TV #22 of 2018:
ReBoot: The Guardian Code, season 1
I have so many mixed feelings about this — apologies in advance — reboot. I loved the original show and have been longing for a revival ever since it went off the air back in 2001, but this new version is pretty different… and pretty bad. In fact, I think the pilot episode might be hands-down the worst episode of anything I’ve ever seen. (It’s also the s1 episode that’s least like the older show, which is just a baffling writing decision. That should be a changing-of-the-guard moment, to ease returning fans into the new paradigm while reassuring new viewers they won’t be lost. Instead we’re offered practically nothing recognizable to justify the name of the show.)
Thankfully the series does get better and more ReBoot-like in the nine episodes that follow. It’s still not great, but at its strongest it comes off as something like ReBoot season one crossed with The Sarah Jane Adventures. The way the show handles cyberspace feels like an organic extension of the computer systems from the earlier series, and the returning character of Megabyte seems basically just like his old self (with the caveat of some major plot gaps from where we left him seventeen years ago). And some of the new stuff absolutely works; the living AI character Vera is a particularly delightful surprise.
Most of the live-action scenes are awfully hokey, though, especially everything to do with the villainous hacker the Sourcerer. The worldbuilding in the original series had a certain lived-in dignity to it, but this guy is simply too cartoonish to take seriously. He’s emblematic of everything wrong with this new version of ReBoot, and there’s ultimately way more of that than anything good.
★★☆☆☆
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