A sitcom viewer flipping channels in the 1990s would have witnessed a range of interpretations of New York City. On Cosby, the follow-up to The Cosby Show, they would have seen a mature Black couple in Queens fighting an inevitable transition into retirement and old age. On the Queen Latifah vehicle Living Single, they would have seen six young Black professionals in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn become family while negotiating coming of age in the big city. On The Wayans Bros, they would have seen an overly proud Black father and his two self-effacing sons somehow running a diner and a newsstand in Rockefeller Plaza despite their cross-generational immaturity.
On NBC’s Friends, however, the view would have been limited to six white people living in a Greenwich Village where almost no people of color existed.
