The upcoming Night Court sequel series can illustrate how to best rehab questionable old characters for social sensibilities in the era of #MeToo. Starring Harry Anderson as magic-loving judge Harry Stone, Night Court was a hit for NBC, running for nine seasons from 1984 to 1992. In addition to Stone, Night Court featured a variety of other colorful characters, including towering bailiff Bull (Richard Moll), intrepid public defender Christine Sullivan (Markie Post), and perhaps most famous of all, sex-obsessed prosecutor Dan Fielding, played by future star of his own show, John Larroquette.

Dan was never without a lecherous comment towards females he found attractive, and his end goal during interactions with them was usually to get them into bed. He was also fond of snarky insults towards his colleagues overall. That's not to say Dan didn't get rebuffed plenty of times by the characters he lusted after, particularly Christine, but arguing that his behavior on Night Court would be seen as highly inappropriate in 2021 is a massive understatement.

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Back when Night Court came out, TV was full of comically oversexed male characters such as Dan, and while that type of character certainly still exists today, it's much less prominent, and anyone exhibiting that kind of behavior is likely to be called out repeatedly. Yet, Larroquette's Dan Fielding is the only original Night Court star set to return for the show's upcoming sequel starring Melissa Rauch (The Big Bang Theory's Bernadette Wolowitz) as Harry's daughter Abby. Simply transplanting Dan from the 1980s into 2021 would be disastrously received, offering Night Court the perfect opportunity to illustrate how to properly reform and evolve such a character.

Night Court Reboot Melissa Rauch Abby Stone John Larroquette Dan Fielding

John Larroquette is 73-years-old going into the Night Court sequel, and one presumes Dan is in his 70s as well. He's lived through the same decades of social change everyone else has, and while he still works at the same court, it's hard to imagine him not growing personally since then. At one point or another, Dan surely learned — or was outright told — that his behavior and treatment of women at work wasn't something that would be tolerated. It's also possible that Dan came to a moral epiphany entirely on his own, as while he certainly acted like a creep on the original Night Court, he was shown to still have some decency down under his womanizing exterior. It's been nearly 30 years since fans saw Dan on Night Court, and it's possible he finally did some growing up as he got older.

Of course, the best way to show off Dan's evolution as a man and character is to not only have him act differently, but also to openly acknowledge his past failures. An episode could take a look at Dan's time in between shows, and reveal exactly how, when, and why his views on women changed. The real-life #MeToo movement can actually be incorporated in that, as it could've forced Dan to reckon with his own actions that likely left the women around him feeling harassed and traumatized. Another great potential use of Dan could be him encountering a younger man who behaves in similar fashion to how he once did, and taking him aside to point out how wrong that is, and how his behavior can hurt people in a way he'll live to regret. Of course, Night Court is still a comedy, and Dan can still crack his share of witty zingers, they just hopefully won't be about how much he wants to sleep with his co-workers this time.

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