Worst Filler Shows in the NBC "Must See TV" Thursday Night Line-Up

I liked “Suddenly Susan” I didn’t realize the network considered it fodder.

I watched all these garbage shows. I’d be interested to see how Veronica’s Closet holds up. The worst one was Good Morning Miami which was the first indication we had that Mutchnick and Kohan were a one-hit wonder with Will and Grace.

Wasn’t there a show called Union Square Cafe or something similar that lasted a couple years and was beyond terrible?

Nurses

Coupling

Don’t forget my show! Kirstie

I saw Hope & Gloria on either syndication or reruns, it wasn't great but I really liked Jessica Lundy and the whole thing reminded me of Kate & Allie which I loved as a kid. I believe Lisa Kudrow played Phoebe on Hope & Gloria but I don't remember the reasoning behind that crossover.

I think Cursed/The Weber Show was one of these shows. It was awful.

“Jesse” with Christina Applegate

“Everybody wants a girl like Susan…”

"Good Morning Miami" had Mark Feuerstein, who was looking really cute back then.

Friends. They plopped it before Seinfeld to give it ratings.

Sad Suddenly Susan. It was the needy girl always chasing approval. So formulaic. So forced.

I hated the one with Jonathan Silverman, but I loved that his character had a framed poster from the Lincoln Center production of The Threepenny Opera in his living room.

Hope and Gloria wasn’t bad. Suddenly Susan had appealing supporting characters. The Single Guy was just awful.

Wow, I don't even remember Hope and Gloria but fuck that intro at r9 is embarrassing

Let’s face it, Thursday night was only ever a thing because of Cosby.

R16, Must See TV had dynamite ratings for a decade after that serial rapist left the air. And even before everything came out, Seinfeld and Friends had massively eclipsed The Cosby Show in syndication.

[quote]Coupling

I will never forget seeing that cast interviewed shortly before the premiere and how smug they all were, like they just KNEW this show was going to be a ratings smash that would run for 10 years and win Emmys for all involved. Guess things didn't go exactly as they expected.

Hope & Glory

Piss & Shit

R17: Not really, no. [italic]Seinfeld[/italic] is tainted by Michael Richards’ racism, and [italic]Friends[/italic] was pure dreck from start to finish kept alive only by the corporate decrees of a dying movie studio that also enabled Kirk Cameron’s career in a [italic]Cosby Show[/italic] ripoff and who has been bounced from owner to owner since the turn of the century.

How did "Hope & Faith" run 3 seasons and I never managed to catch one single episode?

[italic]Family Ties[/italic], [italic]Cheers[/italic], and [italic]Night Court[/italic] couldn’t even get better ratings than [italic]Webster[/italic] in their pre-Cosby seasons.

Boston Common.

In the thread about the worst TV theme songs, somebody posted one from a late Tartikoff-era Thursday night flop called [italic]Grand[/italic], which looked anything but.

[quote]Family Ties, Cheers, and Night Court couldn’t even get better ratings than Webster in their pre-Cosby seasons.

R22, exactly. It's not a defense of Bill Cosby in any way, shape or form to acknowledge reality: he alone was to thank for creating "Must See TV" on Thursday nights on NBC, period. Nothing, no matter what horrible things he's done otherwise, will ever change that fact.

Until "The Cosby Show" premiered in 1984, Thursday nights were a disaster for NBC. "Fame," "Hill Street Blues," "Family Ties" and many other well-known shows that had aired that night were either canceled or near-canceled until "Cosby Show" came along and saved the entire evening. Yes, it continued for several more years after "Cosby" was over with shows like "Seinfeld" and "Friends" but you cannot rewrite history just because we would later find out Cosby was a serial predator. He made NBC Thursday nights and that will always be an indisputable fact whether some (like R17) want to admit it or not.

It was on cable access, but surely that sad Damages show with what's her name would qualify.

Just Shoot Me always seemed like a filler show.

Anything with Jonathan Silverman. How many failed sitcoms was he on?

Kath & Kim with Molly Shannon and Selma Blair was terrible.

How did Margaux from [italic]Punky Brewster[/italic] manage to be the less racist one?

[quote] Anything with Jonathan Silverman. How many failed sitcoms was he on?

They put him on [italic]Gimme A Break![/italic] around the time of Dolph Sweet's death which left him with little to nothing to do on the show except get Julie pregnant. It seems like everything after that was trying to make up for how that didn't quite go as planned. That wasn't his fault. As they used to say on TV, "medical science has only come so far."

Indebted.

[quote]Seinfeld is tainted by Michael Richards’ racism

It was already tainted by Kramer's utter annoyingness every time he shuffled into Jerry's apartment and the audience cheered.

[quote] Let’s face it, Thursday night was only ever a thing because of Cosby.

r16=Phylicia Rashad

I don't know if they were the very worst, but I absolutely hated Dear John and Wings.

[italic]Dear John[/italic] couldn’t possibly have been worse than that awful show Tony Danza was doing on ABC concurrently. That show was so bad it was basically the [italic]Friends[/italic] of the 1980s in terms of the gap between ratings and quality.

[italic]Wings[/italic] was just boring. I can’t believe they got seven seasons out of that mess. And Thomas Haden Church enabled Mebra Dessing to have a career.

1988 - 1998 was the apex of my NYC social life so I missed an era of Must See TV. I caught Seinfeld in reruns.

Thank god TV programming has changed and we’re no longer dependent on formulaic weekly episodes.

Let me tell you about Mebra Dessing.

Fired Up!

R13 I thought the Threepenny Opera poster was used in Mad About You! I always wanted one and remember seeing it in a sit com, but I have no recollection of The Single Guy

I hope he does so leftists cannot use that as an excuse for the Cuban government’s cruelty to their people.

r40, scroll down to see and read about Paul Davis' poster for The Threepenny Opera, which was used on The Single Guy.

[quote]Paul’s iconic poster for the Public Theater production of Three Penny Opera is on the wall of Jonathan Eliot’s apartment in the NBC sitcom The Single Guy.

My vote goes to “Jesse”. Not even Christina Applegate and the super hot Bruno Campos could save this one. I remember being annoyed at the time that the actor playing the mute brother was probably making millions of dollars a year to show up and literally just sit there without even having to say a word. They retooled the show completely for season 2 but it was beyond saving.

