A Tribute to Jimmy Burrows
Sunday night on NBC was no grand Friends reunion event, though that was basically how the tribute to veteran television director Jimmy Burrows was depicted by various corners of the Internet – along with NBC’s own trailers for the event. If you’ve never heard of Jimmy Burrows, don’t worry you’re in the majority. The fact that a network took two hours of its programming slate to honor a television director who the general public would not recognize is admirable and should tell you something about his significance .
It was a delight to see so many of America’s beloved sitcom players come together to honor Burrows. As his actors and collaborators they at least genuinely appeared to care for him and recognize his importance. The introduction to the show consisted of Jim Parsons, Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, enlisting Sean Hayes, Jack from Will & Grace, to call up actors from the numerous sitcoms directed by Burrows, in order to pay tribute to him. Cue a montage of the actors in hilarious scenarios when Hayes calls – Matt LeBlanc getting a mani/pedi alongside Johnny Galecki and Patrick Warburton, Charlie Sheen in the middle of confession, and my favorite, Eric McCormack and Rhea Perlman in the bath together.
The special tribute was loaded with humorous bits, as befits an honoring of a director of comedy. But Burrows isn’t just any television director, he is the sitcom director, the most successful television director of all time, with forty years of experience under his belt. The tribute commemorates the 1000th episode of television directed by Burrows, for the new NBC sitcom Crowded. The tribute was comprised of spotlights on just seven of his sitcoms: Will & Grace, Cheers, The Big Bang Theory, Taxi, Mike & Molly, Frasier, and Friends (presented in that order). Incredibly, the cast of all of these series were in attendance to discuss their shows and their experiences with Burrows; there were some absences, including Debra Messing, Kelsey Grammer, and most notably (for the horde of people who only watched to see a Friends mini-reunion) Matthew Perry. However, it was clever to record these absent actors expressing their gratitude to Burrows while also introducing the rest of their respective cast via prerecorded video.
With the exception of The Big Bang Theory, all of the sitcom spotlights were moderated by Jane Lynch or Andy Cohen (Big Bang was assigned to Bill Nye The Science Guy, of course). For a special tribute to a director, I thought the questions could have been more centered on the man being honored. Such questions were especially absent in the first spotlight on Will & Grace, where Andy Cohen primarily asked questions about the actors’ favorite moments with one another, to which at least the actors tried steering in Jimmy’s direction. Cohen put a lot of emphasis on how significant the show is in its advocacy of the gay community; and yet, he missed an easy segue to bring it back to the man of the hour with the fact that W&G was the first show that Jimmy Burrows claimed the right of being an executive producer of. That again: the most successful sitcom director of all time didn’t ask to be the executive producer of Cheers or Friends or Frasier, but a show consisting of two gay men in the main cast. This wasn’t mentioned by Cohen, but is included in the book Top of The Rock by former NBC President of Entertainment Warren Littlefield. For a more full depiction of Burrows and his impact on television, see the aforementioned read.
Excluded from the event were all of Jimmy’s non-acting collaborators. There was not even a video of collected thanks from any showrunners, writers, executives, or crew members who I’m sure all would have loved to been a part of this thanks-giving ceremony for Burrows.
Burrow, on the other hand, did gracefully mention the excluded collaborators in his thank you speech. Still, this significant exclusion is part of the main problem I had with this “tribute” – it was too concentrated on the actors and not the man being celebrated; moreover, the focus on Friends overshadowed the event. At the risk of talking too much about Friends and similarly allowing it to overshadow Burrows in this recap, it’s worth noting that Friends was the only show to have a commercial break cut its spotlight in two; more time was spent on Friends than any other show.
We can attempt to forgive this by hoping that the people who watched the tribute solely to see 5 of the 6 Friends together again took away from the tribute the significant role that Burrows had in making Friends such a TV phenomenon with its enormous cultural impact. Jennifer Aniston thanked Jimmy for giving them “the best ten years of their acting careers” and the not-so-dim in real life Matt Leblanc said about Burrows, “It’s the seed he gives you. He doesn’t say a lot. He gives you credit for being an artist.”
Burrows’ speech was beautiful and deserves to be watched and listened to, more so than any other part of the broadcast, rather than read. He accurately describes the tribute as a trip down memory lane, and closes with a quote by musician George Strait, a quote that speaks to the life of a beloved sitcom as much as it does the life of a beloved director or any human being – “I’m not here for a long time, I’m here for a good time.”
Great Moments & Stray Observations:
Sean Hayes, Jim Parsons, and David Hyde Pierce all on the stage together was enough to make every gay man in the country cry in reflecting on how far we’ve come since these actors had to hide their sexuality while making millions of people laugh each week.
Rhea Perlman got to throw water in her father’s face on TV thanks to Jimmy. She looked like she could talk forever and ever about Cheers, and I wanted her to.
The parody PSA about George Wendt, Norm from Cheers, is better than any sketch SNL has put on in the past couple years.
Kelsey Grammer did impersonations of some of the characters Jimmy directed, including Jack, Joey, Sheldon, and Niles. It was cute.
Bill Nye asked a great question – “What was your favorite comedy show?” to which Kaley Cuoco responded Friends, Jim Parsons responded The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Johnny Galecki responded Taxi. All of these shows were directed by Jimmy Burrows.
Danny DeVito revealed his nickname for Jimmy – “Beads” because Jimmy would always have beady eyes from working so hard (DeVito also portrayed Jimmy pulling his d**k... for some reason).
Billy Gardell was asked how Burrows is different from other directors, to which he responded, simply, “He’s a lot better.” ‘Nough said.
Taxi’s episode about Reverend Jim’s driving test was Jimmy’s favorite episode he directed. The comedy still holds up today and is completely worth checking out.
Andy Cohen didn’t know that Monica inherited her apartment from her grandmother so I’m seriously questioning why he was a part of this tribute at all.
Jason Bateman was inexplicably there to present Jimmy Burrows.
Burrows compared Courteney Cox/Monica to Mary Tyler Moore, Lisa Kudrow/Phoebe to Reverend Jim, Matt LeBlanc/Joey to Tony Danza, and I for one am obsessed with the idea that Burrows connected all of his characters in later sitcoms to those of his past sitcoms.
And now two last quotes, from none other than intellectual on-screen brothers, Niles and Frasier Crane:
D.H. Pierce, looking out at the hall filled with talented people – “to be a part of such a lineage, such a history, is overwhelming.”
Grammer – “we all got to stand on the shoulders of a giant.”