What do you think about when autumn rolls along? Falling leaves, perhaps? Apple picking? If you’re anything like me, it’s new TV shows. When I was growing up in the ‘00s and early ‘10s, I would pore over the fall schedules of each of the networks and get excited by the new series premiering and my favorites returning. This was before the streaming wars ruined television. Before Hollywood was overrun by tech. It wasn’t actually all that long ago, but it feels distant and irretrievable. I was so much younger then.
Fueled by that feeling of nostalgia that returns every September, I felt it’d be worth my time to revisit TV’s past, back through the years to before my era. I decided to recreate the programming on NBC on September 16, 1993 - the first Thursday night of the 1993-94 season, which was the one that introduced the famous “Must See TV” branding. I hope using the lens of one specific night of programming will be a useful and unique way to think about these shows, which have been analyzed a lot already, but never by me.
Must See TV was a slogan used to advertise NBC’s Thursday (and eventually other nights) programming between 1993 and 2006. In the ‘90s heyday, these sitcoms were a ratings juggernaut with massive cultural impact. The cream of the crop would define what a sitcom would become going forward, though partially because of the network’s attempts to repeat their success by airing a parade of shows with similar premises.
NBC’s Thursday night sitcom dominance predates the use of the slogan, as they had huge hits like Cheers and The Cosby Show in the ‘80s. So, choosing this specific night to look at is pretty arbitrary, as a successful study of great sitcoms could begin earlier or later. September 16th, 1993 featured the second season premiere of Mad About You, the fifth season premieres of both Wings and Seinfeld, and the very first episode of Frasier. I never really watched Mad About You or Wings, but I love Seinfeld and Frasier and have seen every episode of those shows.
One of the things I think this structure will help us think about is scheduling. Back when network TV was a thing people watched, it mattered where a network put a show on its schedule. What led into it, what aired opposite it on other networks were important factors in determining a show’s success. In the streaming era, what shows become hits (not to mention which shows are hits) seem a lot more mysterious. It’s all data that we don’t have access to. It’s an entirely different game now than it was in the fall of 1993.
I also like this structure because it helps me combat another dumb thing brought on by the streaming era, which is people’s compulsive need to start things at the beginning. Since streaming platforms list the episodes of a TV show in order, people have gotten used to watching them like that. To the point where they actively won’t engage with something they haven’t seen the beginning of. But it never used to be like that. You watched a show, and if you missed an episode, you missed an episode. Or you heard it was good so you tuned into the next episode. We have forgotten how to dive in.
So, I didn’t watch the first season of Mad About You or the first four seasons of Wings to prepare for this post. Because I didn’t need to. I anticipate this rubbing some people the wrong way, but I don’t care. I am a conscientious reader of texts and, after all, it’s a TV sitcom, it’s not that hard to follow.
8:00 pm - Mad About You
”Murray’s Tale” (Season Two, Episode One)
Written by Billy Grundfest
Directed by Thomas Schlamme
Paul (Paul Resier) and Jamie (Helen Hunt) have to look for their dumb dog when Jamie’s irresponsible sister, Lisa (Anne Ramsay), takes him for a walk and returns with the wrong dog.
As I said above, I don’t know this show, but this was a pleasant, if not laugh-out-loud hilarious episode. I liked that it manages to involve the whole cast, as they split into search parties, but it’s still all connected to the primary story of having to look for the dog. And the dog switch itself is sort of unbelievable, but it stems from the characterization of Lisa, so we can go with it. It seems like the ideal Mad About You story is about Paul and Jamie’s relationship, which this one isn’t, but it does build to a nice moment for Paul and Lisa’s relationship, which is an extension of that relationship, as Lisa is Jamie’s family. So, I feel like I understand what the show (at least in this era of its life) is trying to do. The conclusion of the episode, with the other couple, is the funniest part of it.
I must also mention the fantastic denim jackets worn by Paul and Lisa. The guest stars in this episode include a funny Jerry Adler and comedian Steven Wright. And I won’t make it a point to mention every time a New York City apartment on a sitcom is too large or unrealistic (because that banal commentary has already been offered thousands of times on the internet), but I must mention the Buchman’s kitchen, which is huge. I would like that kitchen.
8:30 pm - Wings
”Stop in the Name of Love” (Season Five, Episode One)
Written by Dave Hackel
Directed by Andy Ackerman
Brian (Steven Weber) attempts to take his relationship with Alex (Farrah Forke) slowly after the rest of the cast point out his love-‘em-and-leave-‘em ways.
Wings shares a lot of the same writers as Cheers and Frasier, and I’ve always thought of it as inferior to those shows. Perhaps it is, but this episode was great. It’s very funny, but even more important than that, it features some genuine character development. I know that shouldn’t be too much to ask of a sitcom, and yet, it often is. This is where you can feel the shared DNA between this show and Cheers and Frasier. Those shows (in their best years, at least) always put character first. As much as I like laughs, it's characters that are the mark of a good sitcom to me.
Even though this episode is squarely about Brian’s journey, all the regulars get some good, funny material with two exceptions: Thomas Haden Church’s Lowell, who is absent, and Alex. This is the first episode where Forke is credited as a regular and despite the plot being about her relationship, we don’t really hear from her until the end of the episode. That’s disappointing, and it wasn’t a surprise to read that the character doesn’t last another season. They clearly didn’t care about her character.
9:00 pm - Seinfeld
“The Mango” (Season Five, Episode One)
Story by Lawrence H. Levy, teleplay by Lawrence H. Levy and Larry David
Directed by Tom Cherones
George (Jason Alexander) worries he isn’t sexually satisfying his girlfriend. Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) learns Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) faked orgasms when they dated. Kramer (Michael Richards) gets into a feud with a fruit vendor.