Speaking of Bruno Campos, he apparently quit acting several years ago and is a lawyer at a big NYC firm now.

[quote] Let me tell you about Mebra Dessing.

Forget her, what about me? I was supposed to be the next Jane Pauley, but that backstabbing golddigging bitch Katie Couric had other plans.

Neborah Dorville was never going to be big. She was the Marla Maples of morning TV. She does corporate videos now.

[quote] Neborah Dorville was never going to be big. She was the Marla Maples of morning TV. She does corporate videos now.

R45, Deborah Norville has been the anchor of the TV show Inside Edition, since 1995. She is also on the board of directors ViacomCBS.

"The Naked Truth" with breakout star Téa Leoni and Holland Taylor.

[quote] They put him on Gimme A Break! around the time of Dolph Sweet's death which left him with little to nothing to do on the show except get Julie pregnant. It seems like everything after that was trying to make up for how that didn't quite go as planned. That wasn't his fault. As they used to say on TV, "medical science has only come so far."

He got a lot of buzz for Brighton Beach Memoirs and a lot of film work. When his movie career flopped. He got tv roles again.

R47 and others, the thread is for nbc Thursday night duds.

Scrubs was pretty bad, Zach Braff's mugging could make anyone long for Jonathan Silverman and Becky #2 was a bore. I didn't mind Jesse in the first season when she worked in the restaurant with George Dzundza as her father. The show was still ranked #12 in the Nielsens when they canceled it after season 2

Cosby might have first made Thursday nights on NBC big in the eighties but by the time it became Must See TV in the 90s, NBC had completely abandoned the family sitcom that Cosby did. It instead became dominated by the Cheers and Night Court type comedies built around friends or co-workers, not domesticity. Which gave rise to Seinfeld and Friends, even Mad About You and Frasier weren’t really “domestic” sitcoms.

I watched Caroline in the City because I thought Malcom Gets was hot.

R49, The Naked Truth aired on NBC after Seinfeld for 2 seasons and finished #74 in the ratings. Is that not a dud?

I only watched The Single Guy once, and I remember:

A. Being surprised to see Olivia D'Abo was on it

B. A fake commercial that featured in the plot, that I still find myself singing occasionally

If you like butter

You'll like butter better

Brindle's Better Butter in a Can

Ooh-la-la

At least that is how I sing it, not sure if it is correct - that was a long time ago

"Men Behaving Badly" with DL fave Ron Eldard and Rob Schneider.

And DL fave Justine Bateman.

[Italic]We Got it Made [/italic] was on Thursday nights the year before Cosby. A truly dismal show despite the fact that the male leads were very good looking. Perhaps they should’ve been lovers and the show wouldn’t have sucked as much.

Ah, yes, Hope and Gloria, starring DL Push Actor queen Cynthia Stevenson.

r53, The Naked Truth only aired behind Seinfeld for three months (when The Single Guy was finally kicked to Wednesday and they moved Suddenly Susan after Friends; after three months--because they only ordered 13 episodes for the first NBC season--it was replaced by Fired Up). It was #4 that season. The next season they moved it to Monday with Susan, Caroline and Fired, and it immediately tanked.

Most of the episodes of The Naked Truth--which was definitely a filler show--are on Youtube. I tried watching a couple and it was dire. I did enjoy this interview with Amy Hill, who joined it in the final season, at The AV Club. Sounds like it was a nightmare. ------------- "The other bad experience I had was working on the last season of The Naked Truth with Téa Leoni. She hated the show and wanted to be off the show and, for the whole season, tried every way to be fired. So every episode, rehearsing was hell, and taping was hell. One of the actors actually kicked a writer during the taping and was fired, and I had to do the rest of his lines for the rest of the episode. It was crazy.

My character was a tabloid photographer, and [Princess] Diana was killed before we started shooting, so my character couldn’t be my character anymore. So I’m a tabloid photographer one day, and the next day, they said, “We think your character’s more like a Roseanne Barr character that lives in Beverly Hills.” It was like, “What are you talking about?” It made no sense. Nobody knew what to do with me because my character couldn’t be my character.

AVC: But you were on the show, and so they had to use you somehow.

AH: I had to be there because they had to pay me anyway. Those are my contracts. So they said, “We’ll just keep her there.”

The showrunner would say to me almost every day, “You’re funnier in a lower register.” He wanted me to talk in a deep voice the whole season. I just lost it, probably around episode 20. I said, “Don’t talk to me anymore. I’ll talk however I feel like talking.”

AVC: That also seems like something that they wouldn’t necessarily have told a man.

AH: That character was actually supposed to be a guy, but they cast me. At the network audition, it was me and LL Cool J, I think, and we were both up for that part, but it was written as “a Danny DeVito type.” So they said, “Let’s bring Amy Hill in.”

AVC: That makes no sense.

AH: I obviously look nothing like Danny DeVito.

AVC: Neither does LL Cool J.

AH: No. But I made a lot of money, so it’s okay. -------------------------- (For those who haven't heard that story, the writer who was kicked was Matthew Weiner, of future Mad Men fame.)

Experience the awfulness:

R60: I loved her as the grandma in Margaret Cho's [italic]All-American Girl[/italic] and I quit watching after they pushed the rest of the family to the side. It's a shame she was wasted in that terrible Mike Myers movie.

Wait, Kelly Ripa wasn’t in this?

for r3, Yes, Union Square was the Friends clone they attempted in the Fall of 1997. Some good actors--Harriet Sansom Harris! Jonathan Slavin!--but the show was a mess. The problem was it was originally written for one actress, who they decided didn't work, so they replaced her with Constance Marie, who is likeable, but whose character had no personality. (The original actress and character had a personality, even if it was an annoying one.) Surround her with a bunch of bland characters who had no personalities--or who depended on the actors' personas to provide one--and the show had no direction, point of view, or laughs.

Original Union Square pilot with the original actress

"The Single Guy" was pretty awesome in terms of how unfunny it was. The scripts had all the beats of a successful sitcom at the time (like "Friends" or "Mad About You"), but the jokes were unfunny and the actors were unappealing.

