What Murphy Brown Got Wrong and What Last Man Standing Got Right

Last week marked the return of two sitcoms, Murphy Brown and Last Man Standing.

Both shows have had their own interesting journeys. Murphy Brown was on the air for ten years and was seen by many as a landmark for how women were represented on television. Reboots are all the rage these days in Hollywood, but as Candice Bergen has repeatedly pointed out, her show wouldn’t have been revived if it weren’t for the election of President Donald Trump and part of her goal is to “restore respect for the press.” Meanwhile, Last Man Standing ran for six years before ABC decided to pull it off the air in 2017. Its cancellation confused its fans since it had always earned solid ratings for Friday night standards and many believed it was a political decision since Tim Allen is conservative, something the network has denied.

So how did audiences react to their comebacks? Well, Murphy Brown earned a disappointing 7.4 million viewers for a big-name reboot, which was less than the premiere of Will & Grace that had over 10 million viewers. And both of those shows pale to the Roseanne reboot, which had collectively earned a massive 27 million viewers. And Last Man Standing? It landed over 8 million viewers, which is a strong Friday night debut for their new home at FOX.

If you watched both politically-charged premieres, you can get a better understanding why one show stumbled at the starting line while the other didn’t.

The Murphy Brown premiere was a recap of sorts of the legendary fictional news anchor in the Trump era, beginning with a montage of the 2016 campaign to the tune of the Rolling Stone’s “Sympathy For The Devil.” A retired Murphy Brown wakes up on her couch in a panic on election night, wearing an “Original Nasty Woman” shirt, shouting an earth-shattering “NOOOO” at her television screen. Fast forward to January 20, 2018, which marked the revival of the Women’s March. Brown is hanging with part of the old gang Corky Sherwood (Faith Ford) and Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto), reminiscing about the glory days and venting about the current state of events and “fake news.”

Two months later, her son Avery Brown (Jake McDorman), who is also a journalist, tells Murphy he just landed his own show at the “Wolf Network” (obviously an inspiration from Fox News), a place Murphy describes as where “all the male anchors are conspiracy theorists and the women are dead behind the eyes.” Avery defended his career move, arguing that people that “drive pickup trucks” and “go to church one Sunday” deserve a voice.

“They’ve got one. It’s orange, lives in the Oval Office, and is Facebook friends with Putin,” Murphy shot back.

Then, Murphy tells Avery that not only is she coming out of retirement, it turns out that both of their shows will be competing in the same time slot. This family dynamic will likely be the focus of the reboot.

The rest of the premiere included a Twitter war between Brown and Trump and a cringeworthy cameo appearance by Hillary Clinton who was applying for a secretary position on her show.

Aside from the subpar humor, one of the most notable takeaways from the Murphy Brown premiere was its desperation to be relevant. The entire episode was rapid fire of cultural and political references meant to keep viewers’ attention and to distract them from the weak writing. But above all, the show’s biggest problem is that its target audience is essentially the #Resistance. It’s a common problem in Hollywood, particularly in late-night and awards shows, that there is no longer an interest in capturing the biggest audience you can attract. In fact, they often go out of their way to alienate a substantial portion of the country (aka Trump supporters).

Now let’s compare that to the return of Last Man Standing.

If you weren’t familiar with the show, it’s a simple sitcom that follows a man’s man-type Mike Baxter (played by Allen) and his female-dominant family. The premise of the premiere focused how politically divided the Baxter family has become with sisters Eve and Mandy (Kaitlyn Never and Molly McCook) engaging in a war of insults and Mike’s very liberal son-in-law Ryan (Jordan Masterson) considering moving Mike’s daughter and grandson to Canada due to the stress of current events. In protest of the potential move, Ryan’s son Boyd (Jet Jurgensmeyer) runs away, causing  the divided family to come together during such a crisis to look for him. When found by Mike, Boyd shares how he “hates fighting” and that “everybody’s fighting about everything.”

Upon returning home, both Mike and his wife Vanessa (Nancy Travis) explain the moral of the story to their children.

“We’re gonna disagree… but we can’t let that break us apart,” Vanessa said. “You have to always remember that we love each other.”

“And because of that, we treat each other with dignity and respect because that’s who we are,” Mike added.

Cue the happy ending.

Last Man Standing has always had a slight right-leaning tilt due to the fact that both Tim Allen and his character are unapologetic conservatives. And you can draw parallels between the plots of this episode and the premiere of the Roseanne reboot, which focused on the politically-divided Conners. Both had the valuable lesson about family being more important than politics.

The reasons why Last Man Standing offered a stronger episode than Murphy Brown are twofold. First, despite the polar opposite political stances, Last Man Standing never defined itself by its politics. It defined itself by its family. Murphy Brown did the opposite and prioritized the politics. And second, it may be a conservative leaning show, but it never goes out of its way to marginalize liberal viewers. Mike Baxter does his fair share of mocking his progressive son-in-law just as Archie Bunker mocked his “meathead” son-in-law, but he never does so at the expense of those oppose him politically.

That’s not to say that Last Man Standing is must-watch television. It has always been enjoyable but was never considered genius. But they’ve got a loyal fan base for a reason and they were heavily involved with giving this show a second life.

Murphy Brown can learn a thing or two from Mike Baxter. Let’s just hope she doesn’t view him as a deplorable.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.