ReBoot: The Guardian Code Earns Its Fan Backlash

I’m old enough to be able to remember when The Simpsons first started using Comic Book Guy — the portly, surly, and above all opinionated proprietor of Springfield’s local comic shop — as a stand-in so the show could poke fun at its die hard fans. The reaction was as swift and negative as you’d expect, with series’s biggest devotees (often its biggest critics) taking great offense, not only at being cast as schlubby lowlifes, but at having their concerns dismissed as pointless, nerdy nitpickery.

So it felt like deja vu when ReBoot: The Guardian Code — the 2018 revival of the groundbreaking 1994 computer-animated television show, ReBoot — depicted the hardcore fans of the original series in nearly the exact same way and received the same sort of response.

“Mainframe Mayhem” is The Guardian Code’s episode-length homage to its 1990s predecessor, but it also features a live action Comic Book Guy equivalent who’s depicted in less than flattering terms. The episode’s fan stand-in is middle-aged and chubby, obsessed with the original ReBoot, and when on the verge of finally beating a two decade-old video game, talks about how his mom complained that he’d been wasting all of his time in her basement.

That series of jabs became an inflection point for the original show’s small but vocal fanbase, who had been agitating for a revival and feasting on scraps for more than a decade. Despite that excitement, the older fans were immediately skeptical of this new show. Diehard Reboot-heads were perturbed by every detail that emerged about destined-by-title revival; they lamented the final product when the show debuted and found this little kick in the pants to be the final straw.

My apologies to Mark Leiren-Young for comparing him to Comic Book Guy here.

It’s not hard to see why The Guardian Code would rankle longtime fans, whether or not they fit that homely nerd stereotype. The first nine episodes of the new series have almost nothing to do with the original show, save for one repurposed character and the old logo. While the original ReBoot was entirely computer animated, a pioneering first for television, The Guardian Code splits its time between live action in the real world and CGI in the digital one. And in terms of spirit and tone, the new series has more in common with other “teenagers get superpowers” shows like Power Rangers (with dashes of The Matrix and The Last Starfighter thrown in for good measure) than it does with its predecessor.

And yet, there’s something laudable about how The Guardian Code aims to be its own thing. We live in the age of the remake and the late sequel, where more and more properties are being brought back from the dead. But it’s the rare installment — think Twin Peaks: The Return or even Star Wars: The Last Jedi — that’s willing to mark genuinely new territory and do something that builds on, but is not beholden to, what came before. It would be folly to put The Guardian Code in that same category, but it’s admirable how the new series is not simply a ten-episode dose of nostalgia, but instead tries to establish itself as a unique thing in its own right.

That makes me sympathetic to the creative team behind The Guardian Code in the midst of this backlash. It’s inevitably a challenge to try to do something new with a familiar property. The pushback is unavoidable, as older fans don’t like their favorite toys being stashed back in the toybox or changed from their warm, familiar guises. So my natural inclination is to respond to ReBoot fans smarting from their dorky in-universe proxy with the same mantra I had for Simpsons fans grousing about Comic Book Guy — “lighten up.” It’s okay for a show to poke a little fun at its own fanbase from time to time.

But there’s a few things about The Guardian Code in general, and “Mainframe Mayhem” in particular, that give me pause.

"What if I tried to...I don't know...stab Megabyte with a banana or something?"

First and foremost, regardless of its pedigree or the burdens of fan expectation, The Guardian Code just isn’t very good television. The quartet of teenagers who’ve been chosen to save the world are each one-note archetypes with the latest coat of “hip youth interests” soullessly applied to them. The characters’ motivations vary from the rote to the needless opaque. The dialogue on the show vacillates between passable-at-best and thoroughly atrocious. And the pacing of the series is downright bizarre at times, with strange cuts, teases, and pointless scenes stitched together with little sense of flow or rhythm.

Granted, The Guardian Code is not all bad. The villains from the old series eventually show up, and not only feel true to their past appearances, but give the new show a boost with some legitimately interesting wrinkles and complications. Vera, a digital A.I. who becomes a teenage girl through some poorly-articulated computer wizardry, manages to generate some real humor and pathos a la Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. But these are small comforts in the The Guardian Code’s ten episode slog of a debut season.

