The series ended in 1999 after seven seasons
with a two-part finale that did some time
hopping of its own. Janeane Garofalo played
Jamie and Paul Buchman’s only child, Mabel,
who was seen all grown up for the first time
since infancy when she narrated 22 years into
the future to end the show.
The future is now. The new show picks up as
an anxiety-prone Mabel (Abby Quinn) heads
off to college, unraveling mom Jamie in the
apartment where the Buchmans continue to
live in downtown New York, just five blocks from
Mabel’s New York University dorm room.
It was that seamless timing, Mabel’s emerging
adulthood, that got the two stars thinking they
could do it all over again. That and the fact that
some shows in recent years have rebooted with
a shred of dignity: “Will & Grace” and “Roseanne”-
turned-“The Conners,” for instance.
“We did everything we wanted to do and finished,”
said Reiser, who created the series with Danny
Jacobson. “Then we just — would we? I mean,
people want us to do it. It would be crazy, right?’”
Crazy but worth the risk? The original series
and various cast members won a Peabody, four
Golden Globes and 12 Primetime Emmys, Hunt
included. Its 45-minute extended series-ending
finale featuring Garofalo drew an audience of
nearly 20 million households.
Reiser, Hunt and others in the original cast,
including Richard Kind, John Pankow, Anne
Ramsay and Cynthia Harris, picked up from a
main set that’s about eight miles from where the
original was shot in Hollywood. Paul and Jamie’s
apartment is redecorated and expanded with
some of the same basic bones.