This is a solid episode from the peak era of Seinfeld. The sexual talk is unique for network TV in 1993, and it’s also very funny. The early scene at the diner and the following scene where Kramer says he’s also faked orgasms are the funniest stuff that aired on NBC that night. Unfortunately, that’s the beginning of the episode. The rest of “The Mango” never reaches that comedic height and the story doesn’t build to much resolution. Ironically, there’s no climax.
Unlike the two above episodes, this one features multiple plots. That’s something that’s extremely common in sitcoms today, but was rarer in the past. Seinfeld is one of the series that perhaps could be credited with popularizing that structure. But, unlike the later imitators, Seinfeld always went to the extra effort of connecting the stories, usually by intertwining them in some clever way at the end of the episode. Seinfeld became known for this complicated, at times baroque, structure. When it works, it’s brilliant and sophisticated writing, and when it doesn’t, it feels forced. “The Mango” is neither brilliant nor forced, but the intersection between the Kramer plot and the rest of the episode isn’t as satisfying as we expect from Seinfeld. (The George story, which features Lisa Edelstein as his love interest, and Jerry and Elaine’s story are connected by the topic and thus are inherently linked in a way that doesn’t require additional intersection.) Am I nitpicking? Perhaps, but I know how good Seinfeld can be, so I can recognize that this episode is good, but not top drawer.
I do like the idea from which the Kramer story sprouts, as it is infuriating to buy a piece of fruit that’s no good. There should be some recourse. But, Kramer (and then Jerry) getting banned from the establishment is an idea that gets revisited in the much better “The Soup Nazi” episode a couple years later.
9:30 pm - Frasier
“The Good Son” (Season One, Episode One)
Written by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee
Directed by James Burrows
Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), having relocated from Boston to Seattle, must deal with his aging father (John Mahoney) moving into his apartment.
A pilot episode is an entirely different beast than the other episodes I’ve discussed, as it has different goals. Frasier’s pilot is unique still because it’s a spin-off. It banks on the audience being familiar with the main character already and lets the episode establish the tone, the setting, and the other characters. What’s so great about this show is that the tone is informed by the temperament and sensibilities of its main character. In other words, a Norm spin-off would feel nothing like this. The structure harkens back to a classic sitcom like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, where we follow the main character to work (where Roz (Peri Gilpin) is) and to his home (where Martin, Niles (David Hyde Pierce), and Daphne (Jane Leeves) are). We are brought into Frasier’s world so effortlessly, it really is one of the best first episodes of any sitcom.
The comedic centerpiece of the episode is when Daphne comes for the job interview. Is Daphne ever allowed to be as funny as she is in that scene again? I do think the show improves when it realizes that Niles is equally important to the dynamic of the Crane men as Frasier and Martin are, but with that elevation in prominence unfortunately comes a limiting of Daphne’s comedic potential. Because once Niles’s crush on Daphne is introduced (in the third episode of the series - Niles and Daphne do not share any scenes together in this episode), all of the jokes become about that. She’s no longer the funny one. Not a problem for this episode, but it’s something that slowly hurts the series over time. I mention only because it speaks to what sets Frasier apart from other sitcoms at the outset - the characters are extremely well-defined.
10:00 pm - Super Special All Star Comedy Hour
I debated whether or not to include the 10:00 hour because most of the Must See TV marketing was just about the sitcoms and not the hourlong drama that usually followed them. But it seemed weird to me to talk about ⅔ of the programming of leave a ⅓ undiscussed. Although LA Law was the show that aired in this spot for most of the ‘93-‘94 season, this night saw a strange stand-up special that was thinly veiled promo for NBC’s new shows. Hosted by Paul Resier and, um, Billy Cosby, it was an unexciting and mostly unfunny evening that started and ended with dancers dressed as peacocks. Oof.
The format is that one of the hosts introduces a comic in a new NBC sitcom who does his routine and then a clip rolls from the show. Rinse and repeat five times. I suppose I get the idea, since a lot of NBC’s sitcoms were derived from stand-up acts, including Reiser and Cosby. But it didn’t make me laugh and it didn’t make me want to watch any of the spotlighted shows. The comics featured were John Mendoza of The Second Half, John Caponera and Drew Carey of The Good Life (called The Bowmans in this special), that famous stand-up comedian Valerie Bertinelli of Cafe Amercain, and a duo known as The Mommies from the show of the same name. No offence to the Mommies (and I’m glad any female comics were featured), but did they really have to be folding laundry while telling jokes? Whose idea was that?
The Mommies was actually the only of the spotlighted shows to last beyond a first season (It was canceled after two). Guess this promo special didn’t help. The clip that was the most interesting to me was the one from Cafe Americain, which was briefly part of NBC’s Saturday sitcom block. And, to her credit, Bertinelli didn’t try to do a stand-up routine, but rather a bit where she took questions from the audience that were meant for other celebs. It wasn’t funny, but it was vaguely amusing. By far the funniest of the comics was Drew Carey (two years before the debut of his eponymous sitcom on ABC), who had edgy material about gun violence among postal workers.
There’s also a very brief appearance by Jerry Seinfeld and Jason Alexander, in character as Jerry and George. After one of the clips of the new shows, the special cuts to Jerry and George on the couch in Jerry’s apartment, having just seen the same clip on TV. They lament that NBC picked up these shows but not their pilot. It sounds funny but it’s not. It’s very short and there are no real jokes in it, perhaps a reflection of Seinfeld’s reluctance to being dragged into a promotional gimmick.
That was NBC’s Thursday night lineup 33 Septembers ago. A very entertaining night of television - if you turned off your set at 10.
What are your thoughts on this era of sitcoms? And did you like the format of this post? Let me know if you want to see more like it.
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