Sometimes, you don’t know something is of significance until a lot of time goes by. Which brings me to the Fall Preview issue of TV Guide from Sept. 1995, and an incredible coincidence which wouldn’t have meant anything to someone reading it way back then.
 
On one of the preview pages, there’s a show called “Misery Loves Company,” a fairly unfunny Fox comedy that aired Sunday nights. Among its stars was a very young and very unknown actor named Christopher Meloni. (And yes, he actually had hair back then!)
 
On the very next page, highlighting Monday nights, was an equally unsuccessful Friends clone called “Can’t Hurry Love,” a flop CBS comedy that wasn’t funny enough to attract an audience. It stars a then very young and almost unknown actress named Mariska Hargitay.
 
What are the odds both would be one page apart at the beginning of their careers in two otherwise obscure TV comedies in the mid-90s and wind up years later in the longest running drama in television history, "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit?”
 
But there’s one last oddity – after the glossy pages went to press in advance, a small mention in the “changes” section noted that the “unknown” Meloni apparently didn’t fit the role and had been replaced by another actor. So he never even had a chance to appear in the short-lived series.
 
What a strange moment from the past that those reading it back then could never have imagined.