Veronica Mars. Entourage. Sex And The City. Seinfeld. Stahp.

When a TV show ends that we’ve invested so much of our time and emotional energy into — not to mention all the swear words we wasted at the government and its refusal to give us fast internet — it can be quite the blow. Luckily, due to the world’s collective refusal to move on (and Hollywood’s apparent inability to create much original content), it’s usually only a matter of time before talks of a reunion start to surface.

After the Veronica Mars movie, which was released over the weekend (reviewed here), the next show to jump on the reunion bandwagon will be Entourage. Because it finished in 2011 and that was SO LONG AGO YOU GUYS.

Due for release in 2015, the reunion film will feature Vince (Adrian Grenier), Ari (Jeremy Piven) and the rest of the gang, showing us what they’ve been up to. Presumably, there’ll also be lots of famous people doing cameos, and a heap of this kind of thing, too:

But why? Why do we push so hard for our favourite characters to get back together one last time? Why can’t we let them stay in their heyday in our memories, or in the reruns? Is it detrimental to the legacies these shows built?

Can a TV reunion ever be good?

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Chasing Nostalgia 

When something was once so awesome and enjoyable, it seems only logical that if you go against nature and narrative arcs and ham-handedly force that thing to exist again, it will only be WAY MORE AWESOME and SUPER FREAKING ENJOYABLE… Right? Riiiiiiiiiiight?!

When executed correctly, the reunion of old characters can be an effective way to satisfy the audience’s nostalgia. Think the Full House and Seinfeld Super Bowl ads from earlier this year. Brief and genuinely funny, they worked because they gave us just enough of a taste of what we’ve been missing. And importantly, they stayed true to the characters we knew and adored, without having enough screen-time to completely destroy their legacies.

But when executed incorrectly, the result can be awkward, unrewarding, and leave a bitter taste in the mouths of viewers. Case in point: when the stars of The Brady Bunch reunited for A Very Brady Christmas (1988), almost two decades after the original series first aired in 1969. Although the idea of watching the antics of a blended family while they were still young and cute was once plausible and entertaining, getting the aged actors together for some forced plotline came across as unnecessary and desperate.

Plus, poor pig-tailed Cindy (Susan Olsen) didn’t even make the cut! She was strangely replaced with some sort-of pseudo-Cindy (Jennifer Runyon).

 

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Chasing Closure

It would be easy to dismiss TV show reunions as an easy money grab from producers hoping to cash-in on already-successful franchises. But, in some cases, it’s the fan demand for closure that drives the resurrection. The very existence of Veronica Mars: The Movie is testament to this.

When the show it was based on was unexpectedly cancelled after the third season, there was no resolution for the characters or for the fans who followed their lives so intently. Plot threads were left hanging, questions were unanswered, and “marshmallows” (a deceptively gooey name for rabid fans of the show) were forced to rock back and forth in the foetal position for a few years, until a Kickstarter campaign was launched to get a movie version made and tie up all those loose ends.

The campaign was a gigantic success, raising US$5.7 million, and resulting in a feature film just a few months later. Closure, it seems, is quite the motivator.

With Entourage, however, the writers knew the show was ending. They had the luxury of forethought. They could write final scenes to conclude each character’s journey in a (hopefully) fulfilling manner. So the decision to resurrect Entourage as a film was not borne from a desire to wrap up the gang’s story nicely and achieve closure — or even to provide fans more of what they covet. More likely, it was the glaring dollar signs associated with the series that clinched the deal for the producers.

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Damaging The Legacy

Let’s not mince words here: the main problem with reunion movies is that often they just plain suck. Watching mediocre movies is always a less-than-ideal way to spend your time, but when it’s a movie based on characters you had previously loved, it’s like someone just threw a bowling ball into your nether regions. Painful.

Who can forget, for example, the abomination that was the Sex And The City movie and its ‘I’d-rather-stab-my-eyes-out-with-a-fork-than-watch-this-again’ sequel? And yet, because someone in Hollywood is really earning their pay packet, a third installment is now rumoured to be in the works.

At its peak, the SATC series was revered for its fresh take on friendship and its open discussion of female sexuality. But by the time the movies rolled around, the vapid, rich-white-woman entitlement of the characters had become too blatant and almost inexcusable, tarnishing the brand irreparably. The culturally insensitive Sex And The City 2 included a particular low-light, with Samantha (Kim Catrall) throwing condoms around like confetti in a conservative, Muslim country. Apparently, being borderline racist is so hot right now. Overwhelmingly, the media backlash to this film was harsh, yet justified. (‘I Watched 146 Minutes Of Sex And The City And All I Got Was This Religious Fundamentalism‘ reads the headline of a particularly hilarious review.) SATC fans should just collectively ignore that film ever happened, basically.

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Flogging A Dead Horse

Rumours surrounding a Friends reunion have been circling the interwebz for years. And with 2014 marking ten years since the series finale went to air — and about the same number of years since David Schwimmer starred in anything of note — whispers of a special anniversary episode are beginning to get louder.

However, keen to destroy the hopes and dreams of ‘90s sitcom fans everywhere, several former cast members quickly shot these fantasies down in flames — possibly accompanied by an evil ‘mwahahaha’-type laugh (unconfirmed). Courtney Cox claims they’re “too old” now, while Lisa Kudrow emphatically states a reunion “is never going to happen”. Matt LeBlanc also concedes he doesn’t see a Friends reunion in the future, providing the Most Convincing Reasoning Ever as to why a reunion shouldn’t occur:

“You know how they always say the book is better than the movie? Friends was about a finite period of time in your life, like after college but before your life really started. And that was the magic of it,” he said. “To see what they’re doing now? Who wants to see, like, Chandler pushing the stroller around or at his kid’s softball game? [… ]I think it’s better for people to imagine their own future for those characters.”

In summary: more often than not, your favourite TV shows are like that crazy dork you dated in Year 10. Probably best to leave them in the past, hey.

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Erin is a sub-editor for TV WEEK. She has written for Cosmopolitan, Girlfriend, Mamamia, and more. Follow her on Twitter at @erin_e_doyle.