Friends

By Toby Young It all went pear-shaped in the end, of course—and I blame the director. At first, Bob Weide and I got on pretty well. His main claim to fame was that he’d directed about half the episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, one of my all-time favorite sitcoms, and I thought that anyone good enough for Larr...

By Nicole LaPorte At one point in the 1990s, NBC had 16 half-hour sitcoms on the air. This fall, it has four. And two of those four—The Office and 30 Rock—though critically beloved (both are up for Best Comedy Emmys on Sunday, Sept. 21), are struggling to be embraced by mainstream audiences.