Rest assured, the original ReBoot was not exactly a masterpiece every week, and it had more than its fair share of stock conflicts and hokey bits. But the show had two advantages that The Guardian Code lacks. The fully-CGI presentation made ReBoot visually distinctive for its time, even when the stories were no great shakes, and the “inside of a computer” premise offered something unique in terms of worldbuilding and created endless possibilities for the show to map real life struggles into a digital environment.

The Guardian Code, on the other hand, can’t rely on the novelty of its computer-generated graphics, which can be seen anywhere and everywhere in 2018. And its “four teenagers with attitude fighting the bad guys” setup just makes it the latest in a long line of similar shows that have all but exhausted that premise. Without any real novelty or innovations, all that’s left in The Guardian Code is a standard kids’ action series with noticeably poor execution, and it’s not hard to see how longtime fans could be annoyed at the title of one of their favorite shows being used as a trojan horse for something this bad.

"You have to save them, rangers...I mean guardians! Ay yi yi!"

But “Mainframe Mayhem” is the icing on that hard-to-swallow cake. The episode includes the brief and unsatisfying return of ReBoot’s original heroes, who appear as caricatured versions of their former selves that mainly exist to spout old catch phrases and pass the torch. But apart from that minor indignity, apart from the easily-forgivable continuity snarls, and apart from the geeky depiction of ReBoot’s fanbase (which still deserves to be laughed off), the final episode of The Guardian Code seems to offer a clear message for fans of the original show — “this isn’t for you.”

And that’s fine! Remakes can be calibrated to capture the imaginations of a new generation even if they put off the old one. The 2000s-era version of Battlestar Galactica can be intended for a different audience than the 1970s original. For kids’ shows in particular, older fans need to reckon with the idea that the old installments of what they love with always be there, and that if they’re not into something aimed at the current generation, the right choice is to simply not watch, buy, or recommend it, rather than ranting and raving.

Lord knows there’s more than enough fan entitlement and fan outrage to go around right now without the world needing more fanboys lamenting that the current version of the thing they liked at age ten is no longer satisfying to them in their thirties.

The problem is that “Mainframe Mayhem” is dismissive of the show it’s nominally a sequel to in a way that leaves a sour taste in your mouth. The protagonists and trappings of the original series are carelessly reduced to their shallowest elements. The old heroes are trotted out in a perfunctory fashion and then shuffled off again once the new characters have had the chance to prove they’re better than the older versions. And the shut-in obsessive fan, whose room in his parents’ basement is decked out in ReBoot merch from floor to ceiling, is made out to be a loser for caring about the show all this time, literally and figuratively.

"We really think of it as a love letter to the fans."

That feels wrong, especially when the reason this new show is on the air in the first place owes to the type of fan enthusiasm and affection for the old cult series. We live in a world where studios cling to any bit of recognizable IP as a means to make their projects financially viable in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Given that state of play, more shows and movies should use those recognizable brand names as a springboard to tell new types of stories, with different kinds of characters and challenges, in new and different ways. Otherwise, we’re just not going to get them at all.

But it’s a two-way street. Fans should have tolerance for franchise revivals taking familiar stories and characters in new directions. And at the same time, those fans should be able to expect that a new project will treat what came before with respect, and that the old stories and the folks who loved them will not be greeted with derision or dismissiveness beyond some good-natured fun.

It’s easy to say “it’s not for you” when you’re reviving a two decade-old children’s show and get pushback from middle-aged grumps (like yours truly). But that’s a harder charge to level when you sell the show with a title that’s only familiar to those same middle-aged grumps, meant to gin up excitement, enthusiasm, and most importantly, funding for your new project. It’s hard to complain about your fans when the brand name used to sell your show is only made bankable by that same set of fans.

"They both ride hoverboards! So they're friends now!"

It’s churlish to complain about an old property going in a new direction. But it’s fair to take issue with a show riding a familiar brand, putting out something disconnected in spirit, tone, and premise from its predecessor, and then looking down on the fans irked by what amounts to a revival-in-name-only, and worse yet, looking down on the show they liked, the one that made the new show possible.

It’s fine to poke fun at your fans from time-to-time, especially where, as here, the actual writer of “Mainframe Mayhem” plays the schlubby shut-in who’s so hooked on the original ReBoot, adding a self-effacing layer to the episode’s digs. But it’s not fine to do what The Guardian Code does in a broader sense: borrow a recognizable title for something mostly unrelated, offer an inferior product, and then dismiss and deride the original work, and the fans who made that title still worth something all these years later.