Jennifer Keishin Armstrong > Quotes

“BY 2013, SEINFELD WOULD BECOME the most successful show ever in syndication. Networks buy reruns in packages sold in “cycles,” and Seinfeld was the first show in history to get to a fifth cycle, taking its rerun sales through 2017—nearly twenty years since its finale.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything

“It is the story of two men whose sitcom—full of minute observations and despicable characters—snuck through the network system to become a hit that changed TV’s most cherished rules; from then on, antiheroes would rise to prominence, unique voices would invade the airwaves, and the creative forces behind shows would often gain as much power and fame as the faces in front of the cameras. Seinfeld”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything

“Not all New Yorkers embraced it: Locals thought Seinfeld so influential that some, like bohemian artist Penny Arcade, who came up in the city’s downtown scene of the ’70s and ’80s, eventually blamed the show for making the city seem attractive and accommodating to suburbanites who then moved in, gentrifying, chain-restaurantizing, and sanitizing the character right out of Manhattan.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything

“Seinfeld told his writers that nine was his lucky number, so he just had to go out with his ninth season.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything

“women did not fart on television,”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love

“You might step in dog poop. Or you might meet your destiny.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love

“We need to give girls credit for the sophistication of their social structures. Our best politicians and diplomats can’t match a girl who understands the social intrigue and political landscape that lead to power.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed With It) – The First Authoritative Book on the Teen Comedy That Defined a Generation

“Mean Girls marked a change in the pop culture rules of feminism at this critical time. Pink and girly, it told us, didn’t necessarily mean stupid and weak.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed With It) – The First Authoritative Book on the Teen Comedy That Defined a Generation

“Girls were responding to these films’ darker aspects, analysts said. “Today’s teen girls want to see movies that speak to them more on their level, rather than giving them a sanitized view of teen life,” Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, a box office tracking firm, told USA Today. “The paradigm is shifting toward going after the teen audience in a more realistic way with edgier portrayals, things that today’s teens can relate to.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed With It) – The First Authoritative Book on the Teen Comedy That Defined a Generation

“The finale felt nothing like a regular weekly episode, and "The Puerto Rican Day" took place off the home set, so the episode the week before-"The Maid," an unmemorable half hour in which Jerry sleeps with his cleaning lady-was, the cast and crew realized, the last normal episode. They'd left their old lives behind before they realized it.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything

“When you opened Thel’s closet doors, angels sang.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love

“What I loved about Miranda was she was the bullshit detector,”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love

“Oh, you’re the Marble Rye Lady!” Her rabbi went out of his way to greet her now, she told People magazine, and he had a sizable congregation. This was no small show.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything

“The Seinfeld writers began checking message boards and other sites regularly to gauge fan response to the episodes.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything

“the “power lesbians,” who first invite her into their circle after admiring her Prada loafers.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love

“She hadn’t realized this might be a detriment in the case of a movie about and for teen girls. The script, as Fey first turned it in, was clearly R-rated, which would eliminate most of its target audience. It needed a PG-13 rating to succeed at the box office.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed With It) – The First Authoritative Book on the Teen Comedy That Defined a Generation

“tutu-like tulle skirt Field had gotten for five dollars”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love

“Guys with beards tended to smoke weed, be creative, listen to cool music.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And all the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic

“the city was the fifth lady of Sex and the City,”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love

“The result of Mean Girls’ own phenomenon was a macro, fun-house-mirror reflection of the very themes it sought to explore: the ways girls and women are pitted against each other and held to impossible standards, so that the more spectacular their rise, the more doomed they are to fall.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed With It) – The First Authoritative Book on the Teen Comedy That Defined a Generation

“Mean Girls’ legacy is like Cady’s Spring Fling crown—there’s a piece of it for each and every one of us. Get in, loser. We’re going back to 2004.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed With It) – The First Authoritative Book on the Teen Comedy That Defined a Generation

“Like boy bands, these shows are for teen girls, and therefore they'll always have to fight to be taken seriously, even if they come up with something as transcendent as "I Want it That Way".”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson's Creek: How Seven Teen Shows Transformed Television

“It’s no surprise that the patriarchy could find a way to turn Mean Girls against the young women it spoke most to.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed With It) – The First Authoritative Book on the Teen Comedy That Defined a Generation

“They would work for something like fifty-six days in a row without a break. That was what it took to replace Larry David.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything

“The more outrageous the story line, the more of it had to come from reality.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love

“David had an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball that Kramer admired, and an unusual dedication to the Yankees for a guy that grew up in Brooklyn, which was Dodgers territory.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything

“It got its own internet holiday, October 3, Mean Girls Day, a day that has been acknowledged by not only BuzzFeed and Instagram but also heads of state and international space crews.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed With It) – The First Authoritative Book on the Teen Comedy That Defined a Generation

“their environment was totally white-washed.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love

“The Sopranos never had any questions asked about whether or not they like each other, because they’re not all women.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love

“Ball walked by Moore, then backtracked a few seconds later, looked her in the eye, and said, “You’re very good,” before she left. Moore would think of that whenever she felt unsure of herself.”
― Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And all the Brilliant Minds Who Made The Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic