Agree. I have the DVDs because 80% of Friends episodes are funnier than almost anything on TV right now.
There are a few places where it shows its age, such as Chandler bragging about his new laptop:
12MB of RAM
500MB hard drive
Spread sheet capabilities
28k bps
One of the best parts of the show was the mostly successful guest appearances. Several Emmy winners in the bunch and almost all of them a big hit. My faves:
•Elliott Gould (who I normally don’t much care for) was a riot as Ross’s father with his frequent inappropriate comments.
•Maggie Wheeler as Janice, always popping up at the worst (for Chandler) possible place and time.
•Christina Applegate as one of Rachel’s sisters.
•Kathleen Turner as Chandler’s “dad”. Hilarious.
•Tom Selleck as Monica’s love interest in several episodes.
•Marlo Thomas as Rachel’s mother.
•Danny DeVito as an over-the-hill stripper.
•Terri Garr as Phoebe’s birth mother.
•Bruce Willis as the disapproving father of one of Ross’s girlfriends.
•Alec Baldwin as a constantly overexcited boyfriend of Phoebe.
•Paul Rudd as the guy Phoebe finally settles down with.
And there are lots more that I’m probably forgetting right now.
Even Bradd Pitt wasn’t bad in his Rachel-hating role in a Thanksgiving special.
I also thought they pulled off the Phoebe/Ursula thing very well. I was totally able to buy into Lisa Kudrow playing twins and saw them as two very different characters.
And the flashback to the 80’s and 90’s episodes with fat Monica and Chandler’s “flock of seaguls” haircut were great.
I saw the show starting to trend downwards in the later seasons and glad they ended before it hit bottom. The finale was good, and the fade to black was moving.
(Joey & Chandler are discussing whether ducks or clowns should be heads or tails in a coin toss)
Joey: “Ducks is heads… because ducks have heads!”
Chandler: “… What kind of scary ass clowns came to your birthday parties!”
I liked the way they wrapped that up so low-key and matter-of-factly, too. After all the drama and switching and scheming and trying to get their apartment back, all it took was Monica and Rachel making out for a minute to get the good apartment back.
I’ll say this for Friends- it’s not innovative or cutting edge, but for what it is, it’s very good. It’s a straightforward three camera laugh track sitcom. The secret of Friends’ success is the chemistry of the six main characters, combined with writing that knew how to play to their strengths. It’s that, rather than being daring in any way that allowed it to become a runaway hit.
I’d be interested to know how you define a runaway hit. Ratings-wise, Friends consistently ranked in the top ten, and 8 out of ten of its seasons were in the top 4.
So you’re saying Friends wasn’t a runaway hit even though it was constantly considered one of the four most popular shows on the air during its almost entire run?
No, I thought Mr. Burns was saying that in the last sentence of his post before mine:
I read that as saying if the show had been more daring, maybe then it could have become a run-away hit. But on re-reading, I can see several ways to parse this sentence. I fully agree that the show was a run-away hit.
I think that should have read: “…rather than being daring in any way that allowed it to become a runaway hit with the Cynically Elite Intelligentsia That Hang Out Here”.
You see, it was normal people who liked it. Unlike me and many of my friends here, who are cursed with the propensity to demand more than entertainment from our entertainment.
Ooh, can I parlay that last line into a Doctoral Thesis?
That really nails an attitude here that totally gets up my nose. I consider myself luckier than a lot of people who post here, because I can actually allow myself to enjoy things (many things - many low-brow, common things, even).
Friends hasn’t aged well, IMO. As others have written, mostly because it declined in quality, the egos intruded, writing got lazy, etc. I watch it now and I think, “I used to laugh at this… why, again?”
Surprisingly, I feel that Seinfeld is still funny. I didn’t expect it to be, I figured it’d date just as badly as Friends has (same general concept, 1990s Clinton-era pre-9/11 artifact, etc.). Instead, I still find the writing wicked smart and the re-runs comforting. Perhaps it’s because we were never supposed to actually like the characters on Seinfeld, so I don’t feel bad about still seeing them all as four miserable (yet funny) wretches.
I watch Friends, and I just find that I don’t like anyone at all on the show anymore.
I still like both Friends and Seinfeld quite a bit. They appeal to different parts of my funnybone. The first is essentially sweet; the second is essentially sour.
I’ve seen a few people mention the egos of the stars. Can someone elaborate? Did it feel like they were all jockeying for bigger storylines or something, or do you mean they were all overexposed in the media and you were sick of them?
I think it’s aged just fine, but people are still in the oversaturated phase of its life cycle. It tends to happen with long-running, runaway hits like that–by the end of the run, syndication is showing multiple episodes a day on multiple channels, and that continues for quite some time after the cancellation. After a while people get tired of seeing it all the damn time and it stops being so funny. But after a few years off, you catch an episode and think, “Damn, I’d forgotten what a scream this show was.”
Right now, Friends has been off the air for just shy of 6 years. If you allow a 2 year period for the “Oh god I miss this show” repeat viewings of multiple episodes to die down, that puts us 4 years into the “Oh god, that again?” phase. In other words, we’re right at the beginning of when you would expect people to start watching the reruns again. I think if you repeat the favorite sitcom poll in another 5 years, Friends will start popping back up as a common favorite.
And yes, Friends is totally a product of its time. So are all classic comedies.
