I really discovered TV in the years after I graduated from college in 1985, watching late-night reruns of Cheers, Taxi, and other shows. So for me, must-see TV was at 11 p.m. or midnight. But in 1994, ''must-see TV'' took on a whole different meaning, for obvious reasons. It was the year Friends started on NBC, and we were on Thursday nights withMad About You, Seinfeld, and...well, I don't remember what was on after that — Madman of the People? But then ER! It really was the night to watch TV, and I liked all those shows. (The ones I remember, at least.) I remember thinking, ''Oh, my God! We belong here? Whoo-hoo!''
What I loved about Mad About You was that it was so character-driven. Each episode took its time, and Paul Reiser's character was just funny. Not a lot of big jokes, but just deeply funny. I loved the pace, the characters, and how direct it was about the issues they were dealing with. Seinfeld was unlike anything I'd seen before. The characters were totally unique, but also like people we knew; it took people no one thought could ever be interesting on TV and made them and their situations interesting. I loved ER for a similar reason: It was a ''nothing you've seen on TV before'' surprise, like watching a movie every week. It was a little less of a soap opera that first season, but there was just enough to get invested in the doctors and their personal stuff.
Those shows were creatively inspiring to us. I had been on Mad About You; Courteney [Cox Arquette] had been on Seinfeld. All of us loved them, and when we were rehearsing, we consciously tried to bring certain aspects of them into what we were doing. For example, that first season, I remember Courteney telling us that when she guest-starred on Seinfeld, she was struck by how the cast would support each other, how they'd watch each other's scenes and chime in with ideas — ''You know what might be funny?'' kind of stuff. We emulated that help-each-other thing. It was more fun, and you never knew what could come out of it. You felt more involved, more invested.
But what I remember most from that first year was all the ''pinch me'' stuff, none more so than going on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Oprah letting us know for the first time, ''people are getting together to watch your show! There's buzz!'' We were like, ''What?'' We had no clue. I remember every week going up to the producers and asking, ''Are the ratings good enough? Do we get to stay on?'' We didn't know we were doing well, but I guess we should have known a little if Oprah was having us on. —As told to Jeff Jensen
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