It always reminded me of that SNL sketch about Joey and Cindy Adams, where Phil Hartman as Joey keeps telling jokes in the rhythm of a Borscht Belt comedian but the punch lines make absolutely no sense.

r24, have to disagree. I loved that Grand theme song. I just realized I still know all the lyrics 30+ years later.

When they lost some cast members between seasons, they didn't bother reshooting it with the remaining cast and replaced it with a much more generic opening. Nowhere near as good as the original.

Another terrible Suddenly Susan opening. I forgot about those cutesy intro lines ("Say hello to;" "Welcome back;" "Who can forget"...) And why are they giants?

I bought an off-air set of DVDs of "Grand" last year and watched most of the first season, I intend to watch the rest at some point. The theme song is the best thing about the show, but it mostly holds up. It's surprisingly not comedic a lot, especially Pamela Reed's character. It's in a weird middle space - it's trying to be an ambitious show but it's also a Carsey-Werner NBC sitcom with the laugh track and the brightly lit multi-cam look. A lot of horny old man jokes that would probably not be warmly received. I was 15 when it aired and remember thinking it was very adult and sophisticated and I'm sure I watched it but none of it rings any bells watching it again.

[italic]Friends[/italic] was and Is crap so why would a knockoff of it be any better?

I don't think anyone's mentioned Inside Schwartz. It was on after Friends in the fall of 2001, when Friends was the #1 show on TV, yet Inside Schwartz ranked #16, which is dire. A single guy whose life is commented on by sportscasters. Also dire.

I actually liked Caroline and the City and it wasn't just because I got to have sex with Malcom Gets in the parking lot behind Carny's on Sunset when I was a twinkling. I also always wanted one of those old TV set fish tanks that Caroline had.

Aww, r35, I liked Dear John.

Ugh. Veronica's Closet

Seriously, why were these opening credits so terrible during this time period?

Anybody who thinks "Seinfeld" is forever tainted because of Michael Richards' tirade is living in a woke dream world.

Most of the world has forgotten about it. Only the most die hard SJWs still work up a hard-on over it.

WHET Mel Gorham? She was talented.

[quote] I don't think anyone's mentioned Inside Schwartz. It was on after Friends in the fall of 2001, when Friends was the #1 show on TV

Which is why it is not a coincidence that that is also the same year terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and tried to go after the White House.

[quote] Seriously, why were these opening credits so terrible during this time period?

Because [italic]Friends[/italic] lowered the bar for everything.

I loved the Fired Up episode where they pay homage to Mission Impossible, r39. Sharon WAS Barbara Bain! And what's not to love about her Heat Wave?

Why'd they kill off Ron Silver?

I guess you could say they polished him off.

It's kind of amazing how many shitty shows they threw on Thursday trying to make them work, when the better shows that did last were launched on other nights and then made the move to Thursday. When they were wasting real estate on Thursday with Jesse and Veronica's Closet, Will & Grace was being launched in the dead-end Monday night lineup (before making it to Tuesday, then finally to Thursday). During the 96-97 season when they were throwing Susan, Naked, and Fired Up on after Seinfeld, they launched Just Shoot Me in the dead-end Wednesday night lineup. It soon made the move to Tuesday, then Thursday, and lasted 7 seasons. (I recently watched JSM on Hulu and found the first few seasons held up. It did start to lose steam in the middle seasons, and was running on fumes at the end. Wendie Malick was still brilliant.)

All these shows' ratings started to decline when [italic]Seinfeld[/italic] was canceled. By this point, cable had taken a sizable chunk of network TV's audience away and DVD would continue to take more of it, too.

[italic]Will & Grace[/italic] was everything wrong with [italic]Friends[/italic] with a pink coat of paint over it. I couldn't stomach 10 minutes of a single episode of either. Shame on you, America, for not turning your backs on these shows and watching more intellectually stimulating fare like [italic]The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd[/italic].

It's amazing that NBC had such a good rep when its good/decent Thursday shows was a relatively short list: Cosby, Cheers, Family Ties, Friends, Frasier, Seinfeld (and perhaps a Different World).

So many others were either very off the wall/artsy (My favorite, Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, Grand) or just terrible, mostly because they were trying to copy whatever the show du jour was of the day (just about every other one on the list).

R84 I love that you mentioned Molly, too!

R85: That list should stop at [italic]Family Ties[/italic].

The 1990s shows were overrated as fuck.

r84, considering Molly Dodd left NBC in 1988, 6 years before Friends debuted and 10 years before Will and Grace, viewers turning their back on the latter would have required a time machine to watch it.

The smartest thing [italic]A Different World[/italic] did was cut the umbilical cord with [italic]Cosby Show[/italic] after the first season.

I once made a list of all the Thursday night also-rans for something I was writing. For reference, between 1988 and 2004 when “The Apprentice” premiered and sitcoms on Thursday were no longer a thing:

Nick and Hillary, Grand, Rhythm and Blues, Hope and Gloria, Madman of the People, The Single Guy, Boston Common, Caroline In The City, Men Behaving Badly, Suddenly Susan, The Naked Truth, Fired Up!, Union Square, Veronica’s Closet, Jesse, Daddio, Stark Raving Mad, Battery Park, Cursed, Three Sisters, Inside Schwartz, Leap Of Faith, Good Morning Miami, Come To Papa, Coupling

Some of those I have absolutely no earthly recollection of. I may have missed one or two.

R88: Imagine what the 1990s could have been had viewers given less conventional shows like MD a chance.

Seinfeld was not "canceled," a term that suggests the network made the decision to take the show off the air.

[quote]Stark Raving Mad,

That was the one with NPH and Tony Shalhoub--right?

[quote]Wait, Kelly Ripa wasn’t in this?

She was in "Hope and Faith," with Faith Ford. It was on ABC, not NBC.

