Objection! The Original Night Court Wasn't as Bawdy as You Remember

Many of my childhood memories are centered, for some reason, on conversations grownups had when I was around. One that sticks out vividly took place during a trip to Disney World between my dad and my Uncle Harold. It was about NBC's hit sitcom Night Court.

We were hanging out at the hotel's swimming pool. My head popped out of the water after doing a sick cannonball, and my dad mentioned the name Harry Anderson, the late magician, comedian and star of Night Court. The conversation grabbed my attention because Anderson was one of the first entertainers I ever saw performing magic and comedy together on a Saturday Night Live rerun. This was back when the show made time for comedy acts that didn't involve the cast.

Anderson's comedy style was just as sharp and brilliant as his magic skills. His pre-stardom act took on the character of an old-fashioned hustler and con artist who wore loose suits and a painted tie that he claimed he got because "the guy couldn't guess my weight." He performed in a way that even my 8-year-old brain could appreciate, talking to the audience like they were fellow con men and con women even when they were the ones being had.

Now let's go back to my dad's conversation. I heard him say that Night Court was such a bawdy show that Anderson wouldn't let his daughter watch it. Those kinds of warnings always stuck in my mind like a recommendation, almost a dare. Usually, there was something to these things that nobody, especially not adults, could see. They made the same mistakes with things like The Simpsons, MAD Magazine and The Ramones.

NBC has just premiered a sequel to Night Court starring Melissa Rauch as the daughter of Judge Harry Stone, who was played by Anderson. The actor died suddenly in 2018 at age 65, and in the days leading up to its premiere, fans on social media started posting the usual "Oh, I can't wait" or "Oh man, it's gonna suck because it's not the original" kinds of posts, but one in particular jumped out.

One of my friends, whose opinions are often well-informed and astute, said the sitcom relied on more tropes than any other show in history and wondered how a modern Night Court would even work when the original had a character like Dan Fielding, the lecherous, womanizing and degrading prosecutor played brilliantly by Emmy-winning actor John Larroquette.
Old sitcoms still run with regularity, especially now that almost all of them are sitting on a streaming service somewhere. Night Court is one of those shows that get booted up on my Kindle or iPhone during work or an evening meal. If Comedy Central's Beat the Geeks ever gets the reboot it so richly deserves, there's a chance you'd see me on the dais as the "Frasier Geek."

Night Court has fallen victim to a unique form of the Mandela Effect, a pop-psychology term for how our brains create memories of something over time that we believe are common knowledge but are in fact the opposite or never even existed. The NBC sitcom that ran for nine seasons in the late '80s and early '90s and won over 30 Emmys gets lumped in with the likes of Married ... With Children and Are You Being Served? which are shows in which the majority of the writing's flavor comes from lowbrow humor or outright cynicism.

Like most TV, Night Court isn't for young, impressionable minds, but its humor was not just one crass joke after another about getting laid.

Maybe Night Court is classified with those others (which are entertaining and classics in their own way) because its true charm and success came from the zaniness of its core characters and in watching what happens when you stick them in a metaphorical B.F. Skinner box from which they can't escape.
Judge Stone is an examination of Anderson's con-man persona if he'd decided to take a more noble path, along with his love for cartoonish humor and dime-store magic tricks. These two sides are woven together in a way in which they still infect how he runs his courtroom in a less than traditional fashion and even make him a little more sympathetic to people who break minor, insignificant laws. The vast majority of the comedy doesn't come from risqué situations unless they are part of the story — like a memorable moment when Stone gets into a prank war with an old mentor played by SNL's Gary Kroeger.

Our brains seem to be confusing zany as risqué. Maybe it's because Larroquette's performance as Dan Fielding is so bold and funny that his character ended up becoming the whole show in our collective consciousness. Remember that TV audiences in the '80s whooped at any person, situation or bit of dialogue that was even slightly sensual. Between that and the fact that everyone was sporting mullets, it's clear no one was getting laid in the '80s.

Even if that were the case, it was done well. Watching Fielding snap because he lets his smarmy, sexual proclivities rule him while he's stuck in a place he clearly can't leave is pure mental slapstick.
Take, for instance, Fielding's interaction with one of the show's semi-regular characters, Mr. Danielson, a defendant played in several episodes by Wesley Mann. Danielson suffers from a rare condition that makes him move as slowly as a cartoon tortoise. During his first appearance at the court, Fielding is itching to take a hedonistic trip, and Danielson gums up his plans when he appears in court for (what else?) obstructing traffic. As the bit builds, Fielding looks and sounds like his hormones are about to burst out of his chest like a baby Xenomorph.

This is just the surface. We haven't even gotten to the other characters in the courtroom, like the backwoods Wheeler family and its "aw shucks" patriarch played by future Star Trek star Brent Spiner, or the cranky court bailiff Roz played by Marsha Warfield — who we hope makes an appearance in this new series — and her towering but lovable co-worker Bull, played to perfection by Richard Moll.

The story and the character's motives may have some sexual overtones, but there's more to a show than our memory of the audience screaming "Whoo!"