Thursday night’s episode of “Murphy Brown” (9:30 on CBS) finds the cantankerous news veteran (Candice Bergen) making sarcastic remarks about the president on the air — while veteran reporter Frank Fontana (Joe Regalbuto) becomes the unexpected target of White House hostility.
During a televised rally, the fictitious President Trump (voiced by impersonator Bob di Buono) says “Let Fibbin’ Frank know what you think of him — maybe a body slam.”
When Frank, who — series creator Diane English reminds us, was an “intrepid investigative reporter” in the first iteration of the series — decides to attend a Trump rally in Altoona, Pa., he is attacked by some of the president’s supporters. His injuries include three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and one eye that’s swollen shut. Says Frank to Murphy: “This is America and I don’t feel safe anymore.”
English says the story idea was “something we wanted to deal with since our development season in the spring. We were alarmed at the very angry rhetoric, vitriol and hate speech directed at the press and encouraged by the White House. We thought if it was going to escalate, it was possible someone would get hurt.”
Frank’s beating also stems from a real-life incident — when Republican Greg Gianforte “body-slammed” Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in Montana during a campaign stop in May 2017. Trump praised Gianforte, saying, “Any guy that can do a body slam, he’s my kind of — he’s my guy.”
English has said since the outset that this iteration of “Murphy Brown” would address the dangers journalists face today, a concern borne out by current events such as the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “Can you imagine anyone calling Walter Cronkite the enemy of the people?” she asks.
Frank’s attack prompts Murphy’s journalist son Avery (Jake McDorman) to do his own story on the Altoona incident, and he encounters the same level of hostility. The upshot? A horrified Murphy censors herself on air when interviewing a guest with questionable views regarding the rise of homelessness in the US.
“The Murphy we know would have eviscerated this guy,” English says. “It’s where false equivalency comes in. It’s a disease that’s killing journalism. You don’t have to show both sides if one of them is clearly crazy.”
“Murphy Brown” is nearly through its 13-episode first season and English says she is not surprised there hasn’t been any talk yet about a second season (it’s averaging about 6 million viewers a week). “We got our full order up front without a pilot,” she says. “I suspect the network would be reluctant to give us a pick up now.
“If they want us to come back, there’s no end of material.”
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