Party of Five Is Being Rebooted with a Piercing Immigration Twist

Party of Five Is Being Rebooted with a Piercing Immigration Twist

TV studios rebooting popular shows from the 90s is very old news at this point. Whether it’s the suc..

TV studios rebooting popular shows from the 90s is very old news at this point. Whether it’s the success of Fuller House on Netflix or NBC’s attempt to resurrect an entire Must-See-TV block of sitcoms, everything old is new again. But while some resurrections strive to re-create the familiar without any significant or compelling thematic updates, Freeform’s new take on Fox’s mid-90s dramedy Party of Five will introduce a sharp political message to the story of a family of children trying to make it without their parents. Instead of a car crash, deportation to Mexico will leave these kids to fend for themselves.

The original Party of Five starred future Lost leading man Matthew Fox as the eldest brother (and legal guardian) of the Salinger family, which counted Scott Wolf,Neve Campbell, and Lacey Chabert among its members. The kids are left to fend for themselves in 90s San Francisco after a drunk driver kills the Salinger parents. The Salingers’ shenanigans consistently struggled in the ratings, but the show was a valuable property for Fox given its popularity with a young, devoted female audience. (A tricky demographic to capture at the time.) The show’s stars—particularly Campbell and Jennifer Love Hewitt—would lead a number of smash-hit teen movies of the day. In other words, the show has a serious nostalgia factor for some people who may still have their Scott Wolf teen-idol posters tucked away somewhere.

But rather than wrangle Campbell, Fox, Love Hewitt, and the rest back for a look at the grown-up siblings navigating the modern world, the show’s original creators, Chris Keyser and Amy Lippman, have decided to turn the Salingers into the Buendias children and make deportation rather than drunk driving the destructive force that rips this family apart. With immigration crackdowns growing more stringent by the day, Americans are confronted daily with stories of families divided by the Trump administration’s policies.

There is no word yet on whether all of the show’s Buendias siblings will have been born in the United States, but there is potential for the subject of DACA and the Dreamers to play a role in the show as well—at least for the older members of the family. Keyser and Lippman have engaged first-generation American writer Michal Zebede (Castle,Devious Maids) to co-write the pilot with them, and Rodrigo Garcia to direct.

Party of Five isn’t the first show to tackle the subject of deportation in an updated look at a classic TV family. Netflix’s One Day at a Time, which turned the Coopers of the 70s into the Cuban-American Alvarezes of today, took a very poignant stab at the same topic for a side plot in its critically acclaimed first season. In that plotline, Elena Alvarez’s friend Carmen (played by RunawaysAriela Barer) is introduced for an episode before the audience finds out that she has been rendered parentless and effectively homeless by deportation. (The character eventually moves away to live with family in Texas.) One Day at a Time—which earned raves for tackling not just immigration but sexual identity and veterans affairs as well—took a very compassionate look at the toll these policies take on children.

Since it’s very early days yet, and Freeform has only committed to a pilot, not a series order, for Party of Five, there’s no telling exactly how harsh a condemnation of the Trump administration’s approach to immigration this show would be. But equivocating death by drunk driving with deportation in the premise alone is enough to make a strong statement. Freeform is no stranger to tackling social issues; on series like The Fosters,Pretty Little Liars,Switched at Birth, and The Secret Life of the American Teenager, the youth-focused network has long mixed progressive values with the usual teen-soap story lines. In addition to One Day at a Time, this new Party of Five is also just one of many immigration-themed series, including projects titled Illegal,Have Mercy,In the Country We Love, and Welcome to Maine—all looking to hit home with American viewers.

Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Joanna RobinsonJoanna Robinson is a Hollywood writer covering TV and film for VanityFair.com.

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