Television today is very much broken. Between eight-episode seasons with two-year waits in between and the industry’s trigger-happy approach to green-lighting and canceling shows, our current landscape is bleak at best. The rise of streaming has led to a radically different TV world than we had 10 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, streamers like Max, Hulu, and Netflix have great shows for the most part, but their business model is just too short-term focused, designed to combat churn, to suggest a hopeful future. Compare that to the early 2000s, the early days of the so-called Golden Age of Television, when seasons were still 20 or so episodes yearly and somewhat consistent, and you’ll see just how different things are.
I bring up the early 2000s because, in hindsight, it was very much the end of an era, the end of 20th-century television. The shift had begun in the late ’90s with the rise of cable, but circa 2004, network television was still raging on, thanks largely to two juggernauts, the last vestiges of the 20th-century era. It’s hard to truly explain just how major Friends and ER were during their heydays. During seasons 3 and 4 between ’96 and ’98, ER reached ratings of over 30 million per episode. Meanwhile, Friends‘ finale in 2004 attracted a whopping 50+ million viewers, making it the fifth-highest-watched in TV history. These two shows redefined the way we consumed serialized content and, in more ways than one, acted as the last hurrah for TV’s initial model, which started way back in the 1950s. Interestingly, both Friends and ER premiered in September 1994, only days apart and on the same network; hardly anyone expected them to be such titans, but their astounding legacies as true game-changers in their medium are even more impressive in hindsight.
A day in the life
Created by Michael Crichton — yes, that Michael Crichton, the man behind Jurassic Park and the most underrated historical epic of the ’90s, The 13th Warrior — ER premiered on September 19, 1994. Medical dramas were not the norm, but they were certainly not unheard of; St. Elsewhere had come out two years earlier, and General Hospital had been entertaining housewives for over 30 years by the time ER came out. However, Crichton offered something new and riveting with ER; whereas other shows felt distinctively fictionalized and foreign, ER offered a hyper-realistic, hectic, and in-your-face approach that made you feel like you were actually in the operating room. If Crichton made you believe dinosaurs could exist in Jurassic Park, he also made you feel like a real-life doctor with ER.
The show redefined the word “trauma” on television; every scene felt like a life-or-death situation, and every wound was seen with unabashed earnestness — well, for the time, at least. ER never took the time to hold its audience’s hand; the very first scene in the very first episode showed the harsh, uncomfortable, demanding, and decidedly unglamorous life of a doctor working at a public hospital, as Mark Greene (the late, great Anthony Edwards) takes what little free time he has to do something most of us take for granted: sleep.
ER used accurate and challenging terminology to explain its day-to-day cases, never caring if the audience understood it (they didn’t) because they weren’t meant to; ER was all about allowing you access to a place where you really shouldn’t be, where life or death choices were made by the hour. From the get-go, the show received universal acclaim from critics, who admired its intensity and commitment to being as visceral as possible. Even the damn intro song, with its distinctive siren-like notes, felt urgent and unavoidable, a call to action to sit down and watch this masterpiece of modern TV.
ER changed the way audiences reacted to medical dramas by challenging the notions of what could be expected of them. Yes, there was interpersonal drama and more than a few heightened storylines that raised the narrative stakes; however, the actual cases in the hospital were just as important as the behind-the-scenes drama. ER made you care about the episodic patients just as much as you did the regular staff.
The show marked a before-and-after for medical television, inspiring a thousand copycats, including the still-going Grey’s Anatomy, a dying patient who refuses to let go. It’s easy to see the medical genre nowadays and dismiss it as cheap, low-stakes drama with increasingly dumb situations. But ER stands out as the original, the one that started it all and, against all odds, kept its head high for over 10 years, a feat that seems even more impressive today.
The One with the Last Great Sitcom
Three days after ER premiered, NBC released its big sitcom for the 1994-95 season. Friends starred an ensemble of six beautiful and charming twentysomethings who hung out at a coffee shop and dealt with everyday life situations through a combination of humor and sheer TV magic. The six friends led the most relaxed, low-stakes, smooth-sailing lives possible — Monica (Courteney Cox) was a chef who could have breakfast, lunch, and dinner at home and only seldom went into the kitchen; Joey (Matt LeBlanc) was an out-of-work actor who somehow always landed on his feet; and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) was a college dropout who somehow went from waitress to big-time fashion executive.
Like other sitcoms, Friends cared not about reality or consistency, existing in a perpetual state of bliss and fortune with characters who never faced any real challenges. Not that audiences wanted their sitcom to be bleak, though; quite the opposite. Friends captured the generational want for consistency and certainty that so many Gen X-ers wanted, especially as the new millennium dawned. Moreover, Friends introduced the idea of the found family, the concept that one’s family can be chosen, and sometimes, your friends can be your actual soulmates. Friends became the phenomenon of the late ’90s, especially as the former sitcom supreme, Seinfeld, neared its successful ending.
