CW's new reboot of USA's The 4400 (2004-2007), now just called 4400, added nothing revolutionary to the old, except some woke updates like a lesbian couple, BLM anti-police attitudes, and a shout-out to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The first episode, "Past is Prologue," premiered on Monday, October 25. The premise of the show is that 4,400 people who mysteriously disappeared at different times in the past all reappear suddenly without explanation and no memory of what happened. They are being held in a hotel as the U.S. government tries to piece together the mystery. According to TV Insider, the reboot is "told from a Black perspective, which, co-showrunner Ariana Jackson says, addresses 'our country’s inability to reckon with its history of white supremacy.'”
One woman, Shanice (Brittany Adebumola), a black mother who disappeared shortly after her baby was born, flashes back to when she first met her husband, a white man named Logan (Cory Jeacoma), at an anti-war rally in the early aughts. Shanice was pushed into a white police officer and the police officer took an aggressive stance grabbing his billy club.
Protesters: No blood for oil! No blood for oil!
Logan: Hey, don't put your hands on her!
Logan: She was pushed. You could see that.
Police Officer: Watch yourselves.
Logan: You all right?
Shanice: Oh, I'm fine. It's that man who wasn't raised right!
Logan: I know, right? I don't know how parents let their kids go out in the world and treat people like that.
Shanice: This seems to be a pattern among people who look a lot like you.
Logan: Fair.
Another bit of Hollywood dialogue in which white men are supposed to agree with hating themselves. Logan goes on to date and marry this woman who judges him hostilely by the color of his skin.
Throughout the premiere, white cops are shown as aggressive, particularly towards black characters. The episode pushes the Black Lives Matter narrative that life is no better for black Americans today than in the pre-Civil Rights era.
In fact, Claudette (Jaye Ladymore), a black woman from the 1950s, bemoans the supposed lack of change.
Claudette: All this talk about the future. You know, my husband and I have been jailed and worse for organizing the vote for Negroes. If it was really 2021, I'd have hoped we'd made more progress. (Exhales) That it wouldn't feel the same.
When not pretending that their has been no Civil Rights progress for black Americans in over 60 years, the show offers the necessary pandering to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court Justice that Hollywood weirdly worships. Hollywood consistently acts like Ginsburg is the only woman to have ever been on the U.S. Supreme Court.
When Shanice, who is a lawyer, is mistaken for a secretary by a man from the 1920s, Shanice replies, "Excuse me? You did not just say that in Ruth Bader Ginsburg's America." (Shanice is not yet aware that Ginsburg has died.) Somebody please tell Hollywood writers that Sandra Day O'Connor was actually the first female U.S. Supreme Court justice. O'Connor literally was asked to be a secretary when she first applied for a job as a lawyer. For the left, only certain glass ceilings matter.
Hollywood appears unable to create original scripts anymore, instead creating predictable woke reboots of old series. You can skip this latest unimaginative "reimagining" of a once original idea.
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