
Part One: “We Gather Together”—The Cosby Show
Part Two: “The 20 Year Callback”—The Newhart Finale
“Delightful Accidents and Fortuitous Blunders”
Friends, The Jack Benny Show, Seinfeld
On a cold morning in 1930, Ruth Graves Wakefield, the innkeeper/chef at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, was preparing her famous Butter Drop Do chocolate cookies when she realized she was fresh out of baker’s chocolate. Improvising, she found a semi-sweet chocolate bar (that had been given to her by Andrew Nestle) and cut it into little pieces, expecting the pieces to liquefy and absorb into the dough.
To Ruth’s chagrin, though, the tray she (carefully) removed from the oven did not contain Butter Drop Do chocolate cookies. It did, however, contain butter cookies stuffed with slightly softened chocolate chunks. And so began America’s braying waddle toward childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The point is, like chocolate chip cookies, several of the most iconic moments in sitcom history were the result of delightful accidents and fortuitous blunders…»