What a night for TV fans!
NBC’s Must See TV: An All-Star Tribute to James Burrows was positively packed with nostalgia, trivia, fun sketches, and priceless TV moments as some of your favorite stars and casts united to honor director James Burrows, who recently directed his 1000th episode of TV.
From Will & Grace to The Big Bang Theory to Friends, it was a pretty epic couple of hours all in the name of paying tribute to a guy who has worked with some of TV’s all-time greats. Of course, we’re just as thankful as everyone else for all the work Burrows has done, but we’re not here to pay tribute. We’re here to tell you whether or not that tribute was satisfactory to us, which is why we ranked all of the reunions and sketches! You’re welcome!
12. Mike & Molly
This show is still on and Melissa McCarthy is literally everywhere (in a good way, except for how she hasn’t signed on to Gilmore Girls), so it was just a tad less exciting than anything else we saw tonight. However, we could not stop laughing at the clip of Samuel (Nyambi Nyambi) dressed as Spongebob trying to sit down, which was all Burrows’ idea.
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11. The Big Bang Theory
This show is also still on, but we did enjoy the strangeness of Bill Nye interviewing the cast, and hearing the origins of Sheldon Cooper’s “Bazinga.” Apparently one of the writers used to actually use that as a punchline in real life, “and I’ve been stuck with it ever since,” according to Jim Parsons.
10. Frasier
Loved David Hyde Pierce‘s story of reading the first script and thinking Frasier and Niles were basically the same character. It shouldn’t have worked, but it totally did.
9. Opening Sketch
Since we’ve been highly anticipating this special for weeks now, the whole “we just put this together this morning” shtick fell slightly flat. However, the little opening video was still filled with amazing moments, like Eric McCormack and Rhea Perlman bathing together, and Patrick Warburton, Johnny Galecki, and Matt LeBlanc all getting pedicures.
8. Will & Grace
“She’d be married to Donald Trump.” – Megan Mullally on where Karen would be today. She’s so right, and we have so missed Jack and Karen together.
7. Cheers
Ted Danson can still get it, even if we’re now saddled with the image of him constantly rearranging his crotch in order to get himself into the “jock” persona.
6. Kelsey Grammer‘s impressions
Grammer didn’t attend the show in person, but he did appear in a video in which he attempted impressions of other sitcom characters like Jack from Will & Grace and Joey from Friends. He even repeated Sheldon Cooper’s line, “Amy’s birthday present will be my genitals.” The impressions were terrible, and it didn’t matter.
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5. “You’re my favorite cast”
Jim Parsons started off this bit by reading a note from Burrows saying that the Big Bang Theory cast was his favorite to work with, but it turned out that all of his casts had gotten the same note, or almost the same note. David Hyde Pierce got “insert name of actor here,” and Jon Cryer’s said that he didn’t love the whole cast of Two and a Half Men, “just one and a half of us.”
4. Frasier Theme Song
The cast of Frasier took part in a video explaining the whole “tossed salad and scrambled eggs” thing, or at least trying to, and it was a lot of fun. It mostly consisted of Kelsey Grammer singing the song over and over again while Pierce made fun of him, and now we realize we’ve never thought very hard about how strange those lyrics are. And now we’ll never stop thinking about it. Cool.
3. Taxi
While Andy Kaufman did not choose this moment to reveal himself to be alive like we hoped, but Danny Devito made up for it by being his typical ridiculous self. What does the yellow light mean?!
2. CSNCS (Chronic Sitcom Name Confusion Syndrome)
The Cheers reunion was followed up by a hilarious video presented by Gary Sinise about how George Wendt can’t go anywhere without being called Norm. It made us sad, until George ended the video by referring to Gary as Lieutenant Dan. Perfect.
1. Friends
We learned so much about the cast and the show, but our favorite moment involved the cast attempting and failing to sit down correctly.
What was your favorite moment from the reunion? Sound off in the comments!
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