This book examines the most popular American television shows of the ninetiesa decade at the last gasp of network televisions cultural dominance. At a time when American culture seemed increasingly fragmented, television still offered something close to a site of national consensus.The Lonely Nineties focuses on a different set of popular nineties television shows in each chapter and provides an in-depth reading of scenes, characters or episodes that articulate the overarching ideology of each series. It ultimately argues that television shows such asSeinfeld,Friends,Law& Order andThe Simpsons helped to shape the ways Americans thought about themselves in relation to their friends, families, localities, and nation. It demonstrates how these shows engaged with a variety of problems in American civic life, responded to the social isolation of the age, and occasionally imagined improvements for community in America. 

Paul Arras is Lecturer in Communication Studies at SUNY Cortland, USA. 

1. Watching TV after the Wall Came Down.- 2. Lonely Bowling and Other Critical Contexts.- 3. They Let You Just Sit There: The Failure of the Coffee Shop inSeinfeld,Friends, andFrasier.- 4. Im Doing This My Own Way: RedeemingNYPD Blues Racist Hero.- 5. It Was a Different Time: Law& Order, White Rabbits, and the Decline of Sixties Radicalism.- 6. The Truth is Out Thereand He Loves You: Depictions of Faith in TheX-Files andTouched by an Angel.- 7. This Town Aint So Bad: Eternity in Heavenly Springfield withThe Simpsons.- 8. TV after the Nineties.