Through one of those curious coincidences that the popular culture throws at us, the rebooted version of Murphy Brown starts on Thursday. Yes, the same day that on live TV U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the California professor who has accused him of sexual assault, Christine Blasey Ford, will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The reboot’s airdate has been set for months. Nobody planned it this way. And yet, the coincidence opens up a cornucopia of suggestions and hints about changes wrought – and not wrought – in the continuing U.S. culture wars.
First thing to extrapolate is this: Men don’t get it. Women experience the reality of the workplace, social life and social media differently from men. For most women, the #MeToo movement is not about a bunch of powerful men being named and shamed. It’s about a systemic issue – an acknowledgment that sexism, discrimination, harassment and abuse are everyday, omnipresent factors in their lives.
Advance episodes of the new Murphy Brown (starts on Thursday, CBS, City, 9:30 p.m. ET) have become available and the reviews are vastly illuminating. Most women writing about the show are cheering it on. Most men see the revived series as creaky, dull and too pointed in its anti-Trump administration direction.
This image released by CBS shows Joe Regalbuto, Candice Bergen and Faith Ford from the comedy series, 'Murphy Brown.'David Giesbrecht/Warner Bros. via AP
The show, the work of the original creator Diane English, picks up 20 years after the original series ended. TV star Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) comes out of retirement because she’s angry at the Trump administration. She declares she’s tired of shouting at the TV and “I’d rather be on the TV, yelling out!” So she gets the old gang back together, including Frank (Joe Regalbuto), Corky (Faith Ford) and Miles (Grant Shaud) and reboots her career with a morning cable-news show that is meant to deal with facts, not partisan rhetoric. Mostly, Murphy is angry at Donald Trump and his enablers. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a target and there’s a figure clearly based on Steve Bannon.
Women reviewing the revival find Murphy a reassuring figure, someone to treasure. Men reviewing it find the show “preachy” and old-fashioned. The character Murphy Brown just doesn’t have the same agency for them.
It’s interesting, too, that the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh put many people in mind of the treatment of Anita Hill during the televised Clarence Thomas nomination hearings in 1991. Watching today – it’s easy to find footage online – one is horrified by the condescension thrown at Hill by male senators: “Are you a scorned woman? Do you have a martyr complex?”
Back in the day, the Murphy Brown series tackled the controversy. Murphy was obliged to appear before the Senate and answers questions about sensitive information leaked to the press. In the episode, the male senators are portrayed as ignorant buffoons. The episode was criticized at the time for presenting caricatures rather than a deftly humorous take. A year later, vice-president Dan Quayle was lambasting the Murphy Brown character for being a single mother raising her child alone. Specifically, he said Murphy Brown was “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone.”
This image released by CBS shows Candice Bergen, left, and Tyne Daly in a scene from 'Murphy Brown.'John Paul Filo/The Associated Press
Quayle talked about Murphy as if she were a real person, not a TV character. And in a way he was right. To many women she was as good as real – a hugely symbolic figure, a comforting presence who was dealing with sexism in her personal and professional lives and fighting against it. She remains real to many viewers and to many female reviewers, who are buoyed by the return of a female journalist character and that character’s biting humour.
If you ask me, the revived Murphy Brown is a bit plodding in pace and there is far too much emphasis on Murphy’s age. She is presented as so out of touch with technology that she must have been living in a cave for the past two decades. And there is a tad too much humour at the expense of millennials. It’s unsubtle in the way that many 1990s TV series seem too obvious today.
Television has changed enormously since Murphy Brown last aired in 1998. Premium cable and streaming services allow for a subtlety and acidity that the new Murphy Brown never even attempts. At the same time, I’m aware that some things haven’t changed at all. Either since Anita Hill testified or Murphy Brown the character railed against sexism.
I have to be aware of that, and respect that women will feel differently about the importance of this female character returning now. Women experience the world differently, and some men don’t get it.