[quote]I once made a list of all the Thursday night also-rans for something I was writing. For reference, between 1988 and 2004 when “The Apprentice” premiered and sitcoms on Thursday were no longer a thing: Nick and Hillary, Grand, Rhythm and Blues, Hope and Gloria, Madman of the People, The Single Guy, Boston Common, Caroline In The City, Men Behaving Badly, Suddenly Susan, The Naked Truth, Fired Up!, Union Square, Veronica’s Closet, Jesse, Daddio, Stark Raving Mad, Battery Park, Cursed, Three Sisters, Inside Schwartz, Leap Of Faith, Good Morning Miami, Come To Papa, Coupling Some of those I have absolutely no earthly recollection of. I may have missed one or two.

[italic]Friends[/italic] and [italic]Will & Grace[/italic] were among the worst programs in the entire history of television, so it's not hard to see why these other shows failed. They weren't as popular as the network wanted people to believe if they were not successful enough to launch other successful shows on either side of them. [italic]The Golden Girls[/italic] did this with [italic]227, Amen[/italic], and [italic]Empty Nest[/italic] and tried to do it with [italic]Nurses[/italic] right before that CBS hotel thing. The difference that GG actually deserves the popularity and accolades it received. It is the culmination of everything Disney and NBC did to pull themselves out of the respective holes they dug for themselves in the previous decade combined with all the lessons Witt-Thomas-Harris learned from four years of [italic]Soap[/italic] and seven years of [italic]Benson[/italic].

It's pretty ridiculous to name Friends and Will and Grace as two of the worst shows ever when this thread lists well over a dozen shows that were immeasurably worse.

No, R96, they didn't. They mentioned bad shows that still weren't as bad, and they failed because you had to watch those two stink bombs to see them.

"Seinfeld was not "canceled,"

Indeed. Seinfeld pulled the plug himself. NBC brass would have creamed themselves in delight if Jerry would have done even one more season.

This thread pretty much proves that Must-See TV was the biggest snow job in TV history since [italic]Frosty the Snowman[/italic].

93, Yep. It wasn't terrible. Probably deserved another season, more than most of these.

Between the end of [italic]Sanford and Son[/italic] and the beginning of [italic]Cheers[/italic], NBC had no hit sitcoms other than [italic]Diff'rent Strokes, the Facts of Life[/italic], and [italic]Gimme A Break![/italic] None. And believe it or not, and who wouldn't, they had shows that were bigger bombs than [italic]Hello, Larry[/italic].

DS and GAB! were the beginning of Thursday night being a sitcom night for NBC. The two other shows on that night were bombs: [italic]Harper Valley PTA[/italic] and [italic]Lewis and Clark[/italic]. The latter show was suspiciously similar to ABC's [italic]Best of the West[/italic], also on Thursday at 8:30, which also only ran a year, while its two stars got cast on [italic]Silver Spoons[/italic] and [italic]Voyagers![/italic] the following season. One lasted longer than the other even with [italic]60 Minutes[/italic] as competition.

Another addendum to the [italic]Best of the West[/italic] cast ending up on NBC shows: Leonard Frey ended up in [italic]Mr. Smith[/italic], a Friday night bomb that lost to [italic]The Dukes of Hazzard[/italic] and [italic]Benson[/italic]. The star of the show was an orangutan who was apparently smarter than any of the scripts.

The Naked Truth is such a weird case. It was a funny sitcom about sleazy tabloid reporters (Holland Taylor was the editor in chief) who irritated the fuck out of celebrities, and it was canceled by ABC after one season. NBC immediately picked it up and purposely made it into an unfunny, generic workplace sitcom. They had it take place at a respectable magazine with George Wendt as the publisher. A typical episode on ABC would have Betty White pushing Tea Leoni out of a moving car, and during the NBC run, a typical episode would have Leoni...adopting a kitten. Must See TV, indeed!

r103

why did they purposely made it into an unfunny, generic workplace sitcom?

I'm not R103, but my guess would be that they wanted to soften up Tea Leoni and make her more of an appealing "everywoman" type.

For what it's worth, some NBC sitcoms did pretty well for themselves outside of Thursday nights. Frasier, Wings, Mad About You and Caroline in the City, at one time or another, held their own pretty respectably on Tuesdays. If your sitcom aired on Wednesdays, Sundays or especially Mondays, then you were fucked.

Princess Di's death was probably also the death knell for any show that looked at tabloids in a humorous light, R105.

How long would [italic]Frasier[/italic] have lasted had it not been a [italic]Cheers[/italic] spinoff?

The first [italic]Cheers[/italic] spinoff, [italic]The Tortellis[/italic], was a flop. It was no [italic]Cheers[/italic] but it wasn't as bad as [italic]Wings[/italic], honestly. For some reason, NBC didn't actually air it after the parent show and instead aired it after the dying [italic]Gimme A Break![/italic], while one of the two shows they actually tried airing after [italic]Cheers[/italic] that season, [italic]Nothing in Common[/italic], was an even bigger bomb. The other was [italic]The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd[/italic]. The producers of that show had also made [italic]Buffalo Bill[/italic], one of the better examples of "the ones that got away."

Yup, Amy Hill even alluded to that. I suppose they could have had Tea and company working for an E!-type network, but still, it would have been a rough season or two ...

Regarding GRAND, I get the impression that NBC at the time would have greenlit anything Carsey-Werner had to offer. It was more a case of offering anything rather than something (even if the theme is nice). Also, let's hear it for Pamela Reed, who had one hell of a 1990, with Grand, Cadillac Man, her voice work in The Civil War and Kindergarten Cop. She's still working, but talk about a period of briefly ruling the world.

Was Carla on The Tortellinis? They let her back on Cheers after her show flopped? Usually people who leave for spinoffs can’t come back.

She was not. That was the biggest problem with the show. Shelley Long would not have done a spinoff for any amount of money, and they didn't want to remove any of the other core characters from the bar. So who was left?

[quote]Usually people who leave for spinoffs can’t come back.

Not always.

[quote]For what it's worth, some NBC sitcoms did pretty well for themselves outside of Thursday nights. Frasier, Wings, Mad About You and Caroline in the City, at one time or another, held their own pretty respectably on Tuesdays. If your sitcom aired on Wednesdays, Sundays or especially Mondays, then you were fucked.

