"Reboot with a twist" alert.

Deadline:

ABC has handed a pilot production commitment to The Wonder Years, a new iteration of the network’s 1980s family comedy-drama. It comes from Dave executive producer Saladin K. Patterson, Empire co-creator Lee Daniels, the original series’ breakout star Fred Savage and 20th Century Fox TV.

Written by Patterson inspired by his experiences growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, the new incarnation of The Wonder Years chronicles how a Black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama in the turbulent late 1960’s — the same era as the original series — made sure it was The Wonder Years for them too.

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ABC offered a number of interesting messages under the guise of 'The Bod Squad.'

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Remember the Bad Jack Beard from Lost? The one on Matthew Fox's face that kept insisting that everyone had to go back to the island? If the show's creators had gone with their original plan, that beard would have never existed. In an excerpt of The Revolution Was Televised (featured on Grantland), Alan Sepinwall's new book about the making of ABC's cult hit, it's revealed that despite his early, leaderly standing among the castaways, Jack (Fox) was almost offed and replaced by Kate (Evangeline Lilly).

In the vein of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (or even the pilot of Oz), they planned to pull the rug out from under the audience by killing Jack midway through the first episode, forcing Kate to take charge. After this sudden demise, viewers would realize no one was safe. [Damon] Lindelof says Steve McPherson, then the head of the ABC studio, made a convincing counter-argument that it would teach viewers not to trust the show, and the writers ultimately agreed with him.

In the end, it was decided that the character of Kate wasn't dynamic enough to lead the show; in fact, she had not originally been written as the fugitive she turned out to be. Instead, she was one half of a couple who had been separated in the plane crash. (Those roles ultimately switched over to Rose and Bernard.) Switching from Kate to Jack may have been the best course if her character hadn't been completely decided on. But it's kind of a bummer, especially when you consider that the show's creator, J.J. Read the rest

It wouldn't be a Boy Meets World sequel series without the titular "boy," so it was reassuring news to hear that said boy, Ben Savage, would be reprising his role as Cory Matthews in the Disney Channel's upcoming Girl Meets World pilot, about his character's fourteen-year-old daughter. He won't be alone, either -- he'll be joined by Danielle Fishel, who played his TV wife Topanga Lawrence. Really, it would have been downright stupid to do a show about Cory and Topanga's kids without the original actors (though Disney definitely still would have made it without them).

My first thought upon hearing this news was "Yay!" My second thought was "Aren't they, like, 23? A little young to have a teenage kid." After a quick Wikipedia check, I was clearly mistaken. When they got married on Boy Meets World in 2000, Cory and Topanga were in college and could have been around eighteen or nineteen, putting them in their early thirties now, as well as their real-life counterparts. They'd be very young parents, for sure -- but it's 100 percent feasible. And it's not the young parenthood that's throwing me: it's realizing that Savage and Fishel did not inexplicably cease to age after the show ended and are, indeed, full-on grownup persons. Which means that since I'm the same age as they are, I must be a full-on grownup person, too. And there's your (my) sobering, smacky-in-the-face entertainment news of the day.

Girl Meets World is, as of right now, just a pilot for a potential series, which will be told from the point of view of Cory and Topanga's daughter, Riley. Read the rest