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Joe Regalbuto, Grant Shaud, Candice Bergen and Faith Ford in the new Murphy Brown.
Jojo Whilden / CBS
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Jojo Whilden / CBS
Joe Regalbuto, Grant Shaud, Candice Bergen and Faith Ford in the new Murphy Brown.
Jojo Whilden / CBS
When Murphy Brown Created in 1988, Murphy's personality, full of stubbornness, ego, brilliance, challenge, independence and lack of interest in being loved, was a revelation. His existence, his very presence on television as a recovering alcoholic, who had stopped drinking but did not want to stop being what others saw as "difficult" was a source of inspiration. She was confident and she was loved. She was rude and she was great in her job. She was noisy and she was the hero.
Murphy never really softened. She was suspicious of her own emotions, even when she was pregnant. The reason to watch her singing "Natural Woman" to her newborn son, Avery, was so special that she never did it, she never gave in too much. She did not immediately feel comfortable holding her own baby. In the episode "Birth 101", while he had just been born, lying in his hospital bed, she calmly spoke to him about his uncertainty. She warned that she would not be like other mothers. She said that she would make mistakes. "Are we still linked?" She asked nervously, uncomfortably. "I can not tell." It was only then that her friend Frank arrived with a video camera and encouraged her to say something for posterity, she sang to him. This could be Candice Bergen's best time in the role, as he showed something new in Murphy without compromising who she was.
The show ended in 1998, before the anti-heroes of television took off. He hibernated until the late Bill Clinton, the George W. Bush years, the Barack Obama years and just the first two years of Donald J. Trump. Now, it's coming back.
Most of the actors are intact. Bergen, of course, plus Joe Regalbuto as investigative reporter Frank Fontana, Ford Faith, Corky Sherwood, Grant Shaud as Miles Silverberg, and – now, the actor is retired, just as the character – Charles Kimbrough as stentorian presenter Jim Dial. In the present, the show on which they all worked together, FYI, has long gone, but Murphy, Frank and Corky, who are bored of not being on the air and enraged by the 2016 elections, have a new morning show on cable channels – very similar to CNN – and Miles is their producer. The new show, Murphy in the morning, also has a young social media guy named Pat, played by Nik Dodani.
Murphy's son, the little baby she sang to, is now an adult man and a television journalist. Played by Jake McDorman (whom CBS has tried to cast once before on the short-lived drama Unlimited), Avery – which you will remember, after Murphy's mother – will anchor the new morning show to the Wolf network. And if you're wondering what the Wolf Network is, you need to remember that Murphy Brown always makes his dummy doubles of real characters and organizations as easy to interpret as possible. (When he created a character similar to MTV's Kennedy, she called McGovern, Har har.) So yes, the Wolf network is the equivalent of Fox News. This does not mean that Murphy and his son are not politically aligned; Avery Brown is apparently the Liberal resident of Wolf, and now he and his mother are in direct competition.
Much of what the new episodes (three CBS have published to the critics, including the first) are what you expect. Murphy despises the current president. She despises her press officer and her briefings. In the third episode, she takes a Steve Bannon similar to him (his insult must relate to his multiple shirts) and if she should interview him. And the things that she says about him – and possibly about him – are exactly what you can expect from Murphy. She tells him that he is a dinosaur, that he and his kind attach to relevance as they see their influence diminish. And in this fantasy, he is defeated by the truth that she unleashes; It only takes Murphy to look at him and be as stubborn as she has always done to wiggle him.
In the same way, it's Murphy who sneaks into a press point and stops with it … well, with his unique way you'll see. But in the screener of this episode, I saw, there was a moment that made me feel uncomfortable.
The scene shows Sarah Huckabee Sanders doing a briefing, so a real video of her is interspersed with a scene on which they shot with actors playing reporters – Avery is there too. Murphy, who sneaks into the infiltrators' briefing, is waiting for a chance to jump in. Sanders (the real one) says "Fred", and we reduce the actors, which one of the few black actors in the play, gets up (we are apparently to assume that he is Fred). But before he can get up and ask his question, Murphy pushes him to his seat. (The audience laughs.) She bows. Sanders shut up and called an "April". We do not see April, but Murphy does not know who Sanders called, do not take no for an answer and keep talking.
The "April" I know best in the White House briefings – the one that many White House observers know best – is April Ryan, a black journalist.
Please, please, please do not misunderstand: I do not think it was intentional. I do not think that they intentionally chose to imply that Murphy closed April Ryan. In fact, I am certain they do not have I am certain nobody thought about the impact of Murphy pushing a black journalist who had been called to his seat so that she could speak, followed by a possible preemption by another.
But the show will stumble if his vision of Murphy as a truth-telling journalist (1) ignores the many real journalists who have worked so hard in recent years, implying that all that is needed to change the policy is a courageous journalist or (2) places great importance on the fact that journalists like Murphy, experienced and well-off white journalists, listen and talk. The first episodes do not suggest this humility. They do not seem to have learned that the world has not changed in the same way that Murphy does not like the most because of the absence of journalists like her, but also because of the limitations of journalists like her. The show does not question yet its long-standing position, namely a frank discussion – a frank discussion, if you will – is what it takes to change the policy and undo the reputations that you feel have been unjustly won.
Creative Diane English, who is still the leader of this project, knows exactly who Murphy is, and seeing the character with her intact mind is fun. But the show almost requires living and dying by its ability to talk about what we might call our present moment. Not only our current moment in politics, but our current moment in journalism. And although there is a lot of potential for talking about these things in a truly welcome way, this is not happening yet.
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