'Cupid': Chatting with creator Rob Thomas

The premiere of "Cupid" on Tuesday night will represent an unusual event in television. Remakes of shows from the past aren't that uncommon, but it's rare that a network asks a creator to take another shot at a show that didn't score in the ratings the first time -- and 10 years after the fact, no less.

That's the situation Rob Thomas finds himself in now. Thomas, who also created "Veronica Mars," talked with me at the end of January's TV critics press tour about how this "Cupid," which stars Bobby Cannavale and Sarah Paulson, is different from the previous "Cupid" and why he thinks the TV landscape may be more prepared to accept his brand of romantic comedy this time around. Here's what he had to say.

Is it any easier to redo a show that wasn't a big hit and isn't indelibly printed in people's minds?
That's a tough question, because I've never tried to -- I've never had that experience of doing one that's indelible in people's minds. I think so -- I think it probably will be. When I think about the people who are doing the next "Star Trek" movie or whatever, I think there are just certain things the fans will demand. It's the tough thing about doing sequels -- they want the catchphrase, they want all the things you're going to feel a little hacky doing. Whereas I don't think -- I'm certainly not feeling any of that pressure on "Cupid." The thing I'm trying to preserve is sort of the pace and the banter-y rhythm Trevor [Cannavale] and Claire [Paulson] use in dealing with each other, which I sort of thought was the gold of the show.

How long has it been in your head to take another shot at this?
It hasn't been. Strangely, after not thinking about "Cupid" for nearly 10 years, last year two different networks asked me to do it -- both The CW and ABC. Which struck me as very odd, and I think struck The CW as even odder, because they asked me to do it, and at the time I wanted to develop something else, and then ABC asked me to do it and I said yes. [Laughs] The CW's attitude was, "Haven't we been a home for you here?," and my attitude was, "Yes, you cancelled me." ... So it did kind of come out of the blue.

I had certainly thought about trying to get a romantic comedy on the air -- One, because it's a rhythm I'm comfortable writing in, and two, because I think left to my own devices, I can doom myself to writing critically adored shows that appeal to 12 people. And I do feel like ... if someone could do the slightly smarter version of "The Love Boat" -- I don't want to do "The Love Boat," but I want to do the thinking man's "Love Boat." Then I ask myself, "In doing the thinking man's 'Love Boat,' have you just stupidly destroyed your chance at a hit? Can't you just subtract the thinking man?" But I'm not quite built that way.

You mentioned that you're not going to go back to the old scripts too much. But are there any leftover ideas you didn't get to do the first time around?
Interestingly, the pilot was a leftover idea. That idea for a story, that Trevor finds a busker on the streets of the city who's been in America searching for a girl he met briefly before she flew back to America. Ten years ago that was going to be episode 16 of "Cupid" [only 14 aired], and in fact I'd set up a meeting to talk to Ray Davies, the lead singer of the Kinks, to talk about playing that role. We were set to have a phone call on a Tuesday, and on Monday [ABC] called and cancelled us. So that idea's been floating around for me for 10 years.

Any others?
There are certain episodes that I adore from the first time around that I'd like to revamp. One of my favorites is an episode in which another delusional patient of Claire's who believes he's Don Quixote begins to think of Trevor as his Sancho Panza, and they go in search of Dulcinea. That was one of my favorite episodes the first time around, and if I were to do another one that would kind of be at the top of my list.

Is the way people look for love or dates, the way that's changed in the past 10 years, going to inform how you write?
Yeah, and we certainly deal with it to a certain degree this time around. Ten years ago people weren't Googling the person they were going out on a date with, and even dates in the most traditional sense seem to have evolved. My perception on it has evolved quite a bit too, and I'm not sure for the better in terms of writing this show, in that 10 years ago I was a single 33-year-old who was living what I was writing.

I was asking myself the same questions the show was asking: What's it mean to fall in love? Am I looking for somebody who I have heat and passion and sexual chemistry with, or am I trying to find that friend, that companion, that person whose life goals I share? So the show was just an extension of the life I was living. Now I'm married and have two kids -- so there's a certain element that I have to keep up with pop culture to understand how kids today are dating, and that feels weird to me, honestly. Fortunately most of the writers in the room are single and in their early 30s, so there are plenty of people around to inform me.

Do you plan to revisit any of the couples Trevor connects, or is the idea that once he matches them up, it's true love and that's that?
If we make it a couple of seasons, yes. I think that would be a fun thing to do. That's a rich man's problem. ... I do love creating that world. One of the things I really enjoy about doing "Veronica Mars" was creating this small town. The joy of it is like the joy of "The Simpsons" -- you do it long enough, and suddenly you know everyone in town, and you have those actors you want to go back to. ... It was a great feeling three years in to have that real mythology and people who were established. So yeah, in success I hope we create that and can come back to couples we matched before and find again.

Then would it possibly be that they're having problems and might come off his slate?
It could be that, or another thing it could be is -- we have a couple of endings this year that I'd qualify as bittersweet. ... They've been pretty strict here in year one about trying to find the happy ending, but I don want to find -- in season two we'll have some couples that don't work. So we could revisit -- if we have a particularly heartbreaking episode, if we could come back to them a year later, that could also be a way to do that.

You said that in the TCA panel that you think it's a better time for romantic comedy. What did you mean by that?
I just think that post-9/11 and post-, just a glut of very serious shows -- and I don't mean this in a bad way, because there are plenty of them I like and watch -- but that spoke to fears and crime and just much heavier-duty topics. The other thing is that it seems like there have been so many mediocre-at-best romantic-comedy movies -- so many $100 million romantic comedies that you just look at and go, "Are you kidding me?," which makes me think that if you could unlock it for television, you could do well. Like I said, I don't think I'm known for my wildly commercial ideas, yet this is the commercial idea that I do believe in.

"Cupid" got us thinking about some of the other Greek gods we've seen on screen; check them out here. You can also see more photos from the show.

E-mail

• Digg
• Facebook
• Fark
• Yahoo Buzz
• Stumbleupon