You make some very good points here. The show especially struck a cord with the young 20 something crowd that brief time between adolescence and then having kids sometime in your mid-twenties.
That naive time when you think the group of friends you’re hanging out with now are going to be the same friends you’re hanging out with for the rest of your life. And the fun social activities you engage in with your friends will be like that in perpetuity.
Oh to be young and naive.
I’ve tried watching it a few times. Apparently there are cable tv stations showing reruns 24/7, 365 days a year, so I’ve tried, god knows, I TRIED. I could never get through more than 10 minutes of any episode. I loathed all of them so much. I was utterly repelled. (I apparently lack some kind of gene, I also dislike Hallmark Movies for Wimmen.)
Yep. And I guess what I was trying to say was: it’s a happy place. It felt very upbeat. We liked feel good stuff, this was the era of star trek TNG (I think).
We’re a bit too cynical now to just enjoy going to a happy place.
However:
This is interesting, as it’s the other thing that makes the show hard to watch now. It’s not just that the jokes fall flat, but it’s actually mean-spirited.
The Friends are incredibly rude to people outside of their group. The look down on people, use them, and still somehow feel like they are the good guys.
I understand that these non recurring characters are just there for a specific joke or observation, but you see the same kind of attitude among some of the young and privileged in real life.
Of course I never saw it that way at the time.
Can we at least all agree that Malcolm Gladwell is very overrated?
Is overrated? Is anyone “rating” it these days? I agree that it’s not exactly sophisticated entertainment but in its time it was wildly popular among it’s targeted demographic.
Looking at it now, it doesn’t amuse me like it did back then but I can still remember how and why it appealed to me and my friends. So, no, I don’t agree it was overrated.
In the past few years, I’ve seen a number of articles about how Friends has recently had a lot of popularity in the UK. E.g.:
Based on how often Friends actors seem to show up on The Graham Norton Show, and how the audience seems to know who they are, I would say that is true.
I enjoyed Friends when it was on, especially its earlier seasons. I was basically in the perfect target demographic, being roughly the same age as the characters. I was in the same position in life: living on my own for the first time, having a group of friends functioning like a pseudo-family, trying to figure out jobs and dating and how to function as an adult. For that reason alone, it felt real to me in a way that most prior sitcoms hadn’t.
I haven’t looked back in on it in a long time now, despite the easy availability of endless reruns. It probably wouldn’t be as amusing to me now, but then I’m in a different place in my life now. Plus I know all the jokes, and no joke is funny when you already know the punchline.
The best version of Friends was the Britcom Coupling.
Smarter scripts and much better actors overall. Of course it is a Britcom and even with 4 seasons, only had 28 episodes.
To nitpick a little, the characters in Friends are not the sort that usually have kids in their mid-twenties. They’re the ones who bounce around from one girlfriend (or boyfriend) to another until they are in their thirties. Sometimes they find the right person early, but they often put off having kids (or sometimes even getting married) for a decade or so. Then in their early thirties (or late thirties if they can’t find anyone to settle down with till then) they finally get married and have kids.* To nitpick with someone else’s comment, they weren’t upper-middle class in this point in their lives. They were middle class. They all knew that if they tried hard and were lucky, they would soon be upper-middle class.
*Yeah, Ross is an exception to this. Ross couldn’t find any woman interested in him until his twenties, so he married the first one he found. He was so desperate that he was willing to ignore things like the fact that she might be lesbian.
Friends is the kind of show you get when you tell people whose only frame of reference is network sitcoms from before 1994 to write a show that they think is funny with no restrictions. It will be a little bit funnier, a little bit edgier, and a little bit more true to life than, say Bringing up Jack, Hope & Gloria, or On Our Own, to name three other sitcoms that debuted at the same time as Friends and were firmly stuck in the lowest common denominator mid-80s comic sensibility. And a lot of people who aren’t looking for more than incremental progress will like it, and they did.
Jennifer Aniston was tremendously funny in Office Space and probably could have been a great comic actress in more substantial material than what she’s been given, but she was ruined on that front by trying to be a “star” or a sex symbol. The rest of the cast was good enough to carry the good enough material they were given.
It’s so dated now because of the wave of new comedies since 2000 by people whose background is hardcore comedy geek activity rather than watching network TV all day, and because of the “haha look at what is considered cool here in 1997, aren’t these kids wacky compared to us 40-year-old TV writers and our target audience of the same age” aesthetic that is part and parcel of the “career TV writer” sense of humor.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re expecting from it; it’s a US big-3 network sitcom from the mid-1990s. You’re not going to get subtle humor, realistic writing, etc… from one of those.
Shows back then, especially sitcoms, were basically like comic books- bright, flashy, in your face, and generally written if not for, then with an eye toward the lowest common denominator. So even when they were clever and subtle, it was always kind of hiding behind a fart joke or something.
Friends was popular in large part because of the very attractive cast, especially early on. Combine that with a more or less new concept in sitcoms with the focus on an ensemble of young, unmarried, post-college aged people and their adventures/misadentures. Unlike most other sitcoms of the time, it wasn’t focused on the workplace, family dynamics, or generic romantic comedyq, so it resonated pretty strongly with pretty much anyone under about 30.
But it wasn’t serious, insightful TV for the most part. I mean, it had some moments, but in large part it was silly, happy comedy and that’s I think why it was popular. People could go and spend a half-hour watching it and not feel like they had to think too hard, the cast was easy on the eyes, and for people in their twenties/early thirties, it was relatable in ways that stuff like “Family Matters” or “News Radio” (to use examples of a couple of roughly contemporary shows) weren’t.
From my recollection of it I remember it’s popularity was very female based. I knew tons of girls and women who either watched it and liked it or really loved it. Didn’t know a lot of guys who were big fans. If they did see it they were more “meh” of it. The humor being very mellow didn’t hold them and they just weren’t into the relationship dramas.
I agree that Friends was never particularly highly rated in the first place unlike ,say, Seinfeld. It was just a very popular show. Back in the day I would watch it occasionally if there was nothing else on but it is not something that I would re-watch now when there are so many better shows. I also agree that Coupling is great and evidence that it is possible to create a genuinely funny show with a similar premise.
Well, I liked it because it fit my teenaged mentality at the time. It’s syndicated, of course, so I could watch it now if I wish. I never do, so I suppose that says something.
It was a sitcom, not Citizen Kane, which was also very overrated. Not initially, but over time. Citizen Kane, not Friends. Friends was overrated pretty quickly, and has been falling off over time. To re-iterate, or actually iterate for the first time, it was just a sitcom.
Honestly, I think this is why Michael Schur’s shows (Parks and Rec, The Good Place, Brooklyn 99) have succeeded recently. They’re bright points of optimism in a sea of cynicism.
I watched it twice. The first time to check out the hype and the second time a while later, just to be sure.
On first viewing I found it to be boringly cliche. Old material with predictable delivery and a laugh track to convince you it’s funny.
The second try was worse. I’m supposed to think it’s funny because some guy took Viagra, has an erection, and his date didn’t show up, so his friends take him around NY seeking a solution. Completely implausible. not funny and who cares?
I’m not sure what you were watching, but that wasn’t Friends.
Probably correct - it was Seinfeld which I thought was friends.
That’s not a surpise. Young Youtubers from non-English-speaking countries almost always mention watching Friends in school to learn English.