Long before Sex and the City became synonymous for cosmopolitan fantasy, Western television had already mastered the art of serial storytelling. Star Trek debuted in the 1960s. The X-Files arrived in the early 1990s. Friends launched in 1994, offering ten seasons of emotional continuity, humor, and familiarity. By the late 1990s, serial television was no longer an experiment, but an industry with familiar rules.
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