(sign buzzes) (upbeat, thoughtful music)
- I want to talk about 9-11.
- No!
- I thought we were friends.
(laugh track)
- So I was rewatching some of my friends recently--
- It's just called Friends, Daniel.
- No, I mean I was rewatching my friends.
Chandler, Joey, Will, Grace, Jerry, Elaine,
Kramer, George, Caroline, the city--
- Ah, you were watching Friends
and then the rest of the Must See TV lineup.
- Yeah, it's summer in an odd year,
what was I supposed to do?
- What do you do in winter of even years,
rewatch all of Snick?
- Yes.
- And somethin', somethin', somethin',
9-11, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Great point, Daniel!
Can we go now?
Because I've got an excuse to come up with.
- Okay, so Must See TV was NBC's comedy lineup
that ran on Thursday nights from 1993 to 2006.
- Who at this table do you think would not know
what Must See TV is?
Who are you saying this for?
- It's where they tested out new shows
and kept their powerhouses.
- Yeah, your Mad About Yous,
your Seinfelds, your Friendses.
- Yes. My friendses.
In the mid to late 90s and the early 2000s,
Must See TV meant hanging out with your friends,
all of which were in New York City.
- They can't be all--
- Seinfeld, Friends--
- Just Shoot Me, Will and Grace--
- Veronica's Closet! - Veronica's Closet! Hey.
- Mad About You, the Naked Truth,
Fired Up, Stark Raving Mad,
the Single Guy, all New York.
Screw the rest of the country,
the stuff you need to see, the people you must see
are all in New York.
- Suddenly Susan took place in San Francisco.
- But only for a year.
It was reshuffled mid-season
and eventually settled on a Monday time slot.
Suddenly Susan was an outlier,
like the short-lived Boston Common,
a show that none of you even remember,
that none of you could tell me what it was about.
No one brave enough at this--
- Oh, a 20-something from Virginia
delivers his sister to college,
falls in love with a stranger,
and then moves there to woo that stranger.
- Yeah, that's called stalking.
He moves in with his sexually active sister
and tries to inspire her with his chaste pursuit
of the stranger with whom he is allegedly in love,
as if to say, "Sure, sex is bad,
"but at least being creepy is just aces!"
Thanks for reading this, Michael.
(gasps)
- Boston Common wasn't long for Thursday nights
because Must See TV belonged to New York.
The fast-paced, diverse, hipper than you,
mother (bleep) capital of the world.
At a certain point, they just started naming shows
after locations in New York.
- Battery Park-- - Union Square--
- And Union Square. - And Battery Park!
- Yes, both of those.
Then the city in Caroline in the City was--
- New York City!
- Yes, all of your friends were
all hanging out in New York City,
from Phoebe Buffet on Friends
to a second character on Caroline in the City,
they were all hanging out together.
There's not workplace comedies,
its not family comedies,
it was a bunch of friends hanging out,
all of them together,
but only in New York.
- Only in New York!
- That doesn't apply here.
- Also, they're all friends with one another's shows.
Phoebe's twin sister is a waitress on Mad About You,
and Paul Reiser shares an apartment building
with Cosmo Kramer.
There's even an episode of friends
where Caroline is in the city,
and she's hit on by Joey and Chandler
while they're taking care of their friend's baby,
and she just thinks that they're a happy gay couple,
(chuckles) and they are just so upset about that.
(sighs)
- Ross was on--
- Ooh, the Single Guy!
See, Jonathan Silverman thinks that Ross is gay,
and then the rest of the episode is mostly
just jokes about that.
- The point is, it's all the same New York, the same bubble.
Even the outlier, Frasier in Seattle.
He's still just another intellectual coastal elitist--
- All I got was some attitude and a cheap glass of wine.
Loire Valley, my ass.
- He's in the same bubble as everyone else back in New York,
and you must see them.
You must look at them.
And then--
I forget, then what happened?
9-11! - 9-11.
- That year had an hour of Friends
followed by Will and Grace and Just Shoot Me.
A bunch of wealthy, bored people
hanging out in New York, livin' their lives.
The year after 9-11,
Must See TV debuted a show called Good Morning, Miami.
- Strange name for a show based in New York.
- They also had one of the first single-camera sitcoms,
Scrubs, about a doctor who escapes
into wild imaginative fantasies
while he's working in a hospital
in an undisclosed middle-of-America town.
NBC was fleeing New York, and fleeing reality.
- Yeah, but the last couple of seasons of Friends
kind of left reality, too.
I mean, they didn't even acknowledge 9-11.
Wait, didn't we talk about this already?
- In New York, during 9-11,
and didn't mention it once!
- Joey even left New York in Joey.
- Friends couldn't handle 9-11,
so they retreated to the heartland
and to a fantasy world.
The shows that stayed in New York weren't
about privileged, wealthy people
just hanging out, enjoying their lives,
it was about privileged wealthy people
who'd get hired at a job so we can enjoy
watching their mean boss enjoy firing them.
- You're all fired.
- Or they were liberal Hollywood elites
giving grand speeches about how great New York is
only to get spat in the mouth by a complete stranger.
- But Kenneth the page is just an insulting caricature
of a TV-guzzling country bumpkin.
Self rebuttal, he does turn out to be some sort of god.
- Who said I've been alive forever?
- Ooh, I hope that happens to me and my character.
Wait, did we already talk about this?
If I've followed the events correctly,
I think I might be some kind of magic.
- A New York exodus was clear.
The top billed show for years
after 9-11 was My Name is Earl,
a show about a simple guy in a small town doing good deeds.
- Yeah, but they were all small towns.
In the Office in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Pawnee, Indiana for Parks and Recreation,
Greendale, Colorado--
- In season four Community.
- Okay, all right.
Later, we're gonna talk later.
- It's you.
- Everyone left their big American melting pot bubble
for smaller, more comfortable bubbles,
and they all went single cam.
All of 'em.
No laugh track.
Maybe we weren't sure if we could laugh anymore.
(groaning)
- Or perhaps more interesting,
the single camera led us
to a more voyeuristic look at the world.
Mockumentaries, suddenly diving inside people's heads
to see their fantasies.
We didn't trust each other anymore.
We were more paranoid.
- Right! The friends were no longer friends
from Friends anymore.
They were just workplace comedies,
people forced to work together in an office like the office
from, well, Parks and Recreation.
- Right, you can choose your friends,
but you can't choose who you work with.
If it's a workplace show,
then you're suddenly surrounded
by a bunch of people that you might not agree with.
You fight, you argue, but then,
after many, many seasons, you start to get along,
you learn to trust each other, learn to like each other,
learn to love each other, and become a family.
- So what's your theory?
Why did you bring this up?
- He already said. 'Cause he loves us.
Hey, I love you, too, man.
In a very deep, intense, scary way.
In that way, I (bleep) love you.
- No theory, just a thing I noticed.
I notice things, I'm a noticer.
Like for example, Must See TV,
the year it started, that was the last year of Wings.
- Yeah, planes.
- Yes, that's right, Michael, planes.
- Uh, wait,
okay, planes, 9-11.
That's--
no, forget me, that's nothing.
- Isn't it?
- Okay, so Daniel, you're saying what,
that Wings did 9-11?
- No, I'm not saying that.
I'm not saying anything.
I just had a thing.
I know it's kind of half baked,
but note cards.
I, I had a thing.
- Okay, but Daniel, just to reiterate,
your thing is just the theory
that 9-11 changed everything.
- Mm.
Didn't it?
I'm gonna start, let's go around the horn
and list things that 9-11 changed,
and I think we'll be here for a very long time.
New York.
- Uh, well, let me think of one.
- Must See TV.
- Cadbury Egg size.
I blame 9-11.
- Mm-hmm, amount of money spent on war.
- What shampoo I can bring on a carry on.
- Green tea-flavored Kit Kat bars.
Most of mine are candy related,
but we'll get through 'em.
- That was hit the hardest,
probably. - Yeah.
- Hey, everybody, thank You for watching
that episode of After Hours.
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A lot of time to burn, still.
I really went right through that.