The Rocky Horror Show may be coming back to Broadway, but the real time warp is happening in the Comedy Series category at the 2026 Emmys. As America’s collective nostalgia clock ticks over from the ’90s to the 2000s, the early aughts are making a real… Comeback.
Sure enough, 20 years after Lisa Kudrow first played the role of Hollywood striver Valerie Cherish, the HBO comedy has returned for a third and supposedly final (for real this time) season. And since it’s been a full quarter-century since Zach Braff’s J.D. Dorian entered the hallways of Sacred Heart Hospital, we naturally have a Scrubs revival with almost the entire original ensemble back in scrubs once again.
But you can’t get any earlier into the early aughts that Malcolm in the Middle, which launched its seven-season run on Fox on Jan. 9, 2000 — a mere nine days after Y2K didn’t happen. Twenty-six years later, Frankie Muniz is officially back as the put-upon middle child in one of the wackiest families to ever grace the small screen in the four-episode revival series Life’s Still Unfair. (By the way, this trend isn’t exclusive to TV; Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, and Emily Blunt are about to bring 2006 back in style on the big screen with The Devil Wears Prada 2. And on Broadway, Don Cheadle and Ayo Edebiri are headlining the first Broadway revival of Proof since it originally tread the boards in the year 2000.)
In their heyday, all three half-hour comedies found purchase with Emmy voters; Malcolm led the pack with 33 nominations and seven wins between 2000 and 2007, while Scrubs scored 17 nods and two victories during its 2001-10 run, and The Comeback received three nods for its first season and a single Best Comedy Actress nomination for Kudrow after its 2014 return. Repeats may not be a thing on television anymore… but we’re about to find out whether the same is true on the awards circuit.
Hal’s the boss?
To hear Malcolm mastermind Linwood Boomer tell it, he never had any intention of riding the 2000s nostalgia wave back to television. “Before we had started this whole thing, I had been very, very, very happily out of show business for quite a few years,” the show’s creator quipped at the Life’s Still Unfair New York premiere earlier this week. “So naturally, I felt some trepidation about coming back.”
Appropriately enough, Muniz’s onscreen dead, Bryan Cranston, was the cast member who knocked on Boomer’s door — and wouldn’t go away. “This was something I tickled with him about 12 years ago,” the Breaking Bad icon said. “I said, ‘Maybe a 10-year reunion movie?’ And he said ‘Absolutely not!'”
But Cranston wouldn’t take that “Absolutely not!” for a definitive answer, and eventually enlisted the powers that be at Hulu, which picked up the Malcolm rights as part of Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox’s film and TV arms. “Finally, I annoyed [Linwood] so much that he said, ‘If I come up with a great idea, I can see it happening,'” the actor remembered, laughing. “And we are all the beneficiaries of the great idea.”
In fact, Boomer couldn’t resist joking about just how much he benefitted from bringing Malcolm in the Middle back on Disney’s dime. “I could not be happier or more proud to be part of this shameless cash grab.”
Luckily, Gold Derby can report that Life’s Still Unfair, which is streaming on Hulu now, is a cut above your usual shameless cash grabs. Revivals of vintage family or teen comedies where all the once-young characters are suddenly wrestling with grown-up problems can be a dicey proposition. As an ’80s kid, I remember when the Brady Bunch — a family whose antics I followed in syndicated repeats — returned as The Bradys, with Marcia as an alcoholic and Bobby in a wheelchair. My younger self was also baffled to see the Archie characters transform from comic book teens into mid-life screw-ups in the bizarre TV movie To Riverdale and Back Again, which featured a divorced Jughead bonding with his young son through the power of terrible hip-hop covers.
It’s worth noting that Muniz is also a single dad in the Malcolm revival, and belongs to the growing pool of grown kids going “no contact” with their parents. But Boomer mostly navigates those potentially comedy-killing plot points well, and the cast slips back into their familial roles without missing a beat. As skilled at cooking up laughs as he was at cooking up meth, Cranston is clearly having a grand old time being stuffed into washing machines or accidentally macro-dosing psychedelics as dangerously goofy Hal.
But both iterations of the show really belong to Jane Kaczmarek’s formidable Lois, whose tough-love wisecracks inspired waves of laughter in the premiere audience. The actress was the most-nominated cast member of Malcolm‘s original run, with seven total Best Comedy Actress nods, while Cranston logged three supporting actor nominations and Muniz scored one Best Comedy Actor bid. (The late, great Cloris Leachman won two guest actress statuettes for her daffy performance as Grandma Ida, whose passing is acknowledged in the Life’s Still Unfair premiere.)
Kaczmarek is notably switching to the Supporting Actress category for the Malcolm revival, and is currently sitting at No. 19 in our Emmy nomination odds — the same spot that Cranston occupies on the Supporting Actor leaderboard. Meanwhile, Muniz lags at No. 29 in the Best Actor race and the show itself is way down at No. 32 among the various Comedy Series contenders. Given their respective Emmy histories, Malcolm’s parents are the best hopes that Life’s Still Unfair has at a 26-years-later awards comeback and even that’s looking like a long shot.
Comedy Supporting Actress
1.
2.
Janelle James
Abbott Elementary
3.
Jessica Williams
Shrinking
4.
Sheryl Lee Ralph
Abbott Elementary
5.
Carol Burnett
Palm Royale
6.
Liza Colon-Zayas
The Bear
7.
