Television: Must-See (Again) TV

This spring in the famously youth-obsessed TV business, Botox is out and wrinkles are in. The reason: during last November's sweeps, the networks' triannual efforts to impress advertisers--a Carol Burnett reunion on CBS surprised everyone (not least of all CBS) by drawing 30 million people to watch a reel of bloopers. Now, virtually every TV icon with an AARP card and a pulse has been pressed into service.

The nostalgia specials planned this sweeps--roughly two dozen of them--include reunions of The Cosby Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Laverne & Shirley (itself a '70s nostalgia show about the '50s). We have bloopers from Bob Hope, dating back to when he entertained the troops during the War of 1812. There's a TV Guide special on ABC naming TV's 50 best shows, an L.A. Law movie and a tribute to game shows, as well as love letters to The Honeymooners, American Bandstand and--from the didn't-realize-we-missed-it department--That's Incredible! Fox is reuniting M*A*S*H, a show that not only ran on CBS but also left the air before the 15-year-old Fox network existed.

"As is true with all TV, we kill the golden goose," concedes NBC Entertainment president Jeff Zucker, whose network leads the back-to-the future pack, partly because of its 75th-anniversary celebration (NBC is counting its years as a radio network). But producers and stars insist the specials--most of which have not been screened for critics--aren't derivative clip jobs. Well, not total derivative clip jobs. Bill Cosby taped a new stand-up routine about family issues to integrate with clips and cast interviews. On the Laverne & Shirley get-together, Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams do a sketch in character in which America's favorite brewery workers audition for a reality show. Mary Tyler Moore, who co-produced her special, sat down for one-on-one interviews with co-stars including Ed Asner, Cloris Leachman and Valerie Harper. "I walked around for a couple of days with a major lump in my throat," Moore says. Mike Farrell, M*A*S*H's B.J. Hunnicut and a producer of the reunion, says he signed on "for quality control, to make sure it's not some exploitative piece of junk...[Fox] made it clear they were going to do a tribute to the show because they think it's a big ratings winner. That's all they care about, frankly."

The industry explanation for Burnett's surprise hit in November was a yearning for comfort culture after the Sept. 11 attacks, so this May is as much a test of Osama bin Laden's continuing legacy as Cosby's. "It's probably an oversimplification," says Zucker, "but the country seems to want to look back at an easier, simpler time." At least it did then, when U.S. planes were pounding Afghanistan and Americans were opening their utility bills with latex gloves. Now it may be the networks who are hankering for an easier, simpler time. Sept. 11 caused a brief return to their glory days, as viewers swelled the ratings of familiar sitcoms and network newscasts. But today the networks are bleeding viewers to cable again (one April Saturday, more people watched the Learning Channel's home-design show Trading Spaces than did ABC's fare).