Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/16/the-greatest-american-hero.html
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“Rachna Fruchbom and Nahnatchka Khan.”
In my next life, if I’m good, I’ll have one of these two names.
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I loved the show as a kid, but in rewatching it, it pretty much gets by on William Katt’s charisma and a terrific theme song. But it’s a great concept that has a lot of potential for revisiting.
Related: William Katt was pretty good as Pippin on Broadway!
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A lady hero? What’s next? Is she going to rescue a helpless prince?
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Not only a female lead, but one of East Asian descent whose culture is incorporated into the plot.
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What I find kind of hilarious about all this breathless discussion is that it isn’t even a new concept.
The Greatest American Hero ran on ABC. The last episode is actually called “The Greatest American Heroine” where Ralph was told by the aliens that he’d gotten too famous and to find a replacement, and (shocker!) he chose a woman! This was apparently an attempt to revamp the show into a backdoor pilot to move the series with a new lead over to NBC. Seriously. The opening credits even say “The Greatest American Hero” and then tack on an I-N-E to the tune of the N-B-C ident.
It wasn’t picked up as a series and the backdoor pilot failed. But they were already working on having a woman lead back in 1983.
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What about Robert Culp? (Connie Sellecca was also fairly decent, but perhaps not genuinely memorable.)
They already attempted a “Greatest American Heroine” series back in the '80s, but never got beyond the back-door pilot:
ETA: Scooped! If I hadn’t taken the time to look up the actual show, I would have been first. Damnation!
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Don’t forget Robert Kulp.
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Yeah, I agree with you 100%. I was young enough to love it as a kid, but now I cringe at the production value and terrible stories. Definitely wouldn’t mind seeing a reboot with better writing and special effects, it’s a story idea that can work in many different ways depending on the lead character the suit chooses. I just hope she figures out how to fly a little more competently than he did. 
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So, what, Ralph just had the suit sitting in a box for the last 30 years? The woman he picked was a mere baby at the time? It got lost in the mail?
I’m actually a bit afraid that one of these ideas will be the actual reboot premise.
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Super Power: Indestructible Hair.
Of course, everyone in the 80’s, men and women, had indestructible hair.
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Believe it or not.
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Given the premise of the original was “we lost the instructions to the magic suit”, you may not be too far off the mark.
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Wasn’t the original about some kind of gawky highschooler? There’s nothing at all wrong with making the “hero” a “heroine”, but this seems like such a shift in premise as to defeat the point of calling it a “reboot” at all.
no… he was a subsitute teacher and was a grown up.
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I really like fresh off the boat, so I hope this hits that same great mark of both stingingly observant and goofy and fun. Also hoping Simone is more entertaining in this role than on New Girl. Definitely could’ve been the way they wrote her character (show was a mixed bag, to say the least) but she was pretty consistently a snoozer.
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I cannot wait for the remake of Krofft Super Show.
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I loved it as a kid too, but all I remember is the terrific theme song. I was literally listening to it the other day, before I even knew about this reboot.
Oh, shiiiiitttt…
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I loved that show so much as a kid…but all I can really remember about it, other than the premise, is Robert Culp’s FBI agent saying the word “scenario” a lot.
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Roger that.
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