True, and as big a show as "Friends" was, I think it was telling that NBC was never willing to risk moving it away from Thursday nights. If it was such a huge hit loved by all of America, why not use it as a launching pad for another night? The answer I'm sure was that, had they done so and its ratings slipped even a tenth, it would've been a huge embarrassment both for the show and the network, not to mention exposed that it was dependent all along on other Thursday shows like "Seinfeld" to hold it up. Clearly NBC did not want to take that chance.

They didn't do that for [italic]The Cosby Show[/italic] either.

Hot, R73! How did you meet him and was the show still on the air at that time?

And is Malcolm packing?

[quote]Seriously, why were these opening credits so terrible during this time period?

IIRC, NBC was eventually the cause of theme songs getting dropped from TV shows altogether. They were the first to realize that dropping station breaks and theme songs -- and having one show move right into the next with no break in between -- was how you could hold on to an audience because it gave them no time to change the channel. Realizing this little trick was working for their rival, all the other networks eventually followed suit and the TV theme song became a thing of the past.

If that's not exactly true, anyone who knows better please feel free to jump in and correct the record.

Oh, FFS r114. Friends continued for SIX years after Seinfeld left the air and propped up the entire night. Get over it. Friends was television's last biggest hit. There have been other hits, but they haven't reached that height, for that long.

NBC had 18 sitcoms on the air at one point - maybe 1997? 4 MTWT, and Sundays at 8. Mindboggling.

[quote]That list should stop at Family Ties. The 1990s shows were overrated as fuck.

Even though its run was primarily in the '90s, I think technically "Seinfeld" belongs in the '80s category because it started in 1989.

[quote]True, and as big a show as "Friends" was, I think it was telling that NBC was never willing to risk moving it away from Thursday nights. If it was such a huge hit loved by all of America, why not use it as a launching pad for another night? The answer I'm sure was that, had they done so and its ratings slipped even a tenth, it would've been a huge embarrassment both for the show and the network, not to mention exposed that it was dependent all along on other Thursday shows like "Seinfeld" to hold it up. Clearly NBC did not want to take that chance.

NBC spent the 1990s forgetting every lesson from the 1970s and 1980s. That is why they let new media take audiences away from them. They no longer had to settle for mass-marketed overhyped pandering crap. Out-of-the-box shows like [italic]Hill Street Blues[/italic] and [italic]St. Elsewhere[/italic] would be on Netflix or Hulu today.

R119: The last biggest hit of television? That's delusional! [italic]Family Guy? SpongeBob Squarepants? Mad Men? Breaking Bad? Game of Thrones? The Office? 30 Rock?[/italic] All of those are better than [italic]Friends[/italic] and will be watched when that show is forgotten. Television isn't dead. It's the traditional three-network broadcast paradigm that's ancient history. Popularity isn't quality.

[italic]Star Trek[/italic] struggled in the ratings all the years it was on NBC and was almost canceled after season 2. It is now an American icon.

R119, YOU get over it. Nobody's saying that "Friends" was not a legitimate hit. I'm saying when it first started and was sandwiched between two other hits on Thursdays on NBC, "Mad About You" and "Seinfeld," that was a nice little cushion that propped up the show for the next FIVE years until "Seinfeld" went off the air. By that time and after years and years of high ratings and over-the-top PR, of course "Friends" was able to fly just fine on its own and pull other shows along with it. But that still does not negate the point that NBC was never willing to risk moving it away from Thursday nights to see how it fared on another night. That's not trying to take anything away from the show, it's just clearly a fact because they never did it even while kicking other Thursday night shows out to fly on their own (and many of them did not do so well as a result, "Mad About You" among them, when it was moved to Sunday nights).

r114, that's inane. The reason they didn't move Friends was because Thursday was the most profitable night of the week (due to movie weekend advertising) and NBC needed it to be strong. There's a reason why CBS went after it with Survivor and CSI in the early 2000s, and ABC with Grey's in the late 2000s. NBC had three of the biggest shows on TV with Friends-Seinfeld-ER during the late 90s on the night when they could make the most money; risking that to...what, shore up the weaker Monday or Wednesday night lineups where there was less money to be made? That makes no sense, especially when the network really struggled between the time Cosby left the timeslot and Friends was moved there in 1995? (A Different World flopped and was moved by midseason. In 1993, Mad About You had the timeslot and didn't even make the top 25. In 1994 when it was paired with Friends, it made it to 11--with Friends soon passing it to become the higher-rated show.) Nothing had worked as well in the timeslot since Cosby (and nothing would afterward), and most of their new shows were shit. Again, moving it would have made no sense whatsoever.

There's a reason that when Seinfeld left, they moved Frasier to the night (which was catastrophic for the Tuesday lineup it had been holding up). They needed a strong Thursday. And while Frasier immediately jumped into the top three, it was the lowest of the three (Friends, Frasier, ER). The idea that Friends needed to be on Thursday to have high ratings rather than vice versa is laughable.

[quote] IIRC, NBC was eventually the cause of theme songs getting dropped from TV shows altogether. They were the first to realize that dropping station breaks and theme songs -- and having one show move right into the next with no break in between -- was how you could hold on to an audience because it gave them no time to change the channel. Realizing this little trick was working for their rival, all the other networks eventually followed suit and the TV theme song became a thing of the past. If that's not exactly true, anyone who knows better please feel free to jump in and correct the record.

The FCC removed limits on commercial time in prime time starting in the 1980s. The networks really doubled down on it after that.

And it's another thing you can blame [italic]Friends[/italic] for.

In '85 she got to do Shaw with Uta, r110.

[quote] Regarding GRAND, I get the impression that NBC at the time would have greenlit anything Carsey-Werner had to offer. It was more a case of offering anything rather than something (even if the theme is nice). Also, let's hear it for Pamela Reed, who had one hell of a 1990, with Grand, Cadillac Man, her voice work in The Civil War and Kindergarten Cop. She's still working, but talk about a period of briefly ruling the world.

She was also the voice of the mother of Bart Simpson's first crush. Let us not forget how that show took a chunk out of [italic]Cosby[/italic]'s ratings.

I met Malcom Getz at a party one time in New York. This was after Caroline in the City and I was single. I tried picking him up. Not the brightest bulb in the box I must say.

[quote] Not the brightest bulb in the box I must say.

