Which do you prefer between the two? Myself, I like both but have a clear preference for Friends. This is for people who like one or the other or both. If you can’t stand either, then please move along, nothing to see here.
Neither show appealed to me, but I absolutely can’t stand Jerry Seinfeld. So if forced to choose, I guess it would have to be Friends.
I like both a lot, though while Friends is probably more consistent, its jokes are extremely formulaic. Seinfeld does have more duff episodes, but watching the first few seasons lays down the backstory which the mid/late seasons play off, to great effect. So for a casual viewer Friends is better as each episode is comfortably similar, but Seinfeld is better in its entirety.
Also, while both handle 20/30-somethings’ rites of passage, Seinfeld’s characters are full-blooded (if petty, mean, ridiculous, etc.). The Friends are all weirdly childlike and/or neutered. It’s hard to believe that even Joey actually follows through on his relentless sex-talk.
Seinfeld, hands down. I watched the first five minutes of a ***Friends ***episode the other day (I was getting ready to take my cat to the vet and couldn’t be bothered to change the channel) and couldn’t believe how sophomoric it was: lame joke after lame joke, all followed by the most annoying canned laughter ever. It was a relief to get out of the house!
The shows were not in the same league. Friends was the Seinfeld Triple A affilliate.
I could never get into Friends, even though I was squarely in its target demographic. 100% Seinfeld for me.
Love Seinfeld; never got into Friends. Different types of humor, and I vastly preferred the former.
Never cared for either. Seinfield was pretty much unwatchable (especially when Jason Alexander was involved. Every time I give it another chance, I turn it off after five minutes. Even the most famous joke (Kramer’s "I’m out’) – which was very funny on paper – was botched in the execution.
Friends, OTOH, could be funny, but never really worked as a whole. It was a decent time-waster, but not anything more.
Friends was just stupid.
Seinfeld was supposed to be “revolutionary” because it didn’t have typical sit-com plot lines (which was good), but the jokes themselves were still typical sit-com jokes. (Seinfeld was a stand-up comedian, so it was pretty much the same old tired stand-up comedy style of jokes.)
Seinfeld, no contest.
Could the poll be anymore lopsided? I mean, what’s the deal?
I liked Friends, couldn’t stand Seinfeld.
Seinfeld was certainly the more innovative show conceptually, but the characters were such relentless assholes that I could never really get into it. Also, as someone said in another thread, that slap-bass thing they’d do for every scene transition quickly got to be like nails on a chalkboard. With that said, for me only the first four seasons or so of Friends were worth watching. I completely lost interest around the time Ross got involved with the annoying British lady and Chandler hooked up with Monica.
So, Friends by a nose, although I’m really done with both of them.
‘Seinfeld’ for me, despite none of the characters being at all likeable. Great writing made for great humor.
‘Friends’ comes off to me as yet another cliche and inane sitcom.
This: "* I watched the first five minutes of a Friends episode the other day (I was getting ready to take my cat to the vet and couldn’t be bothered to change the channel) and couldn’t believe how sophomoric it was: lame joke after lame joke, all followed by the most annoying canned laughter ever.*
Bingo.
Seinfeld had some funny season and some very funny episodes. The fact the characters were not very likable leaves it out of my top sitcom grouping. I think Friends was stupid and dumb and never liked it.
Agreed. This isn’t even a fair fight. A closer match-up would be Friends vs. Saved by the Bell. They’re kind of the same show to me.
Zach and Slater are like Chandler and Ross. Kelly and Jessie are like Monica and Rachel. And Screech is like a Phoebe/Joey love child.
I didn’t find the characters nearly as unlikable as everyone else has. Hell, I didn’t even notice they were unlikable until all the commentary I’ve read on the Dope many years after the end of the series. I guess what does that say about me as a person? 
Then again, I love sitcoms like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where the characters are very obviously unlikable. I mean, I hang out with likable people, so, for me, it’s more fun to watch that which I am not as familiar with. But, seriously, I never really got the whole Seinfeld-characters-are-a-bunch-of-sociopaths thing. They had their quirks, but I never really found them particularly unlikable.
Seinfeld by far, they don’t even belong in the same conversation.
Ive seen every episode of Seinfeld many times; some I’ve loved, others not so much. I tried to watch just one episode of Friends, but had to turn it off, it was just dumb.
I saw what you did there. 
For me, it’s Seinfeld all the way. I could watch a rerun for the 100th time and still enjoy it. I’ve never watched even a single episode of Friends.