James Burrows recalls 'Friends' cat attack, 'Taxi' driving test
LOS ANGELES – When you've directed 1,000 episodes of TV, including such beloved comedies as Cheers, Taxi, Frasier, Friends and Will & Grace, it's easy to come up with classic moments.
It's harder to narrow it down to a few favorites. But director James Burrows, whose legendary career will be celebrated Sunday in a two-hour NBC special, Must See TV: An All-Star Tribute to James Burrows (9 p.m. ET/PT), offers some memorable moments during a chat with USA TODAY just days before he reached the milestone directing an episode of NBC's Crowded (premiering March 15).
On Friends: A cat attacks Ross as he tries to tell Rachel of his feelings for her.
Burrows remembers a Friends moment from Season 1's seventh episode, "The One with the Blackout" (1994).
Just before a nervous Ross (David Schwimmer) can work up the courage to ask Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) out on a date, a cat interrupts the moment by jumping on him. As he and Rachel fight off the attacking cat on the balcony, the oblivious trio of Monica (Courteney Cox), Joey (Matt LeBlanc) and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) can be seen inside, singing their way through a New York blackout. (Coincidentally, those five are together in the special, with Matthew Perrry, whose Chandler was stuck in an ATM vestibule, appearing via taped segment.)
Burrows says: "The cat jumps on his shoulder and he’s trying to get the cat off his shoulder and we cut inside and Matt and Lisa and Courteney are singing Top of the World. And you see him in the background with the cat. Just a classic moment."
On Taxi: Reverend Jim, not surprisingly, has a communications mix-up.
In Season 2's aptly titled "Reverend Jim: A Space Odyssey" (1979), the cabbies help the addled Reverend Jim (Christopher Lloyd) through his driver's license exam. Jim has trouble just figuring out his last name for the application, so it's no surprise he cheats by asking Bobby (Jeff Conaway) for help with a simple test question: "What does a yellow light mean?"
When Bobby whispers the correct answer, "Slow down," Jim misinterprets the response as a command and repeats his question in a slower manner. This back-and-forth continues, a brilliant blend of anticipation and timing that creates a classic TV moment.
For Cheers, it's a toss-up: Sam and Diane's first big kiss or Woody's wedding.
Sam (Ted Danson) and Diane’s (Shelley Long) passionate embrace at the end of Season 1 (1983's "Showdown") was "just amazing," a memorable scene that influenced the entire TV industry.
" 'Sam and Diane’ has become vernacular in the writing business. I’ve been on a number of shows where someone says, ‘At this point, we need for them to have a Sam and Diane relationship,' ” Burrows says of bringing the bickering duo together.
Woody's Season 10 nuptials (1992's "An Old-Fashioned Wedding") stands out as an exemplar of another comic genre: farce. "That was extraordinary," Burrows says.