Ashley Padilla
Saturday Night Live
8.
Michelle Pfeiffer
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
9.
10.
But when we caught up with Cranston at the Life’s Still Unfair afterparty — with specially-blended Hal-garita in our hand, natch — the five-time acting Emmy-winner emphasized that awards weren’t part of the calculation behind annoying Boomer into making this revival happen. “This is all for fun,” Cranston said with a smile, adding that the fun was made better by all the hard work that went into making Life’s Still Unfair a worthy continuation of the Malcolm legacy. That’s a rare bit of fatherly wisdom from Hal you’ll actually want to listen to.
Comedy Supporting Actor
1.
2.
3.
4.
Bowen Yang
Saturday Night Live
5.
Ebon Moss-Bachrach
The Bear
6.
Tyler James Williams
Abbott Elementary
7.
Nick Offerman
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
8.
Marcello Hernandez
Saturday Night Live
9.
10.
Waiting for Superman
Welcoming audiences to the New York premiere of Rooster last month, Bill Lawrence clocked a familiar laugh emanating from the crowd. “Thank you, Zach Braff — love it,” the super-producer said when his Scrubs star cracked up at one of Lawrence’s gags. Braff wasn’t repping Scrubs at the event; he directed two episodes of the Steve Carell-starring collegiate comedy, which was just announced as HBO’s most-watched freshman comedy series in over a decade. Carell has seen his Emmy odds rise as Rooster achieved hit status, now occupying the No. 6 spot on our Best Comedy Actor leaderboard, while the show is lingering just outside of the Big 10 at No. 12.
And Rooster isn’t the only show that Lawerence can crow about; his Apple TV hit Shrinking just wrapped up an emotional Season 3 and is a clear comedy priority for the streamer with last year’s Emmy blockbuster, The Studio, not returning until next year. Leading man Jason Segel is No. 2 on the Best Comedy Actor chart, while Hollywood legend Harrison Ford may finally win the supporting actor statuette that eluded him last year after voters chose Somebody Somewhere‘s Jeff Hiller… wisely.
With the spotlight very much on Rooster and Shrinking, that leaves the Scrubs revival feeling like an also-ran. To be fair, ABC is bringing Lawerence and the cast — including Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke — to PaleyFest this weekend for some FYC love. (Look for Gold Derby’s in the room report afterwards.) And the famously tight-knit group will be gracing another event on April 14 at the Television Academy’s Saban Media Center. Still, the initially strong ratings for Scrubs have dipped in recent weeks and the network has notably yet to announced a renewal, even as Rooster nabbed a Season 2 pick-up and Shrinking rounded third and is heading for a time jump-enabled Season 4.
Given those hurdles, it’s gonna take a superman to lift the show out of its mid-tier rankings across our leaderboards. But hey, Braff could still chart a course to the Emmys for calling “Action” on his pair of Rooster episodes.
Comedy Actor
1.
2.
Martin Short
Only Murders in the Building
3.
Adam Brody
Nobody Wants This
4.
Steve Martin
Only Murders in the Building
5.
6.
Jeremy Allen White
The Bear
7.
Tim Robinson
The Chair Company
8.
9.
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II
Wonder Man
10.
Ted Danson
A Man on the Inside
Cherish the thought
Now here’s an early-aughts show that’s not striking prognosticators as a museum piece. In reviving her always-prescient Hollywood satire, Kudrow made sure that The Comeback would speak to the current times — specifically the already-occurring industry disruption caused by nascent AI technologies. “Just as reality TV was the ‘almost extinction event’ for scripted television [in 2005], it’s the same feeling now about AI,” the Emmy-winning Friends star said at a press conference that Gold Derby attended ahead of Season 3’s launch.
“I firmly believe an audience will always let you know what it likes and what it doesn’t,” Kudrow added, endeavoring to strike an optimistic note. “There might be some AI entertainment that audiences like, but it’s not going to take over everything.”
The Comeback‘s focus on the here and now as opposed to the then and gone is resonating with critics, who have awarded the latest edition series-best reviews. And it’s sure to hit home — potentially a little too close to home — with TV Academy voters who have experienced AI’s encroachment in real time. Of all three revivals we’ve been discussing, The Comeback is best positioned for Emmy recognition, with Kudrow sitting at No. 2 behind Hacks star Jean Smart on the Best Comedy Actress leaderboard, and the show achieving Top 5 status among the Comedy Series contenders. It would be the show’s first-ever nomination in the “best in show” category.
Comedy Actress
1.
2.
3.
Quinta Brunson
Abbott Elementary
4.
5.
Kristen Bell
Nobody Wants This
6.
Elle Fanning
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
7.
8.
9.
Selena Gomez
Only Murders in the Building
10.
Rachel Sennott
I Love L.A.
In fact, if it weren’t for Deborah Vance, it’s highly likely that 2026 would be Valerie Cherish’s year at long, long last. So far, though, Hacks‘s final season narrative is winning out over the 20-years-later return story that The Comeback is telling. It just goes to show you that even when a revival proves how everything old can be new again, it’s still hard for Emmy voters to say “Hello” to yesterday.
Comedy Actress
1.
2.
3.
Quinta Brunson
Abbott Elementary
4.
5.
Kristen Bell
Nobody Wants This
6.
Elle Fanning
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
7.
8.
9.
Rachel Sennott
I Love L.A.
10.
— Additional reporting by Denton Davidson
