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TV reboots are not a new thing. These days they seem to be the only thing, but they are definitely not a new thing. It has never been a bad idea to rehash something that is tried and true because fans want to see these characters back in their lives, and producers need, badly, to find a built-in audience. The times that a reboot flops seem to outnumber the successes, and often it is just a lucky strike that makes a new show spark. When Will & Grace came back it was as though they had never left, the chemistry and the humor intact, even compounded, while Murphy Brown tried to update the show with the same cast members playing their same characters, but with tired jokes and boring premises. Meanwhile brand new actors playing established characters has seemed to work for Dynasty, Charmed and Hawaii Five-0. Fuller House and Girl Meets World are merely a continuation of the adult lives of child characters that audiences loved. A television reboot can take any form at all, depending on the imaginations of the creators. After all, if you think about it, Hot In Cleveland was kind of The Golden Girls with a few years shaved off, including Rose Nyland as Sophia Petrillo. Absolutely anything can be recycled, especially when it comes to sitcoms because there is practically no sitcom premise that hasn’t been tried – so rebooting a classic sitcom needs to be a well thought out process.
One Day at a Time is considered a classic sitcom, the original having run nine seasons, but the original premise wasn’t new when it debuted in 1975. A single mother raises her children. By that time audiences had already seen single mothers in sitcoms with Julia (1968), The Lucy Show (1962), Here’s Lucy (1968), and The Doris Day Show (1968) to name a few, and a situation comedy, by its definition, needs a situation. Enter Schneider, the superintendent for the building in which the Romano family lives, a quirky, nosy, know it all who becomes like family to the three women — there’s your sitcom. That was great in 1975 but sitcoms have grown since then and Norman Lear, the genius who developed the show, knew that when he rebooted it for audiences in 2017. He was aware that this present day reboot would need something more substantial to speak to today’s audiences.
And he chose Rita Moreno.
An EGOT winner, Miss Moreno’s presence in this sitcom is the happy byproduct of the savvy decision to change the family in One Day at a Time from Caucasian to Cuban, bringing to television a representation of a community largely overlooked by the TV producing Powers That Be. Throughout television history viewers have tuned in, hoping to see someone like them. Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. urged Nichelle Nichols to not leave Star Trek because she presented a strong black woman in a position of authority at a time when people of color needed to see that. Margaret Cho broke ground when All American Girl became the first TV sitcom centered around an Asian family and now there are more Asians on the air than ever before. Billy Crystal’s Jodie Dallas garnered much attention on the TV show Soap but there had actually been gay characters on shows dating back to, at least, 1972. Everyone wants to turn on their TV and see someone like them, and One Day at a Time 2017 brings not just a Latin family to television but a Cuban-American one, and viewers responded passionately with ardor and respect for the reboot.
Penelope Alvarez is a veteran with PTSD, divorced from another vet with PTSD who turned to alcohol for comfort, and she is raising her daughter and son with the help of her flamboyant and fabulous mother, Lydia. The family of four live in an apartment building owned and run by a 12 Stepping, trust fund man-child named Schneider and, together with Penelope’s bumbling and adoring boss, they navigate the daily trials and tribulations of an extremely modern day lifestyle, including racism, addiction, coming out gay, teen drug usage, PTSD, ageism, trans/non-binary lifestyle and more. Fortunately for audiences all of these subjects are handled in classic sitcom style, with much laughter due to excellent writing that dips unexpectedly and blissfully into the pool of poignancy before dropping another belly laugh into our laps. At no time does an episode of One Day at a Time feel like an after school special, it always feels like an entertainment — with a message artfully woven in.
