By that I mean comedies about groups of friends, “Friends” being the Platonic Ideal example. Other examples being Happy Endings, Taxi, How I Met Your Mother. Big Bang Theory. I understand the appeal of such shows & am more attracted to these sitcoms than to family sitcoms, usually.
My question - do they have ANY basis in reality? Have any of you had such a group of friends? Do you continue to have such a group after, say, college?
what do you mean? that they had sex with each other and are platonic, or that they have time to hang around with each other everyday?
I just mean comedies about groups of friends who hang out together - do any of you have such groups like in these comedies. (I was using the term “Platonic ideal” as in Plato’s ideal , nothing to do with sex . )
Taxi is a workplace sitcom. Many of the characters were indeed friends, but they knew each other because they worked together and the show was set largely in the cab company’s garage.
Yup, this was my life after moving to a new town for a job after college. It lasted for three years with a core group of people. We were even fairly equally split in gender. We hung out three or four nights a week, went to out of town stuff together, celebrated holidays together when we couldn’t be with family - everything those sitcoms show.
We made jokes about which “Friends” characters we were (I was Monica!) But we never, ever, got romantically (or even just sexually) involved with each other. Not because no one was ever interested, but affections never lined up at the same time.
It’s pretty well broken up now though. It started when the first person got married. I’m still very close to one of the other girls in the group, but I don’t talk to anyone else on a regular basis. I’m engaged, some of the others are in serious relationships too. We never were able to make our significant others part of the group - either the fairly short term ones or the permanent ones. The boyfriends/girlfriends just never integrated.
Shows like Friends and How I Met Your Mother portray a somewhat stylized version of what I assumed were relatively common relationships of post-adolescent people in their 20s and 30s living in urban areas like New York, Boston, Seattle, San Fran and Chicago. This whole thing started in the early 90s as 20-somethings took longer to get married and their immediate social network took on more of a surrogate “family” structure.
These relationships typically consist of the following:
Most, if not all, have or are aspiring for professional jobs
Educated
Most are linked through roomate, work, school or family relationships
Are usually in urban places, particularly NYC, where people live in close proximity, often with roomates and without cars
Social activities often consist of just “hanging out” in common areas like bars or coffee shops
Typically in a “transitional” state. That is to say, they are not married, in school or professionally well established.
They are a “clique” in the sense that each member knows every other member
Often co-ed, consisting of friends sisters, girlfriends, exes and whatnot.
To answer the OP’s question, yes, I’ve had groups of friends as portrayed on these shows at various times in my life. But not the same group my entire life.
There is one main difference between reality and fiction (other than that the TV friends tend to be more attractive than most and their appartments much nicer than one would find occupied by a 26 year old in Manhattan). Due to the nature of the show, the relationships tends to be more insular and more permenant than one might normally find IRL. That’s because the tv show is always about the same six people. Therefore, no matter what happens, season after season, they always end up together. No romantic relationship is permentant unless it’s an internal coupling or the season finale where they go their own ways. Flashbacks to college or high shool tend to show them together as well (ie Ross, Rachel, Monica and Chandler). So you end up with this unbreakable core relationship that seems to last forever.
In reality, people move. They get married and have kids. They get bored or have falling outs. Barney Stinson would probably not be spending as much time hanging out with couples. Couples would probably not be spending so much time with a creepy single guy. Most people don’t couple off within their same group of 6 friends from grade school.
I think Seinfeld was one of the first.
The Young Ones, a Brit-com about four university students, had a vaguely similar dynamic. Evening Shade, built around a family, also featured the husband’s closed circle of friends, as did King of the Hill.
There’s an on-again, off-again show on (I think) TBS called “My Boys” which is similar. A bunch of young professionals in Chicago who hang out together all the time.
as someone noted above “Taxi” is more of a ‘work’ sitcom than a ‘friends’ or ‘family’ type sitcom. I forgot to list “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” as an example of a ‘friends’ type. I think it wins as having the only characters more despicable than those in Seinfeld.
Coupling - NOT the US version - The UK one - far funnier
I read an article back in 01 or 02 that dubbed these sort of shows “time porn.” The idea is that in our busy and isolated lives we don’t have time in our day to hang out with a group of people, and these sitcoms are wish fulfillment in the same way porno sex equates to an actual sex life. We can’t schedule a hangout, so we enjoy watching others do it in convenient half hour blocks.
Shovin’ Buddies.
I don’t think that’s true. In spite of all the “more people are living alone because they would rather be on Facebook” articles, I have to think that most people actually do have friends and relationships and don’t just live a pathetic life of working all day and skulking home to water their plant until they fall asleep watching TV. Especially if you live in a major city where most of these sort of shows take place.
Or a earlier, I spent the 70’s and 80’s in similar living and social arrangements.
The British sitcom Last of the Summer Wine is very much a “friends” show, although it breaks almost every one of msmith537’s guidelines.
In high school, college, and a few years post-college, I had close groups of friends. Not so much now, due to job, home, family, etc.
Exactly. My best friends are thousands of miles away.