You know you're really old when someone mentions Jimmy Walker and the first person you think of is this guy.
OK, that one hit home. Funnily enough, this one doesn't impact me that much, because I always sort of looked forward to 2005 precisely because I remembered that TF:TM was set in it. Reaching that year kind of felt like closing a loop so I don't mind it being historical. Here are a few: - Friends premiered 17 years ago. - Frasier? Eighteen. - Cheers? Twenty-nine. - Lisa's future wedding in The Simpsons? Meant to have taken place LAST year... (I rewatched this ep the other day, and I was shocked when I saw the date)
You think that's bad. Imagine watching GRIMM and realizing that his dying aunt is the same age you are!
She's dying. Who gives a toss? You have more hair! I mean seriously? Is that chemo, or the after effect of some beastie attack?
It is the yeeeeeear two thouuuuusand fiiiiive. (Vic Caroli rules!) What about partying like it's 1999?
Go look at a picture of Steve Martin to cheer you up. He looks great because he looked like he was 45 when he was 25.
I make my self feel old pretty much anytime I watch an episode of "Friends" or "Seinfeld" or of TNG. Seinfeld ended a year after I graduated high school, Friends nearly 8 years ago and TNG, of course, nearly 20 years ago. Watching all of those shows are all fun and good and I can still highly enjoy them but watching Friends and Seinfeld sometimes it makes me laugh in just how... 90s they are in the height of their runs. There's an episode of Friends where Ross gets a pager. When Elaine uses a cellphone in Seinfeld it's one of those old, large, 90s-era flip-style phones that only made phone calls. Watching all of those shows and even movies I enjoyed in high school and, hell, even in my 20s makes me feel old. Yes, watching stuff I enjoyed just 10 years ago makes me feel old.
And if you have a copy of Cruel Shoes, read it. It may make you feel old, but at least you'll laugh while doing it.
There's also the fact that a fair number of "classic" Seinfeld eps wouldn't work at all in today's modern, cell-phone laden, world.
There's a lot of stories from Seinfeld, Friends and pretty much every TV series made that couldn't work in today's tech heavy generation. More so than any other jump. The stories in I Love Lucy weren't rendered illogical between the 1950s and 1990s. All of the ILL stories would work then, with maybe a bit less of the 1950s attitudes towards women and life-style touches. But, yeah, a lot of problems in Seinfeld and Friends could be solved in a world where pretty much everyone has a cellphone and many people even have Smart Phones. Hell, 99% of the bullshit Cliff Claven spouted in Cheers could be called out by a computer being in the office or someone in the bar having a Blackberry. The cell-phone has made one of TV's more classic characters completely non-existent if that show would be made today.
On the bright side, when you consider how many cruddy sitcoms were based on the old "wacky misunderstanding" trope, and how many of those misunderstandings wouldn't occur in a cell phone era, at least we are spared some of the bad too.
Seeing The Muppet Movie as a 10 year old kid in the theater and now taking my little kids to the the new Muppet Movie yesterday; and feeling the same way about both movies.
Well, Fraiser used that trope in pretty much every episode and that was hardly a cruddy sitcom, so...
Friends was actually quite late to show its characters using cellphones; it took maybe a season or two longer than you'd expect. I suspect part of this was simply the writers not wanting to have to adapt to writing around them! Anyway, constant telecommunications certainly make any farce-based storyline a lot harder to pull off. It's still possible, but you have to create ever more improbable methods of breaking the data umbilical cord.