With Norman Lear back leading the charge, it is no surprise that One Day at a Time would turn out as good as it did. The indefatigable nonagenarian seems to have no plans of stopping any time soon. By his side in the Captain’s Chair is co-creator and show front runner Gloria Calderon-Kellett, whose own Cuban background informs the creative process on set – a large number of writers credited for the series have Latin names, indicating a sense of loyalty and accuracy to the telling of tales of this Cuban-American family, a feat that is absolutely essential since episodes throughout the three seasons of the show deal with teenage daughter Elena’s Quinceanera, centered around her coming out and Cuban attitudes surrounding homosexuality. There are storylines centered around traditional Cuban beliefs regarding psychotherapy and medication for depression, and others that focus upon obtaining one’s US Citizenship. There is great specificity in the writing, so as to focus fully on the Cuban American lifestyle, and yet the series possesses a truly universal quality to it so that audience members who are not of a Latin background can enjoy the storytelling as well. That is the true gift that Lear and Calderon-Kellett have bestowed upon their audience: specificity inside of universality.
These gifts, though, would be lost if One Day at a Time did not have a cast of actors bringing to life the characters that bring us to their hearts. Justina Machado has an impressive list of credits to her name but it would be hard to imagine that any role she has played has been as close to her heart as Penelope, the hub in the Alvarez family. She handles all of the aspects of Penelope’s (sometimes Lupe or Lupita) life with precise comic timing and massive amounts of pathos. In mere moments she changes scene courses, causing big laughs where, moments before, viewers were crying. Penelope is as natural as your own next door neighbor, even when the sitcom acting is as broad as a crutch on a banana peel with a Laugh In laugh track. We go where she goes because Machado is driving, and with the skill of Grand Prix driver.
In three seasons we have seen Isabella Gomez (playing impassioned activist daughter Elena) handle every one of her character’s crises with impeccable sitcom acting skills, while youngest cast member Marcel Ruiz matches every adult on the show playing Alex, Penelope’s precocious teen heartthrob of a son. The family dynamic between these three is extraordinary, the kind of chemistry you look for when tuning into a new show for the first time, hoping against hopes that it will be good – it is sitcom gold, and when you add in the legendary Moreno, it becomes gold dipped in diamonds.
In a time when aging has become the hippest thing you can do, where Betty White is the Engergizer Bunny and George Takei is more famous than ever before, in an age when Tony Bennett is the coolest cat in the recording studio and Helen Mirren is the sexiest woman in the movies, Rita Moreno is the Grand Marshall at the Parade. With the role of Lydia, she is showing people that a woman in her 80s can be active, fun, fiery, passionate, silly, sexual and fiercely protective of her family. She brings a lifetime of experience to her performance, and one hopes the younger actors working with her pay attention to her every move so that they can carry on her excellence into a new generation. This is inspired casting that gives new audiences a chance to observe a bona fide original, and one of the greatest talents of all time, showing the world how it’s done – not just acting, but living, tool.
While the original One Day At A Time relied on the quirkiness of Schneider to round out the sitcom feel, this new One Day At A Time brings in a Schneider that is equally as quirky as the original, but with added dimensions. As the 12 Stepping addict, Todd Grinnell brings a groundedness to the nosy neighbor who wants, almost desperately, to be a part of the family. In only one season he not only makes us want the Alvarez family to adopt him, he makes them want to, as well. Watching he and Penelope develop a sibling-like relationship, while he acts as the kids’ favorite Uncle and Lydia’s bestie, all the while fighting his own demons, is only one of the beautiful humanities on display, and there are many.
Observe Lydia’s devotion to her late husband, even while Penelope’s boss (the incomparable Stephen Tobolowsky) develops a heartaching crush on her. Enjoy Penelope’s outright giddiness when the swoon-worthy EMT Max (hunky Ed Quinn) pursues her. Hold tight for the moment Alex shuns his heritage after being race-bashed publicly. Languish in anguish when Elena’s father lets her down in the worst way and the rest of her family swoop in to save the day. No mere sitcom is One Day At A Time, as it hilariously brings into frame important issues of the day, not shying away from uncomfortable topics more suited to hour-long dramas than sitcoms but, rather, putting a Norman Lear sized spotlight on them, the kind of spotlight that illuminates the tears running down your cheeks into your mouth, wide open with laughter.
Today’s One Day At A Time is not for today, it is for every day, timeless, ageless and essential.
Three seasons of One Day At A Time are on Netflix. For the moment, the show has been cancelled. There are rumors it may be picked up by another network
Have you watched One Day at a Time? Tell us what you think!
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