Because of…celery?
mmm
Keep in mind when Friends was a hit show, many people only had 5-8 channels to pick from. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS and a few independent channels.
So the competition was much much less. Nowadays when I watch Seinfeld I’m disappointed in how unremarkable the show is. Seinfeld was a big fish in a small pond. It wouldn’t do nearly as well in today’s media environment with all the competition and all the options.
But even in the 90s, I didn’t care for the show Friends.
That’s funny?
The whole Ross and Rachel thing went on much too long. Much, much, much, much, much, much too long.
Exactly. It’s a comedy show set in New York City and using attractive young actors. It’s not a story or examination about what it means to be a young person living in New York.
I don’t think I ever saw more than a couple minutes of a “Friends” episode, any more than I could sit through an entire “Thirtysomething” or “Two Broke Girls”.
Just not much appeal there, though my reaction falls way closer to “meh” than “hate”.
I liked it early on. I was a 20-something living in the big city and they were 20-somethings living in the big city. They dealt with actual things sometimes, like hanging with friends making more than you, going from employee to management, or having parents that blatantly favor one child.
But Ross and Rachel went on too long and being of a similar age worked against it, as I matured and they didn’t. Of the last few seasons, the only ones I like are when Rachel’s sisters (Christina Applegate and Reese Witherspoon) visit.
I honestly never got the early fuss over Aniston and her hair (but got a laugh when reading some urban fantasy where a character sees a pic of a vampire sporting The Rachel back then). She’s aged much better than everyone, though.
It was a blatant rip-off of Fox’s “Living Single”.
Seriously, get a grip.
I wasn’t really a fan of the show (I was more into Beavis and Butthead, and The State), but I DID have “The Rachel” for about a year. Does that count? 
Yeah, it was a funny show. Maybe if you weren’t a white affluent 20-something in 1994 to 2004 , you might not be the target audience.
My only complaint is that Friends and Seinfeld started a trend of “friends living fabulously beyond their means in New York” shows that includes Sex and the City, How I Met Your Mother, Girls, 2 Broke Girls, etc. Not to mention various rom-coms and whatnot. All which give the impression that “adults” don’t live in New York. Only maladjusted post-adolescents with addiction problems.
This pretty closely matches my thoughts.
Frasier, to compare something of similar vintage, I think has aged very well indeed. At least the episodes before Daphne’s family start showing up.
Oh, now Sex and the City, THAT show sucked. My sister and my mother loved it, but to me it was like nails on a chalkboard. I don’t know why, but I just found the characters really irritating. Not unrealistic, just incredibly, insanely annoying.
Friends was on the air from 1994 to 2004. We had digital cable during that time period. Far from 5-8 channels, we had a couple of hundred. Even Bruce Springsteen’s lament about “57 channels and nothin’ on” was several years out of date.
Exactly. Most people had cable for ten years or more at that point.
Holy shit, yes. I hated that show.
They should’ve put on the brakes.
The humor holds up well, and there was even a not-too-old thread about that. As has been mentioned elsewhere, one thing contributing to its success is everyone remembers the younger days when you had a close-knit circle of friends, with everyone living in each other’s kitchen. I don’t have that anymore. Many people would love to have just such a circle of friends in large apartments in NYC.
Gunther was probably the most underappreciated character. I understand he continues to make the most of it, even setting up pop-up replicas of Central Perk in places like London.
I always find the distance shots of the World Trade Center poignant. It tells you it was pre-9/11. There was even one episode where Joey learns a British pub there sells Boddingtons Ale like they had in London, and he heads off to there. Just glad he did not head off there on 9/11
While we’re at it, Sex and the City is a show we liked too, but we did see that in Bangkok. Watched DVDs.
I can’t say I hate it but I never thought it was more than mediocre. It was occasionally funny. There were some fairly decent comic actors in the cast, especially Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow.
I have been surprised by how popular “Friends” was (and continues to be) in the UK. People quote lines from it, refer to specific episodes, use the characters as shorthand to describe someone’s behavior. I’ve never known anyone in the US with that level of knowledge or interest in this old (and not terribly accomplished or captivating) TV sit-com.
No, but maybe it could be to come in and say you never, ever watched it.
My wife liked it, and I watched it. It was Ok, but I admit is has aged very poorly.