It’s a modern era sit-com. They ALL have pretty people in them.
I was always “meh” about the whole thing. Didn’t watch TV in the 90s so missed the first run. The show annoys me in some ways, but only to the extent that it reflects things that annoy me about my culture. I don’t seek it out on TV, but I don’t automatically turn it off if it’s in the background.
Ever heard of Seinfeld?? Or later, Malcom in the Middle?
I hated Friends when it was on. Mostly because everyone else loved it and I thought it was cheesy pap. And in comparison to the perfection that was Seinfeld, Friends was utter garbage.
Now that I’m older, and I’ve watched a ton more sitcoms, old and new, I can tell that it wasn’t as bad as many. The sitcom world can sink pretty low. But I still think Friends is vastly overrated.
There is a lot of similarity between Seinfeld and Friends but I wouldn’t call Friends derivative necessarily. Seinfeld was not the first sitcom set in NYC. The main difference is that Seinfeld was social commentary and satire while Friends was a comic soap opera. The audience was supposed to form attachment to the Friends characters while on Seinfeld the audience was only supposed to relate to Jerry. But Elaine would play a female version of Jerry on some episodes, and Phoebe and Joey were more like the weird friends that the other characters played on Seinfeld. So there is a lot of commonality, though much of it is the same commonality among many sitcoms, but Friends went their own direction with a long term overarching storyline and a lot of character development. I hate character development on sitcoms though, it ruins comedy, and the great thing about Seinfeld is that the characters ended the way the started, selfish, self absorbed observers of life. No doubt that in terms of originality and pure comedy Seinfeld was the superior product.
I find it funny, but I don’t care for the characters at all.
I liked it for the first few years of the original run. I was single and thought the show was funny. I stopped watching it during the original run at some point, and would not watch an episode now, there are too many other choices, the catch phrases are worn out, and I don’t think it has aged well. Plus the writing on some of the new TV shows is so much better.
It’s a much better show than unfunny, overrated Seinfeld.
That’s right. I said it. Come at me.
This is a big part of it. I loved it when it was first run. Back then everyone watched it, or at least enough so that we all discussed it the next morning at work.
I didn’t love everything about it by any means;the only characters I liked from the start to the finish were Joey and Chandler. I couldn’t have cared less about Ross & Rachel, I had no interest in any of the pregnancy, child birth, child related episodes so even though I suffered through them the first time, I never watch those reruns. In fact, I know the episodes so well (i know; sad:o ) I have certain ones that I will always watch when they come on and many that I’ll never watch again.
So, to answer the OP, of course some people hate the show as much as you do; just not full time 
I enjoyed it at the time it was originally airing. I was pretty much the perfect target audience, being in my mid-twenties and trying to navigate things like dating and finding the right job, just like the characters were.
I don’t watch the endless reruns very much these days, and when I do happen to run across one, it’s rather hard to watch now. Possibly just because I’ve seen them enough that they’re no longer funny, or because I’ve changed to the point that I can’t really related as well to the characters anymore.
Nah, Breaking Bad ended its run a while back.
Can’t say I hate it, because like Gatopescado I’ve never watched a minute of it (or Seinfeld, for that matter). Just never interested me as something I wanted to devote time too. I do watch BBT now and then, but not on a constant basis.
I think the reason I dislike the show so much is it’s so so so idealized, funny, whimsical, and nothing but success and happiness for all. (yes, I assume there are sad bits.) . Everyone is beautiful, everyone has interesting lives, comical situations abound. They sit on that damn orange couch in the coffee shop like they own it. … I did take a look at the spinoff show one of them made about striking out as an actor in L.A. I thought that could be somewhat interesting. No, it was more of the same, more beautiful people and funny situations. (In real life, that wanna-be actor would end up working as a dishwasher and be sitting out behind the restaurant dumpster smoking weed.)…well, glad to hear I’m not the ONLY human on earth who hasn’t been hypnotized by Jennifer Annistons big bouncy tits or skeletal Courtney Cox’s scary staring eyeballs.
