Matthew Perry changed the way America spoke

It is impossible, now, to watch it in the same way. The emphasis has changed—and emphasis is what matters in comedy. He’d always known that. The words, the sentence, the scene can be the same but alter the emphasis—lean a little harder on this word, push a little on that one—and the joke is transformed. He and his friends had played with this when they were at school. They’d developed their own way of speaking. “Could it be any hotter?” they’d ask. “Could the teacher be any meaner?” It changed everything.