Murphy Brown has returned to the airwaves! But as television critic Glenn Garvin sees it, we may have all been better off letting her enjoy her golden years:
The show, a workplace comedy that starred Candice Bergen as an inquisitorial reporter on a fictional 60 Minutes-type show, was a ratings monster in its early-1990s heyday. It was so widely watched that Dan Quayle, the actual for-real vice president of the United States, got into a public squabble with Bergen’s character, who was a fictional construct of some probably not entirely sober screenwriters. A squabble about single parenting that—I am not making this up—led the front page of The New York Times.
But Murphy Brown died in 1998 after several years of declining ratings. Most of its characters would now be in their 70s, not too credible as members of a hard-charging cable news crew and even less so as participants in impromptu anchor-desk, a key plot point one 1990s season. Why on earth resurrect it?
The answer was revealed last weekend, when 60 Minutes (the real one) disclosed that the new Murphy Brown is not really a sitcom but a video weapon for the Resistance to Trump. (“So, if Hillary had won, you guys probably wouldn’t be here?” a reporter asked. “I don’t think so,” replied Bergen.)
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