Best Sitcom Apartments

Ten homes no character could possibly afford, ranked by square footage of denial.

Entries
10
Category
TV
Updated
  1. An Upper West Side apartment window overlooking a bar sign below, a sword hanging on the wall and a red cowboy boot on the floor.

    10. Ted and Marshall's Apartment

    How I Met Your Mother · 2005

    An Upper West Side apartment upstairs from the bar where the whole show happens, which is the real luxury. Over nine seasons it housed Ted, Marshall, Lily, Robin and, briefly, a goat. The commute to MacLaren's was a staircase. Rent was never an issue, somehow.

  2. A basement apartment window at sidewalk level showing passing feet and a curbside brewery truck.

    09. Laverne & Shirley's Apartment

    Laverne & Shirley · 1976

    A Milwaukee basement apartment where the only window looks out at sidewalk-level ankles. Two brewery bottle-cappers live there, with neighbors who walk in unannounced. It is the most honest apartment on this list. The rent was low because it was underground.

  3. A living room with whiteboards of equations, a sofa with one cushion marked by a tape outline and takeout boxes on the coffee table.

    08. Apartment 4A

    The Big Bang Theory · 2007

    Sheldon and Leonard's Pasadena apartment has whiteboards, a flag collection and a couch cushion that belongs to one person. The elevator in the building stayed broken for most of the run, which is why every scene starts on the stairs. Sheldon's spot is not for sitting.

  4. A Manhattan living room split down the middle: neat cushions and a vacuum on one side, pizza boxes and cigar butts on the other.

    07. The Odd Couple's Apartment

    The Odd Couple · 1970

    Two divorced men share a big Manhattan apartment, one a slob sportswriter and one a neat photographer, and every episode is the room fighting itself. Tony Randall and Jack Klugman kept the war going for five seasons. The apartment never chose a side.

  5. A deluxe Manhattan high-rise living room with a wet bar, a white sofa and floor-to-ceiling windows over the river.

    06. The Jeffersons' Apartment

    The Jeffersons · 1975

    A deluxe East Side high-rise apartment, as promised in a theme song about moving on up. George Jefferson ran seven dry-cleaning stores and wanted everyone to know it. The show ran eleven seasons, proving the theme song right.

  6. A bare kitchen with a wooden table, an old icebox, a small stove and a window onto a brick fire escape.

    05. The Kramdens' Apartment

    The Honeymooners · 1955

    A two-room Brooklyn walk-up with a table, an icebox, a stove and a window onto the fire escape. Nothing else, ever. The address is 328 Chauncey Street. It is the bleakest set in sitcom history and the funniest, because Ralph thinks he is about to be rich.

  7. A cozy studio apartment with big arched windows, a sunken living area and a large carved wooden wall ornament.

    04. Mary Richards' Apartment

    The Mary Tyler Moore Show · 1970

    A Minneapolis studio in a converted Victorian, with a sunken living room, a fold-out bed and a big wooden M on the wall. The real house used for exterior shots became a pilgrimage site. A single woman with a career and her own place, in 1970. Revolutionary, and nicely lit.

  8. A sleek modern living room with a grand piano, a designer chair and a patched old recliner facing a picture window of a city skyline at dusk.

    03. Frasier's Apartment

    Frasier · 1993

    A Seattle high-rise in Elliott Bay Towers with designer furniture, a grand piano and one ugly duct-taped recliner belonging to his father. The decor fight was the show's thesis. The Space Needle view is a backdrop from an angle no real building has. Of course it is.

  9. A small Upper West Side living room with a bicycle hanging on the wall, a shelf of cereal boxes and a gray couch.

    02. Jerry's Apartment

    Seinfeld · 1989

    Apartment 5A on West 81st Street, with a bike on the wall, a cereal shelf and a door that Kramer never once knocked on. The establishing shot of the building is actually in Los Angeles. Jerry is a stand-up comic who works one night a week. The math remains private.

  10. A purple apartment door with a yellow picture frame around the peephole at the end of a narrow stairwell.

    01. Monica's Apartment

    Friends · 1994

    A huge two-bedroom in Greenwich Village with purple walls, a balcony and a yellow frame around the peephole, which Monica sublets illegally from her grandmother under rent control. A chef and a waitress live there for a decade. The building exterior is in the West Village.

Honorable mentions

  • A small apartment with two leather recliners facing a TV, a foosball table and a duck nest in the bathtub.

    Joey and Chandler's Apartment

    Friends · 1994

    Across the hall from Monica's, with a foosball table, two recliners and a duck and a chick for roommates. They won Monica's apartment in a trivia bet and gave it back for Knicks tickets. Not the best apartment. Best stakes.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A narrow Brooklyn backyard behind a brick building with a horse standing in it, a cupcake stand and a laundry line.

    Max and Caroline's Apartment

    2 Broke Girls · 2011

    Two broke waitresses in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in an apartment with a backyard where they keep a horse named Chestnut. Rent is the plot of the show. The horse is never explained in a way that fixes it. Neither is the rent.

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