You or him, R128?

r123, you really have no idea whatsoever what you're talking about. Saying that Mad About You and Seinfeld gave Friends some kind of "cushion" when it had higher ratings than Mad About You ever did is nonsense. Also, Friends debuted in 1994; Seinfeld left in 1998. So even if there was some kind of a cushion (WTF), it wouldn't have lasted "for FIVE years until Seinfeld left the air" since Seinfeld left after Friends had been on 4.

[quote]Hot, [R73]! How did you meet him and was the show still on the air at that time?

At show's season wrap party.

[quote]And is Malcolm packing?

Average.

Really nice guy and a good kisser.

There's always the possibility they flat-out lied about the ratings.

They never tried [italic]Cheers[/italic] on any other night either.

Your attempts to defend this wretched show are weak.

I only wish my flopfest 'Encore! Encore!' had been a Thursday night darling. Instead, it was assumed I could tent-pole the Tuesday night line-up on my own.

Who would watch a sitcom about an opera singer losing his voice? What's so funny about that?

The first season of Friends was cobbled together from spec scripts submitted to Seinfeld that weren’t good enough to be made.

R110, I loved Pamela Reed in 'Kindergarten Cop.' She was also in a short-lived sitcom on NBC in the 90s where she played a judge.

Are you all googling this?

I was actually around during this era, and as a tween and young teen (say ages 10-15) more invested in TV than at any other time in my life, and I cannot remember any of these shows or what else was on Thursday nights other than Seinfeld, Friends and Mad About You

Kudos if you are pulling these shows from memory

R137: The subsequent nine were cobbled together from spec scripts of [italic]Living Single[/italic] and [italic]Full House[/italic] that weren't good enough to be made.

The best thing you can say about [italic]Veronica's Closet[/italic] is that it outran Shelley Long's attempted TV comeback:

I used to watch Veronica's Closet reruns because I loved staring at Dan Cortese's biceps.

[quote] Seriously, why were these opening credits so terrible during this time period?

More terrible opening credits: Anthony Clark dancing and spinning awkwardly for the opening of "Boston Common."

R37, unless you were addicted to sitcoms, we weren’t stuck back then, either. Both ER and The X-Files had many stand-alone episodes that didn’t rely on following the underlying story arc. Law & Order was completely episodic.

Waiting week to week for the next episode would have been annoying, except that it’s the only thing we knew at the time. You can’t miss what you’ve never had.

As a side note, I think our national culture has suffered as a result of losing “must see” weekly television. It used to be something that united people across political, racial, regional and social class divides. I didn’t watch the sitcoms much, except Seinfeld, but I used to jabber about TXF with people I would normally never talk to because we otherwise had nothing in common. Same for L&O in its early seasons.

[quote]NBC had 18 sitcoms on the air at one point

And it has none scheduled for this fall.

R138, The Home Court, part of a short-lived attempt to re-establish sitcoms on Saturdays. Pamela Reed also has a small link to "modern day" NBC sitcoms, as she played Marlene Knope on Parks & Rec.

^^If we're talking about multi camera sitcoms, I think it's because they're going out of fashion. Tastes change and the laugh track/studio audience thing itself seems so dated.

This is mediocrity gold, but is also very indicative of the whole "Must See TV" phenomenon that NBC gloated about. From the description:

"Star-Crossed Thursday On NBC, original airdate: November 2, 1995

Ok, here's the deal...

November 2, 1995, characters from certain shows bounced around onto other shows. Caroline from 'Caroline in the City' ended up on 'Friends', Chandler from 'Friends' ended up on 'Caroline in the City', and Ross from 'Friends' ended up on 'The Single Guy'.

Chandler's appearance lasted about a minute, and Caroline's appearance lasted less than that, but Ross was in almost half the episode he crossed over onto!

I was an extra in this Pamela Reed classic...

For r142....

As mentioned above, the answer is The Single Guy.

R150 That's what I used to watch before internet porn was a thing.

R149, I assume you meant Grand, which was fantastic, and not whatever movie you liked too. The Powers That Be was great too but not sure if that counts as a Must See entrant. Wasn’t there a horrible Nathan Lane comedy in there somewhere too?

One weird thing about Inside Schwartz was that it aired on NBC but used the on-air talent and set of the fledgling Fox Sports cable network for Schwartz’s fantasy moments. I’m sure Bob Costas would probably have been too expensive but they still could have used NBC talent. I know shows aren’t owned by the networks anymore so they often film at different studios from where they air but it was probably a sign NBC didn’t have much faith in the show if they didn’t try to cross-promote their own sports programming and talent.

I don't think this was a Thursday night show, but does anyone remember a 2000s NBC sitcom called 'Committed"? It was about mentally ill people and Valerie Harper guest starred in one episode.

[quote] Pamela Reed also has a small link to "modern day" NBC sitcoms, as she played Marlene Knope on Parks & Rec.

She was great at playing a cunt on that show and I loved how Leslie always remained naive to her mother's cuntiness.

No, r153, I meant Scandal Sheet.

[italic]The Powers That Be[/italic] was on Saturday nights after [italic]The Golden Girls[/italic] in its last season, so it doesn't technically count.

R155 I remember that sitcom. Outside of Thursday "Must See TV", NBC had bunch of other filler sitcoms in the 90s like Working that starred Fred Savage and Cafe Americain with Valerie Bertinelli as an American living in Paris.

R157 - my bad. Didn’t read the previous threads.

The Powers That Be was a promising show that ended too soon.

I don't understand why people hate Friends so much nowadays. I was never a fan of it. I only watched if I ate dinner with my next-door neighbors on Thursdays, and didn't care if I missed an episode. But I never hated it, and I never heard of anyone hating it when it was airing on NBC. So why is it so hated now?

That's what I figured, r160. There was a bit of a Pamela Reed tangent.

R162, well, I never liked Friends because the characters treated each other more like enemies than friends. I thought the show had a heart of stone, and so did Seinfeld, and one such show at a time was enough.

But I never hated it. I think people today get all worked up about lack of diversity - the great sin of the 2020's - and how privileged the characters were. We live in po-faced, humorless times.

I unapologetically find this funny, r162.

