Leave it to NPR to take note of the latest pop cultural phenomenon: Television is :finally on board with public transportation:
In the 1990s and early 2000s, TV shows didn’t have a lot of love for mass transit — as Homer Simpson pronounced, “Public transportation is for jerks and lesbians.”
Even on iconic shows set in New York City, characters didn’t take advantage of their mass transit options. The stars of Sex and the City rode in taxis and cars. Same with Seinfeld (except for that one time when Jerry’s car was in the shop and Elaine was forced to take the subway.) So, too, in fictional Springfield — Alex Marshall, who has written about public transportation in popular culture, says he can’t recall even seeing a bus on The Simpsons.
But now, things have changed. On shows like Girls, The Mindy Project, Broad City and Mr. Robot, New York characters routinely use public transit. Watching Mr. Robot, Marshall says, “I almost feel like they’re showing my life.” (In a city dweller sort of way, not a paranoid hacker sort of way.)
Marshall is a public transportation fanboy. He appreciates when TV characters use subways and buses to navigate their fictional, but very recognizable, worlds. “Infrastructure is aspirational,” Marshall says. “It’s not just a means to solve a problem or to get from here there.”
Of course there’s bad news, too—you guessed it–within President-elect Donald Trump’s trillion -dollar infrastructure plan, “there’s little hard evidence” that “ailing bus and subway systems” will get much help.