Long-running TV shows can be a blessing and a curse. The blessing part is obvious enough - if a show lasts long enough to pass the old syndication marker (100 episodes), then it must be popular. (TV networks, before and after streaming, are not in the habit of charitably renewing shows whose ratings don't deserve new life.) The longer a show runs, regardless of its genre, the more solid its popularity must be. Think about it procedurals like "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" and "Grey's Anatomy" have been on the air for literally more than two decades.

But the longer a show runs, the more it can cost to produce (the actors on those shows understand very well how popular they are and want to be compensated to match). And for guest stars who arrive later in a series, they can find that the atmosphere is a bit closed off to newcomers, whether the guest is there for one episode or several. One such long-running show would be the original iteration of "Frasier," which aired on NBC from 1993 to 2004; one such late guest star is the inimitable Jean Smart. But it's good to know that at least for Smart, the experience was as joyful as fans of the Seattle sitcom would want it to be.

When she arrived on "Frasier," Smart was already a well-known figure in the world of TV sitcoms thanks to her role on "Designing Women" in the late 1980s. Smart, then as she is now, is a bright, bushy blonde, and so they were perfectly cast as the grown-up version of the most popular girl from Frasier's high school years. Even though he was obsessed with her as a teenager, she would never take a second. When they run into each other as adults, he as a well-known radio personality and she as a high-powered real estate agent, it initially seems like love at first sight. All goes well for Frasier and Lorna (as she was originally named) on their first date, which ends with them in bed together.

But the morning after, Frasier is surprised to find Lorna as abrasive as she is beautiful, smoking in bed, yelling at her son on the phone, and getting off much more aggressively than she did on her first blush. Eventually, their relationship falls apart, but Frasier keeps running into her and ends up having to tutor her incredibly stupid son, Kirby (Brian Klugman). Although the character's name was originally Lorna Linley, it was changed after Smart's first appearance to avoid the fictional character having the same name as a real woman. Afterwards, she was known as Lana Gardner. Smart made for a very funny fit on the show, as Lana is a constant obstacle for Frasier, who falls in love with one of her friends after their romance ends.

And luckily, it was a sentiment shared by Smart herself. A few years ago, while I was talking to Entertainment Weekly ahead of the new season of FX's Fargo, Smart was asked to briefly discuss her time on "Frasier" and spoke highly of the experience. "They didn't disappear into their offices when they were done filming," Smart recalled. "They were watching each other's scenes and laughing." She later talks about how the show's humor continues to be impressive because it was so deliberately high-brow, but her other comment speaks to a rarity among some long-running '90s-era sitcoms.

For a show like Friends, which remains massively popular, the main six actors were so tightly knit that some of the recurring guest actors talked about how they felt like outsiders looking in. A good example of this is if you watch this interview on Conan O'Brien's old late night show on NBC with Paul Rudd ahead of the Friends finale. Although the actor played Phoebe Buffett's eventual husband, he talks about how uncomfortable the experience was filming the finale; although his tongue is planted firmly in his cheek for most of the interview, that seems to be more than a little true.

Jean Smart's career remains somewhat underappreciated, although it has been very encouraging to see her star rise thanks to shows like Hacks and Watchmen, proving her ability to dive deep into comedic and dramatic characters. It's true that her recurring job on "Frasier" doesn't push her too far, but that doesn't mean she wasn't enormously funny. And whether or not she leans toward a parasocial relationship with a TV show, it's somewhat heartening to learn that Smart's short time on the show (she appeared in just seven episodes out of the series' total of 264) wasn't cold or unpleasant when the cameras were turned off. Given that the end result was a brilliantly funny series that managed to stay relatively fresh for at least seven or eight of its original eleven seasons, he Smart was pleasantly surprised by the friendly atmosphere of "Frasier" almost didn't matter. But since some great series have been tendentious and factional off-set, it's nice to know that a series whose leads often discussed avoiding rehearsals in order to sound as fresh as possible (he summoned that "disrespect required") when the cameras were rolling was open to welcome any and all of his much-appreciated guests.