[quote] And it has none scheduled for this fall.

The corporatist networks need to reinforce out culture of dread from sunup to sundown, thus the 96 and a half shows on death, forensics, murder and people always hunting you down.

I love this thread because it is marrying two of DL's favorite things - "push" actors and "filler" shows.

Stop trying to make push actors happen, Gretchen.

R165: That's not funny, that's sick, disgusting, and exploitative and says nothing about the human condition. Nothing about the show was funny then or now. It had plenty of haters and as long as the oligarchs keep shoving it in our faces, we will speak out against it. All the actors on that show were push actors. None could act.

And they are joke thieves:

They were not even the first NBC sitcom to have one of its lead characters get stuck inside a turkey.

[quote] But I never hated it, and I never heard of anyone hating it when it was airing on NBC. So why is it so hated now?

It’s hated now because Friends is problematic for being transphobic and homophobic and none of the six friends were black.

And because it's about as funny as a hate crime.

'Friends' is the type of comedy where viewers are supposed to like the characters and want to be their friends. I've never liked those kinds of shows. Give me 'Frasier' or 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' or 'It's Always Sunny' any day over 'Friends' and 'That 70s Show' and 'How I Met Your Mother.'

[quote]'Friends' is the type of comedy where viewers are supposed to like the characters and want to be their friends.

Even on that level, they failed, making the title a lie.

People who enjoy 'Friends' were the same people who were never bullied in high school.

I'll pick one from column A and one from column B, r173. I liked Frasier and That '70s Show.

D:Lers hate Friends because they were in their 30s and 40s when the show came out and the Friends were in their 20s and it reminded them that they were getting old and that there was a new generation they had little in common with..

People who hate Friends have no life. Or friends.

[quote] People who enjoy 'Friends' were the same people who were bullies in high school.

[quote] People who don't hate Friends have no life. Or friends. Or conscience. Or any business telling anyone else what to watch on TV.

Fixed.

[quote] People who enjoy 'Friends' were the same people who were bullies in high school.

[quote] People who don't hate Friends have no life. Or friends. Or conscience. Or any business telling anyone else what to watch on TV.

Fixed.

R177: And once again, you prove the haters correct by engaging in ageist stereotype. I was a teen at the time. The show was crap then and it is unwatchable now. They took [italic]Amos 'n' Andy[/italic] off the air for less than this. That show was and is superior, and don't you deny it.

Except for [italic]Frasier[/italic], all the post-Tartikoff sitcoms were disasters.

There's a wonderful scene in the HBO movie [italic]The Late Shift[/italic] where Kathy Bates as Helen Kushnick, Jay Leno's agent, chews out Warren Littlefield, then-new head of programming at NBC. She tells him "you're not half the executive Brandon was." She should have gotten an Emmy for that role.

No one cares about that stupid tired article that always gets dragged out, R180. Or the one about how transphobic Friends was. 🙄🙄🙄

I seem to be the exception to the rules of r175 and r177.

R184: The article is not stupid and tired and you're a racist and a homophobe for defending any aspect of this stupid fucking show. White supremacy, heterosexual supremacy, and gentile supremacy are the ONLY things keeping it alive.

And don't doubt for a second that homophobia doesn't play a part in why Disney won't release [italic]Empty Nest[/italic] on DVD.

And don't doubt for a second that homophobia does indeed play a part in why Disney won't release [italic]Empty Nest [/italic] on DVD.

"All is Forgiven," with Bess Armstrong and Carol Kane, probably pre-dated Must See TV, but that was an unfunny nothing show. And Bess always seemed so bland and uncharismatic to me that I wondered what casting agents and producers saw in her.

"gentile supremacy are the ONLY things keeping it alive"

At least two of the main characters are explicitly Jewish, with at least another possibly being one.

The show depicts Jewish men as unattractive, emotionally abusive wimps, which makes it anti-semitic stereotyping and makes David Schwimmer an Uncle Tom.

R155, I liked Committed. Tom Poston and Eddie Winslow (Family Matters) were on the show.

R192 and Melissa Etheridge's ex-wife.

R188 Empty Nest had Kristy McNichol - how homophobic could it be?

It wasn't. Not by a long shot.. But Disney today doesn't want to release so much as a season 1 box set because they know sales will likely drop off once they get to the seasons she isn't in.

Friends sucked dirty moose balls.

Only the Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men were less funny

Hey, my balls are clean!

The "Will & Grace" reboot.

Well, well...well. CSI is on and who should appear? Little Miss Pamela Reed...that's who.

A few Dabney Coleman vehicles popping up on here. How many failed shows was he on?

Jesus, you’re pompous R121. Like it or not, Friends was a global success. What you’re listing are critical successes. Despite all the Emmys, general audiences wholly rejected Mad Men as boring and pretentious and 30 Rock was always poorly rated and a bubble show.

Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones had big numbers, but nowhere near the ratings Friends had and still does. What did the streaming rights just sell for? Another 200 million? You’re letting your personal contempt for the show cloud your judgment and making really incoherent arguments.

R130, "Mad About You" had been on the air for almost two years when "Friends" premiered. It was not a huge hit by any means but was a critic's darling that did just well enough (and I believe had been nominated for several Emmys) and which fit perfectly into the demographic that NBC desired most (yuppies), so placing an unknown title between it and "Seinfeld" was most certainly a cushion spot. (See attached article, which called the scheduling "a smart marketing move.") And I did not say that "Mad About You" had been in the 8pm Thursday slot for all that time (hence my mention of its move to Sunday nights), just that the 8:30pm slot had been ideal for "Friends" leading into "Seinfeld" for those years before "Seinfeld" left the air (4 years, not 5). So yes, it's a fair assumption to make that this was helpful to "Friends" right out of the gate.

And with regard to R124, what did any of that have to do with my post? I was speculating as to why NBC was never willing to move "Friends" away from Thursdays and I stand 100% by what I said. Networks have been moving hit shows around to shore up other nights for decades; it's not some unheard-of strategy. I said they were probably never willing to entertain the idea because if they'd taken the risk and the ratings suffered even a smidgen, it would have been humiliating for the show and opened it up to critics saying its success had been an illusion all along and that it was really only a hit because of its proximity to "Seinfeld." (Doesn't matter whether it was true or not, that would've been the headline.) Where did I say that "Friends" wasn't highly profitable for the network on Thursday nights? Of course it was. I never said that it wasn't.

