First off, I just now noticed how much "madness" was in NBC's "Must See TV" lineup: Mad About You, Stark Raving Mad and Madman of the People.
Anyway, I just finished my re-watch of Mad About You (I watched the original series finale and the first episode of the "reboot" last night). I may or may not post my thoughts, but I wanted to post here about a lot of the Friends related stuff.
Everyone knows that Phoebe from Friends had a twin sister named Ursula. Ursula first appeared as a character in MAY. She first appeared in season 2 of MAY (after Lisa Kudrow appeared as a different character in season 1), which was the season before Friends premiered. Ursula ultimately appeared in 24 of MAY's 176 episodes, always as a side character. After Friends premiered, the producers of Friends -- particularly David Crane -- conferred with the producers of MAY -- particularly co-producer Jeffrey Klarik, who was, at the time, Crane's boyfriend (and now husband) -- and agreed that Phoebe and Ursula would be twins. In the second episode of Friends, Phoebe made a vague allusion to a twin who was a waitress, so they had either made the deal by that time or were hoping for it.
While Phoebe never appeared on MAY, Ursula appeared in 8 episodes of Friends. Also, in season 3 of MAY, there is a blackout in NYC, which was also a plot point of the season 1 episode of Friends that aired the same night. In a later season 1 episode of Friends, Jamie (Helen Hunt) and Fran from MAY walk into Central Perk and mistake Phoebe for Ursula (assuming that Ursula was also working there).
I think I mentioned this previously, but in her first appearance in MAY, Ursula was working as a tour guide at the Museum of Natural History, which is where Ross worked for the first several seasons of Friends. Unfortunately, they never did anything with this connection (even when Joey took a job as a tour guide at the museum in season 4 of Friends).
Less known than Friends and MAY sharing a universe, the two shows also existed in the same universe as Seinfeld. In season 1 of MAY, we found out that Paul had sublet his "bachelor pad" to Kramer. Paul visited Kramer and, toward the end of the conversation, asked about "that Jerry guy" who lived down the hall. In the season 7 premiere of MAY, Paul ran into Jerry on the street. In season 5 of Seinfeld (the season that aired immediately prior to the premiere of Friends), Courteney Cox played Jerry's girlfriend. What that means is that, in the same universe, Monica had a doppelganger. Unfortunately, they never took advantage of this by having Monica meet Cox's "Meryl" character.
Beyond all that, Friends and MAY had in common tons of actors who played minor roles. Not sure if this is interesting to anyone but me, but there it is.
Thanks to this thread I just watched the pilot to Mad About You. Not Great but charming and has potential. Will keep watching for now.
Did you stick with it? What did you think? I think it improved greatly by season 2.