12 Must-Know Facts About Our Favorite 'Must See TV' Sitcoms

There was an entire episode of Scrubs dedicated to Chris Turk, played by Donald Faison, getting a phone number. Everything about it had to be "perfect" and, when the digits came to light, the number was 916-CALL-TURK. 

Once the number was out in the world, fans started calling it. The show, likely anticipating those calls, actually set up a cellphone with that number. Some fans heard Faison saying, "I couldn't get to the phone right now, but you've called Turk... and that's a great thing. I'll tell you that much."

On another occasion, callers were greeted by a real person. When one lucky fan heard "You've called Turk; Dr. Kelso speaking," he quickly ended the call. 

In addition to acting, George Segal was an accomplished banjo player. He took up acting and banjo-playing in his youth, the latter of which was an extension of having played the ukulele. Segal recalled, "When I got to high school, I realized you couldn't play in a band with a ukulele, so I moved on to the four-string banjo."

He recorded numerous albums playing banjo. He also used to take his banjo (and other musical instruments) with him when he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and performed for the host and his audience - something that ultimately helped Segal break out of the mold of just a serious actor:

It was the first time that the people who make movies saw me doing comedy and having this funny interchange with Carson. That's how I got into all this comedy stuff.

When Segal was cast as Jack Gallo on Just Shoot Me!, the actor's talent and affinity for the banjo was worked into the show. Executive producer Steve Levitan recalled, "We had George play the banjo on a couple of shows."

But it didn't stop there: 

And he also played it for the studio audience. We said, "OK, George, play a song." And it turned into four songs, so we had to tell him, "OK, that's enough with the banjo, George."

The earliest days of Must See TV fell at the end of what was called "The Best Night of Television on Television" - essentially Cheers, Frasier, Family Ties, The Cosby Show, and Wings, among other programs. Wings and Frasier did air during the 1993-1994 season on Must See TV, but then moved to other nights. 

One of the creators of both Wings and Frasier was David Angell, who became a writer (by one account as a former priest, by others as a one-time insurance worker) during the late 1970s. He thrived through the 1980s as a writer on Cheers. He then found success writing and producing shows like Wings and Frasier. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, he was reportedly writing a book.

David and his wife Lynn were aboard American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11, 2001, the plane that was flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. 

During a first-season episode of Mad About You, Steve Buscemi played a former classmate of Paul Buchman who blamed Buchman for his professional failures and was ultimately relegated to working at a subway toll booth.

While the character laments Buchman's role in having to drop out of school, Buscemi was drawing upon a real-life experience he'd had with Reiser. The thing is, Reiser didn't even know it.

On the last day of filming his role on Mad About You, Buscemi explained to Reiser how the whole storyline was "kinda what happened with you and me." As Reiser recalled:

He told me that one time he was about to go on stage at a club in New York and I walked in and I sorta bumped him [took his time slot], which I didn't know - obviously - and he was, I guess, flirting with the idea of giving it up and that night thought, "Ah, it's over." So I thought, "Geez, that's wild."

Reiser didn't feel too bad when he talked about it in 2013, noting Buscemi has "done pretty good since then."

Lisa Kudrow appears in Must See TV programming in numerous ways. This includes two very different appearances on Mad About You. Developed by Paul Reiser and Danny Jacobson, Mad About You started as a show about the car ride home after a couple leaves a party or a dinner and the real conversations happen. During the first season, Kudrow played Karen: "I was a blind date for Paul. It was a flashback to the night he met [Helen Hunt's character] Jamie." 

Later, when Kudrow's agent called her to be on the show again, it was as "the waitress." The agent explained she had to be there in an hour and asked if she wanted to just pass. Kudrow, who needed the work, took it and was asked back for five more episodes.

From there, Ursula Buffay was born. Kudrow went onto appear as Ursula in 23 episodes of Must See TV programming - often pulling double-duty as Ursula's twin Phoebe on Friends.

Jason Lee's acting career started during the early 1990s. With appearances in several Kevin Smith movies, he found success in comedies and dramas alike through the early 2000s. In 2005, Lee took the part of Earl Hickey on My Name Is Earl.  Before any time on screen, however, Lee was, in his own words, "[J]ust a skateboarder from Orange County who fell into acting because I like watching movies."

The avid skateboarder founded Stereo Sound Agency with friend Chris Pastras in 1992; the brand is designed to foster creativity in the skateboarding world. They also put out two movies on skateboarding during the 1990s. On the professional skateboard circuit, Lee is known for popularizing the 360 kickflip and pole jams, among other tricks. In 2019, he was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame.