I’m always very skeptical about reunions. Whether it’s bands, family, high school, or tv series…it always feels like maybe you should just let things ‘be’. I was fortunate enough to see Black Sabbath on their original reunion tour, same with Kiss when they put the original 4 back in makeup and toured the world. Honestly though, I was left feeling a little let down from both performances. While it was cool to be able to say, ‘I saw the original 4 once…’ the spark wasn’t there. For Black Sabbath it was the fact that Ozzy could barely move at the time and was using giant telepromters that even I could see in the nosebleed seats. With Kiss it was partly knowing that there was backup ‘behind the curtain’ for most of the show, and partly because no one really seemed ‘on’ that night. There was a lot of ‘going through the motions’ and it was obvious (at least to me). Lately there has been a lot of reunion hype surrounding reunions of TV shows…The Gilmore Girls did a reunion acouple of years ago that came out on Netflix that, even though I LOVED the original series, I’ve had a hard time bringing myself to watch. Maybe it’s the fear of sullying my memories of the show, or the time surrounding it, but I have had a hard time jumping on the ‘reunion’ bandwagon. Mind you, I have been enjoying the ‘Fake Doctors, Real Friends’ podcast by Zack Braff and Donald Faison, that recaps the times surrounding the filming of Scrubs.
In any case, there is finally a reunion that I’m buying into, hook, line and sinker! It was announced this week that the cast of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (minus the late James Avery aka Uncle Phil) would be reunited for an HBO Max special to air around U.S. Thanksgiving in November. I’m excited to see what the cast will bring to the table for this reunion and see what the characters have actually been doing since the show ended in 1996. You can check out all of the details that have been released so far here.
All of the cast have gone on to do different things, but I’m definitely curious to see if they’ll have the same chemistry and what they will do to address some of the issues the world is facing today!