Throughout 10 seasons, Friends produced 236 episodes full of laughter, silliness, and countless guest stars — everyone guest-starred on the show, from Julia Roberts to Bruce Willis to the late Robin Williams. In more ways than one, Friends was the last great sitcom; not “great” in the way you’d say The Sopranos is “great,” but rather “great” in the way you say the MCU is. Friends‘ popularity was inescapable and near-universal; it influenced pretty much every future sitcom all the way to the early 2000s, from egregiously successful stuff like How I Met Your Mother to criminally underrated efforts like Happy Endings.
Sure, the show has aged like milk in many respects, and newer generations aren’t afraid to use it as a punching bag to criticize the sort of feel-good Americana that dominated mainstream television in the late ’90s and 2000s, largely thanks to its influence. Still, Friends‘ legacy is probably untouchable, capable of withstanding any cancelation attempts future viewers might launch against it. For better and worse, Friends became the benchmark against which all future sitcoms would be measured, a status it retains to this day.
Touched by a smaller show
Not every show could be a titanic success story like ER or Friends, but that doesn’t mean they are any less admirable or, in this case, noteworthy. September 1994 saw the premiere of two other shows that, although smaller in scope and success, are perfect representatives of the sort of do-good, heightened, nearly-sinister wholesome approach most late-’90s TV would go for.
First was CBS’ Touched by an Angel, starring Roma Downey as Monica, an angel sent to Earth to help people struggling with different situations, reminding them that God loves them and there’s always a way forward. Unapologetically (some might say shamelessly) Christian and deceitfully moralistic, Touched by an Angel was one of the mid-1990s’ most surprising success stories. The show went on for nine (!) seasons and attracted considerable attention from both fans, who praised its safe and warm tone, and detractors, who viewed it as dangerously pandering, manipulative, and self-righteous. And yet, Touched by an Angel endured, surpassing 200 episodes and becoming a staple of CBS’ Wednesday nights.
Second was Fox’s Party of Five, which came out first than all other shows, on September 12. A blend of the teen and family genres, Party of Five followed a group of five siblings forced to learn to care for and raise each other after their parents abruptly die. Before 1994, not much respect was put in the teen genre, with many dismissing it as unserious at best and insignificant at worst. However, Party of Five and another major teen show from 1994, the brilliant My So-Called Life, challenged these notions, taking teen storytelling into a more heightened and dramatic place that invited serious discussions about the genuine struggles of being a teenager in the ’90s.
Party of Five allowed its characters to be challenged and pushed to the edge. By treating them with the maturity they needed to achieve overnight due to tragedy, the show gave birth to a new wave of teen shows that saw its characters not as tools for soapy, easily-dismissed stories but as vehicles to discuss deep issues like abandonment, frustration, confusion, grief, and pain. Party of Five is a direct precursor to a new generation of dramatic teen shows going into the 2000s — everything from Dawson’s Creek to One Tree Hill owes a huge debt to Party of Five. One could argue that both Party and My So-Called Life also paved the way for the eventual adultification of teenagers in mainstream media, but that’s a different conversation that only adds layers to an already complex yet rewarding show.
Party of four
In different degrees and under different circumstances, these four shows did their part to forever alter the landscape of American television. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say they altered the very DNA of TV as a storytelling medium. Indeed, September of 1994 can be seen as a before and after in terms of how television was consumed and experienced. ER, Friends, Party of Five, and Touched by an Angel all played a role in shaping a new era for the small screen, taking the medium away from the 20th century and laying the foundations for its place in the new millennium.
Today, these four shows are decidedly less relevant or acclaimed. It makes sense, considering it’s been 30 years since their premieres, and rewatching them makes it painfully clear just how much they are products of their time, often in uncomfortable and cringe-worthy ways. And yet, it’s not an overstatement to say we wouldn’t have today’s shows without these four pillars of modern TV. Would Abbott Elementary exist if creators hadn’t learned from the mistakes made by the many 2000s sitcoms that borrowed directly from Friends? Would the excess of Euphoria and Élite exist without Gossip Girl, a series created as a direct opposite of the many teen shows inspired by Party of Five?
Looking back at the last days of 20th-century TV, these four shows stand out, and the fact that they came only days apart from each other is a bit unbelievable. I can’t name one single modern show that warrants as much attention, let alone two, and certainly not three released in the same month. And yet, television is cyclical, bound to recycle what works and attempt to repurpose what doesn’t. In that way, these four shows are sacred pillars holding the very foundation of our modern small-screen landscape, for better and worse.
