Closet Case
Without being woke or box-ticking, I think that Veronica’s Closet could be rebooted as a single-camera sitcom instead of a multi-camera sitcom (which looks like the TV version of theatre). The twist is that the main character would be a bisexual divorcée who decides to focus exclusively on dating women, albeit discreetly. I’m thinking more on the lines of imagine if Sex and the City had the sexual content of The L Word. These two shows had each lasted for six seasons whereas Veronica’s Closet only lasted for half as long. The other two shows had legacy sequels, And Just Like That… and Generation Q, that had lasted for respectively two and three seasons. Like HBO’s Sex and the City, NBC’s Veronica’s Closet took place in New York as did another NBC sitcom that was created by the same people i.e. the creators of Friends were David Crane and Marta Kauffman.
In Veronica’s Closet, the main character was a businesswoman who is renowned as the queen of romance. Her company, whose name was the title of the series, sold lingerie and other bedroom accessories. Her surname is Chase, which works even better in a reboot where she is chasing “tail” (or “skirt” to be more polite) or even involved in a paper chase. Then there’s the obligatory cut-to-the-chase quip. Back to the lesbianism angle, the irony is that season one of the original series had a real lesbian play the lead’s assistant. Like most sitcoms, Kirstie Alley’s star vehicle was PG. A reboot should be more grown-up to mine the comedic potential of the adult situation for all its worth. This is why the original floundered. Unlike the final season of the nineties sitcom starring Ellen DeGeneres, there shouldn’t be any preachiness or tutorials about what it means to be gay. Ironically, Ellen was originally known as These Friends of Mine in its first season but Friends aired later on that same year.
A riskier risqué reboot of Veronica’s Closet could last for six seasons like another female series that was ribald - HBO’s Girls, which also took place in New York. Going back to the nineties, New York sitcoms were very much “en vogue” as the French would say. Even before Friends, there was Seinfeld and Mad About You. After Friends began airing, there was Everybody Loves Raymond, The King of Queens, Will & Grace, Just Shoot Me! and Becker. To make the reboot of Veronica’s Closet stand out from the original, the protagonist could sell women’s clothes in general including jewelry (or “jewellery” as the Brits would spell it). Instead of sex scenes that could be viewed as leery like a lesbian version of Red Shoe Diaries, there could be awkward foreplay or post-coitus encounters. Whenever we do see mid-sex encounters, there would be awkwardness in the form of an interruption (in or outside the bedroom).
In some TV shows (usually single-camera ones), the sub-plot of every episode is the main plot of the protagonist’s life whereas the main plot of every episode is always the bit on the side. If you were making a series about infidelity, the sub-plot of every episode would be the spouse but the main plot would be the liaison. If you wanted to be cutting edge, you could have the sub-plots be flashbacks to when the protagonist was in a monogamous marriage. The idea being that there’s a point to be made about the contrast of time, sort of like those requisite flashbacks in Kung Fu, Psych and Arrow. You could switch things up a bit by making a series about someone who used to be a player but is now swearing off adulterous activities. Regardless of whether we’re talking past or present, you could hit two birds with one stone by introducing a polyamory scenario if you struggle to choose between two actresses who could play the significant other of the leading lady.
A kiss of death for any gay comedy would be to have someone who goes from being gay to straight or to create a pathos-driven narrative where the protagonist discovers that they may have feelings for people of the same gender. My take on a Veronica’s Closet reboot is that she knows where she stands with women, she just chooses not to advertise it and will do anything to keep people from hiding out. The series finale wouldn’t even be where the jig is up; instead she chooses to get married privately under the pretext of retirement caused by a self-inflicted scandal where she needs to get away from public scrutiny regarding a non-LGBT issue. One of the things that plagued the original series was that Kirstie Alley was into scientology - a religion that makes little of psychiatrists, hence why she sadly refused to reprise her Cheers character in the spin-off: Frasier. One gimmick for a Veronica’s Closet reboot would be to have Veronica confide to a priest in church confessions rather than a formal psychiatrist, but only because the priest studied psychology and isn’t trying to peddle medication to aid the sales of the pharmaceutcial industry.
One trope in sitcoms is having a character whose face we never get to see e.g. Cheers, Frasier and Friends. An abstract take on this concept would be to have Veronica create a person who doesn’t exist. In the original series, her nickname was Ronnie. This leads itself to a wide range of innuendos where a lover has to pretend to be straight when talking about the rowdy and raunchy Ronnie. It would be akin to a superhero story where there has to be countless excuses made for the existence of the pedestrian persona versus the superheroic alter ego. On the subject of topsy-turvy identities, it would make for an appealing stunt casting gimmick to have real homosexuals play heterosexuals whereas real straights could play gays. Instead of a rival company called Pandora’s Boxers (like in the original), there could be a rival company called Vicky’s Secrecy (as an allusion to Victoria’s Secret).