Coffee seems to be just about everywhere nowadays, and we recently came across a review in The Washington Post that got us thinking about all the coffee references we’ve seen on TV recently. It’s like coffee is the new smoking for moving the plot and conversation along in TV and film. Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is just one example among many. There’s coffee as an extended metaphor for hooking up in Luke Cage. There’s coffee as character development in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

When first reading The Washington Post review that suggested this show had worn out its welcome, our fear was that the lack of drama created by getting coffee might be to blame. Yet, by the end of the article, it seems more like the Post’s TV Critic Hank Stuever is afraid that the relatability of getting a cup of coffee might cause the show to drag on past its due—an ironic concern that Jerry Seinfeld himself seems to share—not because of the show itself but because of the saturation of TV shows right now that are just people talking to each other.

Vape pens don’t yet have the same ubiquity or general social acceptance as cigarettes, much less coffee. There’s also a lag time and audience recovery period in which Friends used its coffee shop as a major set for the show. The film Coffee Shop came and went in 2014. But even now, there seems to be a granular ubiquity to coffee’s presence in TV and film, as well as the general culture. Whether it’s getting laid, getting normalized, or getting through the day, coffee seems to be able to grind its way into any situation.

Read the original article at The Washington Post.