Malcolm in the Middle was a great show. It’s true that towards the end of Friends there were good alternatives, but at the start nosomuch.
And yeah, I prefer Friends over Seinfeld. Well, TBH I was in early teens during Friends’ run, so there may be reasons that show appealed to me more than Seinfeld at the time: like I say, it was a place you wanted to be.
But if it were obvious that Seinfeld was actual the better show I should be able to see that, now, when I see reruns of both shows. And I don’t. I don’t find Seinfeld funny at all.
Friends was an extremely popular show in many countries around the world, and popular enough to be constantly on rerun.
You can call it lowbrow say, but “utter garbage” or implying it was just a product of hype stretches credulity way past breaking point.
It’s terrible.
I liked *Friends *for about a season or two, but by the end I too loathed it. One of my roommates in college was a Friends-a-holic. He was seriously emotionally damaged when the series ended. And it’s a show, like many from its era, that does not age well.
I really liked Friends when it first came on. I was in my early-to-mid twenties and even though I was in college at the time and not hanging out in a New York coffee shop, there was something about it that felt like it was about people like me. Cosby, Seinfeld, and Homer Simpson were all very funny but they didn’t speak to me quote like the Friends gang did. But as time went on, the characters got Flanderized worse and worse, in fact I would argue that they are the poster children for Flanderization even more so than Ned Flanders is. Joey got dumber, Ross got more nerdy and whiny, Rachael got more needy and whiny and the storylines got too repetitive and insular. The scenes also got shorter and shorter so a lot of conflicts that seemed like they could have been resolved with a slightly longer conversation got dragged out (Friends wasn’t the only show that did this, That 70s Show did it as well). Later episodes pale in comparison to their earlier couple seasons.
I never watched it at the time. Everything I heard about it sounded annoying. I gathered there were these Ross and Rachel characters locked in a never-ending game of Will They/Won’t They. Pass. I remember one of the female cast members changed her haircut and it was considered national fucking news.
Fast-forward to today. My wife was a big Friends fan and will often let the reruns play on TV. Honestly, I’m kind of stupefied how this thing ran for 10 years. Seinfeld, whether you love it or hate it (I think it’s pretty brilliant), at least taps into something recognizable in most people’s daily lives. After several unwilling hours of watching Friends, I still can’t even tell the characters apart; the only one with a personality is Phoebe. Watching interchangeable, emotionally arrested, not-very-funny ciphers run around a playground version of New York … no thanks.
I’m not a huge fan, but just thinking of this scene makes me smile every time:
(much paraphrasing from memory)
Phoebe is challenged to list all 50 states. Later, Ross (?) comes back and asks how she’s doing with the states.
Phoebe: I got bored with that so I just started naming all the different types of celery.
Ross: Oh, how many do you have so far?
Phoebe: Just one. Regular celery.
mmm
:rolleyes:
. All of them, privileged, no! - overprivileged dumbasses. The kind who often do VERY well in life,most knowing nothing much of anything (like Jay Leno’s jay-walking, tee hee) . -, getting by on money or looks, or general WASP-iness and ‘connections’ . None of THEM are changing the diapers on their senile parents, or working two part time jobs and getting $20 of food stamps a month. None of THEM are spraying their huge apartments with roach spray. None of THEM are riding the bus across town, it’s taxies and free rides, no problem-o. They plop out babies and all the angels sing. Life is a fucking wonderland, flowers and sex and good times non-stop …I swear, I hate all of them even more now.
Hol-ee shit, dude. It’s a fairy tale about twentysomethings in New York, it’s not meant to reflect reality. I mean, why do you think people watch television? To relax and take some time away from the stress of daily life, right? Does anyone want to watch a show about the things you describe? Do you? Of course TV is unrealistic, it’s TV. That level of vitriol seems a bit over the top.