(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. If you like it, you can subscribe by just clicking the C in
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notifications any time that there's a new video from us. A lot of time to burn, still. I really went right through that.
Damn, beat me to it