Twenty ways the '90s changed television

From "Twin Peaks" to "The X-Files" to "The Simpsons" (O.J. included), TV broke ground and rules in the last decade of the century.

By Joyce Millman

Dec 22, 1999 | "Twin Peaks" (ABC) and "The X-Files" (Fox)
On April 8, 1990, a beautiful, blue, plastic-wrapped dead girl named Laura Palmer washed up on the shore of our consciousness, and for prime-time TV, the '90s had begun. Filmmaker David Lynch's dreamlike saga of obsession, depravity and spiritual redemption brought surrealism, Buddhism, sexual perversity, daytime soap operatics, Jungian psychology, kinky humor and a renewed appreciation for cherry pie and a damn fine cup o' joe to network television. "Twin Peaks" was adored by hipsters, academics and regular folks alike -- that is, until they got bored and frustrated by Lynch's unusual (for TV) storytelling rhythms and unwillingness to provide "closure" on demand. "Twin Peaks" was a brief, flickering passion, an electrifying, mind-blowing cultural moment crushed by the Nielsen-dependent conventions of American TV.

But without Lynch's beautiful-ugly visions and his marriage of the disturbing and the deadpan, "The X-Files" might not exist. Chris Carter's blend of sci-fi chills, conspiracy theories, spiritual hunger and the sexiest, deepest, most tender platonic relationship TV has ever seen tapped into some of the same fascinations as "Twin Peaks": the nature of faith, occult and paranormal phenomena, the grotesque. Considering "the truth" about everything from alien abductions to urban legends to the origin of life on Earth from all the angles, "The X-Files" was just plausible and thoughtful enough to scare the pants off skeptics. Articulating the paranoid distrust of government, science and the media that bubbled up at the turn of the millennium, "The X-Files" was the show of the '90s.

David Letterman (NBC and CBS) and "The Larry Sanders Show" (HBO)
When David Letterman moved from NBC to CBS in 1993, he underwent a sartorial makeover befitting a network's highest-paid star, working the enormous Ed Sullivan Theater stage in snazzy suits, tassled loafers and trendy little specs. He was still the same Dave, though -- cranky, self-mocking, unpredictable, a man of contradictions. Throughout the '90s, Letterman remained the most intriguing host on late-night TV. His unhappiness with his lot in life is sometimes almost palpable, as if the burden of being the greatest talk-show host since Johnny Carson has brought him untold misery. He has done some of his nastiest, funniest person-on-the-street work since coming to CBS, yet he has also become courtlier, more generous, toward guests and audience. His relationship with the camera, his genius for reinvention, his daredevil sense of risk -- Letterman keeps pushing TV's mainstream to the left, in the spirit of Ernie Kovacs and Andy Kaufman. He may not like it, but he seems to finally accept it: He is David Letterman, talk show host.

With the boundary-stretching sitcom "The Larry Sanders Show," about a fictional late-night talk show host, Garry Shandling perfected the screwing-with-reality premise he started on his previous cable series, Showtime's "It's Garry Shandling's Show." "Larry Sanders" was an astringently funny backstage look at brutal, venal show biz culture, as well as a comment on the intrusion of TV into every aspect of society. Life was a talk show for the emotionally frozen Larry, who couldn't relate to other humans without a camera running; his producer and father figure, Artie (Rip Torn, in one of the most brilliant performances of the decade) called him "half-man, half-desk." "Larry Sanders" was a deft put-on. But then, given how Letterman retreats into himself the minute a commercial break is signaled, maybe it wasn't.

"My So-Called Life" (ABC) and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (WB)
In "My So-Called Life," producers Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick applied the intimate, confessional style of their seminal '80s work, "thirtysomething," to '90s suburban family life. The parents were 40 and unsatisfied, the teenagers were 15 and restless. The emotional fireworks were mesmerizing. Not only was "MSCL" the truest and most resonant portrait of a modern girl's coming of age TV had ever offered, it spawned a whole new genre: the Serious Teen Drama. From the ashes of the prematurely canceled "MSCL," the WB was born.

And speaking of the WB, its most original and enduring series, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," went to the head of the class with its dazzling, genre-busting tale of a girl with the power to save the world from evil. "Buffy" recast high school angst in horror movie terms, making fresh hell out of cliques, first love and disapproving adults. But "Buffy" was much more, too. Witheringly funny, swoonily romantic and populated by some of the most wonderfully realized characters on TV, Joss Whedon's cult phenom left much of what passed for Emmy-worthy drama in the dust. An indelible image of the '90s: Sarah Michelle Gellar -- Buffy -- with her blond hair glistening and her big blue eyes steely, aiming a crossbow at a vampire's heart with utter composure and purpose. This was girl power.

"Seinfeld" (NBC) and "Northern Exposure" (CBS)
No messages, no Very Special Episodes, no hugs: "Seinfeld" demolished soggy sitcom constraints with manic glee. Oddly, its liberating urban-neurotic nastiness made it the most beloved, and most quoted ("No soup for you!" "Mulva!" "Master of my domain!"), sitcom of the decade. The Rube Goldberg-structured plots, in which Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer invariably were strangled in their own web of lies, achieved an astonishingly consistent level of hilarity. And the four characters were case studies in arrested development. Lazy, whiny and self-centered, they were wish-fulfillment fantasies -- oh, to be irresponsible! -- for viewers in a go-go, work-centered age.

"Northern Exposure" won the 1992 Emmy for best drama series, but, in his acceptance speech, show co-creator John Falsey laughed, "We're really a comedy!" And, in its own way, "Northern Exposure" was as groundbreaking a comedy as "Seinfeld." An hour-long flight of fancy with interludes of bittersweet drama, this series about a New York Jewish doctor who was sent against his will to serve a residency in a remote Alaskan town was a delightful surprise when it popped up unheralded on CBS's summer replacement schedule in July 1990. "Northern Exposure" practically defined "quirky," with its lox-out-of-water premise (it was as overtly Jewish as "Seinfeld") and its band of unpredictable, multicultural small-town characters, whose rich inner lives were explored with inventive, sophisticated storytelling. Hour-long comedy-dramas as diverse as "Ally McBeal," "The Sopranos" (whose creator, David Chase, was a writer for "Northern Exposure") and "Now and Again" owe a debt to "Northern Exposure" for its pioneering spirit: It took TV comedy out of the 30-minute box and into the great unknown.

"The Simpsons" (Fox) and "Beavis and Butt-head" (MTV)
If we were really concerned that future civilizations understand what America was all about at the tail end of the 20th century, we would bottle up every episode of "The Simpsons," along with a TV and a VCR, inside a time capsule and let the chips fall where they may. Premiering as a weekly series on Jan. 14, 1990, Matt Groening's brilliant, subversive, savagely funny chronicle of life as we know it launched the prime-time cartoon revolution. It was, and remains, the standard-bearer for TV satire. Of course, watching "The Simpsons" centuries from now, those future civilizations may well assume that humans used to be banana yellow, with Ping Pong balls for eyes and big blue hair. Let 'em: That's a prank worthy of Bart.

Tripping spacily through the door "The Simpsons" opened, Mike Judge's "Beavis and Butt-head" threw raunch and rudeness into the mix and sparked dozens of worried essays about the "dumbing down" of American culture. Little did the pundits know that Judge's endearingly silly -- and, in their own way, culturally astute -- couch potatoes would soon pave the way for the even more outrageous, rude, silly, astute and potty-mouthed "South Park." Heh-heh, heh-heh. She said "potty." Heh-heh, heh-heh, heh-heh.

Next Page: "Homicide," Xena and TV's man of the decade -- O.J.!

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