The comparison made me wonder: Have New York sitcom apartments, which used to ask viewers to suspend their disbelief, started skewing more toward reality? At the time, shows like “Seinfeld,” “Living Single” and “Friends” depicted much larger apartments in the city he lived in. “That’s a huge difference in the way things are shot and the ‘quality of realism’ that you experience,” Shaffner said. Fast-forward to the 2010s, and fictional New York apartments started to look different. “With ‘Broad City,’ we all knew, like, ‘This is gritty New York,’” said the show’s production designer, Angelique Clark.