Remake Television: Reboot, Re‐use, RecycleCarlenLavigne, Editor. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014.

Abstract

Remake Television: Reboot, Re-use, Recycle Carlen Lavigne, Editor. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014.It seems that anthologies of essays based on hot topics in popular culture will continue to be churned out like so many Fast & Furious sequels-short, limited affairs of ten to twelve essays linked by a common topic such as the Philosophy of Star Wars. This should be the case with Remake Television: Reboot, Re-use, Recycle, edited by Carlen Lavigne, but the chosen programs run the gamut from the known to the obscure, making entry for the novice or infrequent viewer difficult-if not impossible.The television landscape is filled with shows that are remakes or reboots-so Lavigne's job should be easy: find new perceptions of remade popular programs (.Hawaii Five-O, Battlestar Galactico), add some articles about shows that continually {Dr. Who), and toss in a few dead ends {Charlie's Angels), and voila, you're done. However, Lavigne departs from this, adding articles about programs that don't fit the traditional definitions of or reboot and are more in line with the re-use and recycle of the text's title.Take William Proctor's well-written essay on The Walking Dead, for example. Proctor acknowledges that the show is an adaptation, yet he tries to tie it to a remake. Such semantic words mithing is disappointing to readers who are looking forward to the book title's promise and is downright insulting when Proctor argues that the first of the comic book The Walking Dead is a of all previous (and unrelated) zombie efforts in what he describes as a Zombie Renaissance (13).Then, Steven Gil examines what is a remake or adaptation by promising to explore The X-Files but then spends four pages exploring the looseness of terminology before finally examining a program that was considered an original premise. This allows Gil to argue that The X-Files fits into the category because the show was a mixture of The Twilight Zone and Kolchak: The Night Stalker with the FBI agents added for continuity, noting that the latter show inspired Chris Carter's stunt casting of Darren McGavin.Next, Ryan Lizardi explores nostalgia, which, understandably, is at the heart of remakes. Rather than examine how nostalgia helps lure a pre-existing audience to a remake, he explores how the cable channel Discovery Family Channel, which was previously called The Hub, programmed remakes of classic 1980's cartoons such as Transformers and My Little Pony with no discussion of these remakes. …