We Need a Suddenly Susan Revival Now More Than Ever

A Brief, Bizarre History of the Forgotten, Unfunny Sitcom

With news that Kelsey Grammer is shopping around a Frasier revival and that they’ve come up with no less than six ideas for the sequel I thought it was time we revive the (once) popular television show Suddenly Susan starring Brooke Shields. And when I say once, it averaged out to the #3 spot on television for it’s first season before rapidly descending to #65 by it’s second and then a skip hop to #81 and #94 for it’s final third and fourth seasons, respectively.

Oh gather ‘round youngins and I’ll tell ye a tale of a sitcom once true, it was about a magazine, the type you see in a loo. These were the days before Shields would defend herself from Tom Cruise’s criticism of her use of antidepressants for her postpartum depression (though the two did makeup and Shields did attend the Tom Cruise absorbing of Katie Holmes.)

Suddenly Susan is about the fictitious magazine The Gate based in San Francisco. Susan, our plucky titular protagonist has just left her fiance at the alter after realizing that she’s been coddled her whole life and she’s not meant to be with the vain douche she’s about to marry, so she bails to become a successful independent woman who also has the super-woman-ability to be funny and pretty at the same time.

Yikes.

Though to be fair, Suddenly Susan was not necessarily a good show. Brookes and co. barely carried the show for it’s short 4 season run and most of the reviews lambasted Brookes’ lack of charisma and acting ability. Eventually two major stars left in it’s last season while another actor, David Strickland, had committed suicide during the third season run and before you ask: of course notorious asshole and sexual assaulter Andy Dick was involved. And it’s not the first time Andy Dick’s drug escapades have cost a life. According to Jon Lovitz, Andy Dick gave cocaine to Phil Hartman’s wife. She had been 10 years sober when Andy Dick reintroduced it to her and months later she murdered Hartman in his sleep. Thankfully, Lovitz went as far as allegedly picking up Andy Dick’s head and smashing it into the bar over and over again.

But enough about the parallels of NewRadio and Suddenly Susan.

The show evolved from a dramatic script into a light-hearted David E. Kelleyesque pilot. The pilot was was reshot and changed the entire cast except Brooke Shields and made it more of your average run-of-the-mill sitcom that promised you’d hear that studio audience at least once every minute. And that was the pilot that got picked up.

The first season used a “rock n’ roll” cover of Ode to Joy presumably to pinch pennies. And where most actors would normally have to pay for the privilege of getting noticeable credits (ie. Starring, And As…, With) Suddenly Susan decides to make everyone special and thus none of them special. Which sounds about right.

You almost have a visual timeline of how the show deteriorates if you go based only on the opening credits. Season 2’s was better in that at least they sprung to pay for the rights of someone’s music and filmed something original instead of using a montage of clips from the show. The only problem is having your sitcom intro starting off with the lyrics “Well I don’t tell jokes” and having your terribly green-screened actors running around San Francisco not doing much of anything (unless you count that crotch-to-ass pileup at the end there.)

At least they kept the tradition of the weird text credit introductions. Well they kept this intro for another season.  The sitcom’s developers and executive producers Steven Peterman and Gary Dontzig left the series for the fourth season along and the entire writing staff was replaced. Judd Nelson (smoke up, Johnny!) and Andrea Bendewald left at the beginning of season 4. With three major characters now missing it was time for a shakeup. They brought in Monty Python alum Eric Idle to replace Nelson as the boss along with Sherri Shepherd, Rob Estes, and Currie Graham.

And with this shakeup comes the new producers. They want to shake things up hardcore. They want you to know that this isn’t your momma’s Suddenly Susan. This is a Suddenly Susan for the Pepsi Generation! The cool, in-your-face, down-to-clown Suddenly Susan. And what better way show that then with a brand new, sex-ay, funk-ay intro?

I’m not going to go through the beats of the seasons or any of the story-lines because, frankly, I don’t remember any of them. Searching for Suddenly Susan on youtube only nets me results that have guest stars like Rick Springfield and Warren Zevon. There seems to be no “best ofs” unless you included someone’s Nestor Carbonell’s eyebrow fetish. Or in the case of the two full episodes of the show guest-starring Rick Springfield, their obsession.

No, I’m simply going to implore you all to remake this beloved show. No one will remember the storylines. It’s a simple office workplace comedy. Update the jobsite to a more modern, sleek magazine that’s 100% digital. Bring back Carbonell and Shields and Griffin. Why? Because the night is dark and full of terrors.

So, you know, let’s just embrace these terrors so they can tank.

Murphy Brown got canned after one season because: obviously.

Craig T. Nelson was bamboozled into starring in another season of Parenthood on the promise of reviving Coach but thankfully NBC realized that literally no one but the cast of Coach is clamoring for a Coach revival, so they reneged.

Roseanne successfully revived her series only to fuck it up by being a racist.

Will & Grace has beaten the odds and become a success with NBC renewing it for a third season.

I understand it’s all about money for the revivers and all about the nostalgia for the revivees. But someone really should have stopped all of this when Coach and Murphy Brown were even hinting at revivals.

Frasier itself is a spin-off from Cheers, so perhaps it seems less egregious to keep attempting to milk that cash cow. But I can’t help but think that the politicized climate will infect Frasier into becoming something it never really was. Instead of learning to fear all these reboots though, I’ve come to the conclusion that for better or worse, they’re gonna worse. I don’t fear them. I embrace them. For want of success. I get to laugh and they get to laugh while rolling in piles of dough. Everybody wins. If they fail, then I get to laugh and write about it while they get to kind of be upset while rolling in piles of dough. So bring it on, you uncreative Hollywood execs, we’re ready for a Suddenly Susan revival, even if the world is not.