Hulu cancels meta-sitcom Reboot

In a classic example of life imitating art imitating life (imitating art?), Hulu has decided to cancel meta-comedy series Reboot after one season—though, in a classic example of life imitating… etc., the show may have a chance to continue elsewhere. The show was created by Modern Family co-creator Steve Levitan and centered on a fictionalized version of Hulu deciding to reboot a classic sitcom from the 2000s with the original cast, leading to all sorts of humorous situations involving the TV business of today and yesterday and the cultural differences between now and then.

Deadline says that Levitan plans to shop the show around to other streamers and networks, with an unnamed streaming service having already asked to read some scripts for a potential second season. The show comes from 20th Television, which is Disney now, but this doesn’t really seem like a Disney+ thing… if we’re being honest, it really seems like a Hulu thing, and not just because Hulu exists in the show’s universe. If it does get picked up elsewhere, it will be interesting to see if they hit the central joke again and made it a plot point that Hulu dropped the show and Netflix (Peacock or Paramount+ or whatever) came in to save it. You can’t pass up an opportunity to do a “the reboot is getting rebooted” gag.

Reboot starred (or maybe “stars” if you want to be optimistic) Keegan-Michael Key, Johnny Knoxville, Calum Worthy, and Judy Greer as the original stars of its in-universe sitcom Step Right Up, with Paul Reiser playing the creator of the original show and Rachel Bloom playing the showrunner of the rebooted version. And since we may never get to make this reference again: At no point on Reboot did the characters live inside a computer and fight the evil viruses Megabyte and Hexadecimal with their friends Bob, Dot, and Enzo. (That was the premise of an unrelated animated show in the ‘90s called ReBoot.)