to shed the characteristics that made him iconic - and made them watch the original series - because they're socially unacceptable and mundane compared to the actor's true range. Now, can you still have a successful series? Sure, but it's likely that its success will have to be driven by the virgin fans, because I can almost guarantee that fans of the classic will be no help. Having Dan Fielding in the new show will not be a draw for classic fans if he's not actually Dan Fielding.
Actually, him hitting on women who are his equals (other DAs) and not his subordinates (unaffiliated random hotties) would be an effective compromise, wouldn't it? He likely wouldn't be in the show much anyway, so glimpses of the old Dan would still be possible, and likely more satisfying than any new Dan would be to watch.
Sometimes, these "talented professionals," aren't really any more talented than anyone else. I've seen plenty of TV shows, movies, etc that left me wondering if they were written by morons and/or clueless idiots. There are countless examples of TV shows that never made it past their first season because they weren't good. How many movies have been utter flops?
It seems unrealistic that Dan, after so many years, would still be the exact same person we saw on the show. I mean, even later in the show, Dan's character began to change somewhat (but then the whole show did).
I think a realistic compromise would be to see some of the old Dan in there. It's also unrealistic to think that there would be no traces at all of the younger Dan.
Sometimes, sure, but that's not something you should decide until you actually see their work. The problem is when laypeople assume "I can't imagine a different way this could be done well, therefore none can possibly exist." It's arrogant to assume that. The whole reason experts exist is that they're better at their jobs than we are and can think of things we can't. The fact that not all of them are equally good is hardly proof that none of them are. Yes, 90 percent of everything is garbage, but it's the other 10 percent that makes it worth doing.
Or as the Chinese saying goes, "The people who say something cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."
Yes, that is a given, which is why I said I want Larroquette and the writers to take Dan in new directions. "No traces at all" is a straw man that has nothing to do with what I'm saying. I'm saying that it's unreasonable to want Dan to be exactly like his old self. The alternative to an irrational extreme is not the opposite irrational extreme, but a healthy middle ground.
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