And funny how you mentioned "A Different World" given that people used to say it was only a hit because it benefited from being on Thursday nights. But clearly we're never allowed to suggest that "Friends" was only a hit for the same reason, though I guess it's highly possible it would've delivered the same blockbuster ratings had NBC scheduled it on Saturday nights between "Something Wilder" and "Empty Nest."

You’re hopeless, r202.

Why did CBS keep Raymond on Mondays for 8 seasons? Or ABC keep Home Improvement on Tuesdays forever? Why did NBC keep ER in the same timeslot for its entire run?

Because you don't move a top 5 show. Period.

ABC moved us after our first seasons...and our ratings died.

20-30 million people watched Friends each week for 10 seasons. 52 million watched its finale. Today you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who admits to liking it. Yet for ten years it seems like a lot of people did like it.

[quote] Today you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who admits to liking it.

WTF are you talking about? Get out of your bubble. Millions of people love it. It was one of the most watched series on Netflix and it was a huge loss to them to lose it to HBOMax. The reunion broke HBOMax records. Friends merchandise keeps selling and they’re always coming out with new ones, like the board games and advent calendars. Millennials and Gen Z love wearing f.r.i.e.n.d.s hoodies and T-shirts. It’s found new generations of fans.

I was being facetious R206. Of course lots of people liked Friends (hence 20-30 million viewers per week). But as this thread shows, the thing to say now is that it sucked and is hated. All the cool kids are doing it.

So I’m surprised no one has brought up Newsradio which in my opinion in terms of quality surpasses them all. Hilarious weird and didn’t fit into the Must See TV box as hard as the network tried. A brilliant little gem.

The best of the best. No question.

The best of the best in my opinion. Brilliant show.

Sorry. for the multiple posts about Newsradio. I thought it wasn’t posting. LOL

As someone who quit watching network TV years ago, could you tell me if NBC even has must see tv Thursdays anymore? If so, what is the lineup? A bunch of reality show shit?

Some of you have baby tastes not only in food but in entertainment, too.

How gauche.

I liked Friends. It was unrealistic, and lightweight, but it was enjoyable. I still like it. Not everything has to be on par with The Brothers Karamazov. Some things can just be a fun diversion.

I love Newsradio. It used to piss me off when I would go to watch, and NBC moved it again. Newsradio had a fantastic cast that really made the absurdity seem believable.

I forgot Barbra Barrie was on Suddenly Susan. Never understood why she worked so much. Her presence seemed so forced.

David Strickland offed himself because he was on that shit show Suddenly Susan. Can you blame him?

R104, what I remember best about that show was how sexy Tea Leoni was in her shirt skirts and ladder legs!

Great article. So many shows I either never heard of (Coupling? Leap of Faith?) or never realized were at some point a part of “Must See TV.” Also, wow was Mark Feurstein on a lot of shows!

Leap of Faith was created by Jenny Bicks and was NBC’s attempt at a network Sex & the City. It should be a DL icon given its cast: Sarah Paulson, Regina King, Jill Clayburgh, Brad Rowe, and Ken Marino.

Why would it be surprising R207 that DLers did not like Friends, given the demographic on here and the love for shows like Golden Girls and Facts of Life?

I hate Andy Dick so no [italic]NewsRadio[/italic] for me. He’s the reason Phil Hartman is dead.

"Townies", with Molly Ringwald and Jenna Elfman

Henry Winkler was nominated for a guest Emmy for Battery Park. But then tv reporter Alan Sepinwall pointed out that the episode had been postponed and actually aired outside the eligibility period, so the nomination was withdrawn. William H. Macy got a nomination for Sports Night instead. Bruce Willis ultimately won for Friends.

Bruce Willis won an Emmy?! Oh, FU, Hollywood!!!

Townies was on ABC. The big name in the cast was Molly Ringwald. Which is funny now since the rest of the cast was Jenna Elfman, Lauren Graham, and Ron Livingston.

Jenna Elfman's post-Dharma TV shows have all been filler: Courting Alex, Accidentally on Purpose, 1600 Penn, Growing Up Fisher, and Imaginary Mary. Poor Jenna.

Face it Jenna, we're just not into you anymore.

Don't worry, gays, I'll be back with more filler shows!

Please, please, Jenna, make sure you sing in them!

R220: you mean shows that are actually funny and cast minorities in them without having to be goaded into it?

🙄 — go cry into your Martin DVDs, R30. Not every show needs to have diversity. The shows on BET certainly don’t have any interest in diversity!

Go wash the shit stains out of your white hood, R231. Not every show needs to be nothing but yt heterosexuals.

Go wash the shit stains out of your white hood, R231. Not every show needs to be nothing but yt heterosexuals.

Black people haven't owned BET in over 20 years.

Why so racist, R231? You remind me of my identical twin sister Ursula, who appeared on 'Mad About You' before crossing over to my own, even whiter sitcom. She hated the Blacks!

Watching Ellie

R236 That show got even worse when they ditched the real time gimmick and tried to do a traditional sitcom. 'New Adventures of Old Christine' was so much better.

Was this shit show ever in the Thursday lineup, or was it another day? I honestly can't remember. My mother loved it (because of course she did).

I don’t think The Mommies was ever on Thursday although maybe they aired it there once or twice to try and give it exposure. I seem to recall it being on Mondays or maybe Fridays

The Mommies was on Saturdays. I am guilty of having watched it. But I was in middle school at the time. I watched that, Nurses, Empty Nest, and Sisters. I did my homework during Cafe Americain.

The “Grand” theme song is even more cringey than i remembered

Telma Hopkins left Family Matters to do The Mommies. Dumb!

I thought she left Family Matters to do a show with Cindy Marshall, R242.

I watched Union Square because I had a crush on the male lead, Michael Landes…even though I thought it was lame. For some reason his role was gradually reduced to a supporting one and I lost interest. Glad that he has found success with “Cruel Summer”.

The John Larroquette Show