'80s & '90s Sitcoms That Should Never Be Rebooted

UPDATE: On April 20, John Stamos announced that Fuller House had received a 13 episode order from Netflix. It's actually happening, you guys. There's still no word on whether the entire original cast will get back together for the season premiere, but the series proper will follow DJ, Kimmy, and Stephanie after the three women move in together to care for all their children together.

We'll admit, the news that Coach is being given the reboot treatment was a pretty tough blow to the argument that there is a limit to what the modern entertainment industry will run through the reboot mill. But, we have to hold fast to the belief — to the hope — that there are some properties, even from '80s and '90s sitcoms, will not be rebooted, because network executives should have at least enough integrity to avoid milking these shows for any traces of nostalgia appeal.

Nobody ever thought Full House would rank among this untouchable lot. The squeaky clean fan favorite — armed with resilient catchphrases, an earworm theme song, and some of the finest specimens of sitcom hair in all of pop culture — is a top dollar candidate for contemporary revival, hence the unsurprising news: Netflix might be developing a spinoff series centered on DJ Tanner and her best friend Kimmy Gibbler, with original actors Candace Cameron Bure and Andrea Barber in talks to star.

Full House joins the likes of fellow late 20th century pop culture icons The X-Files and Twin Peaks (and sub-icon Coach) in rebooting for modern audiences, furthering ever more the ubiquity of the industry's favorite practice. Surely, however, there must be a few well-known '80s and '90s TV shows that nobody would ever bother rebooting. There must be!

Wings

Seven seasons of healthy ratings aside, Wings never made its mark as the kind of pop culture benchmark that sister series Cheers became. It isn't that Wings was bad (it certainly wasn't), just that it was completely and totally unremarkable. As such: unrebootable.

Just Shoot Me!

The sort of show that could exist only in the late '90s (as floundering ratings and schedule shifts in its later post-2000 years proved), this "single girl in the big city takes a job at a magazine" show (one of many) would have even dimmer of a future now than it did when it premiered.

Father Ted

The quirky and macabre United Kingdom comedy about three disgraced priests exiled on a remote island might enjoy lasting cult fervor, but it's the sort of genuine off-kilter oddness that couldn't possibly be reproduced in today's wickedly self-aware world. Hopefully producers can sense that.

Welcome Freshman

This teen comedy started out a sketch show and gradually morphed into something closer to the sitcom format, lasting three seasons on air by sheer force of will. Without even an understanding of what it was supposed to be, there's really nothing for rebooters to work with.

Becker

Becker could virtually be retitled "Ted Danson's other show" and lose nothing in the translation. A show that basically borrowed form from Cheers (a handful of lovable losers swapping stories over a restaurant counter), but without any of the... well, without much of anything.

Shasta McNasty

Oh how terribly out of date this would feel... and felt back then.

E/R

Not the incredibly successful drama series that launched the careers of George Clooney and Julianne Margulies, but the like-titled hospital sitcom that aired for one season on CBS... and also starred George Clooney, bizarrely enough.

The Tortellis

The far less successful of Cheers' two spinoffs (the other being Frasier), there is no era in which the Dan Hedaya-led family sitcom could have thrived. Not then, not now, and probably not the distant future.

Images: ABC; NBC (3); Channel 4; Nickelodeon; CBS (2); UPN