The Reboot Will Be Televised Archives

Reboot, Squared

TV can’t reboot its way out of its past errors, any more than an individual can fix their past trauma by reliving it, over and over again.

The show’s white, middle-age, upper-class liberals clumsily realizing their privilege are an accurate mirror of some of its viewers.

The turn toward an aesthetic of Black excellence on TV reveals a mode of self-fashioning that celebrates neoliberal markers of merit and prestige.

“Picard” is perhaps the least utopian of any “Star Trek” media. But’s that because its political pragmatism shows how to build a better reality.

“Star Trek: Picard,” “And Just Like That…,” “Bel-Air,” “Reboot”: even within our age of the reboot, old stories offer new insights.