Ditto! I’ve seen between a dozen and two dozen episodes of Friends, but probably only half a dozen of Seinfeld that I was able to get all the way through because they characters are just such awful people.
This is my take also. I imagine that if the Seinfeld crew existed IRL, I would fit right in, warts and all. Whereas the Friends crew are what I call “conventionals”, and wouldn’t have wanted me around (OK, maybe I would have shown up as one of Phoebe’s boyfriends for half an episode, but they would have all tried to get her to dump me).
Not really relevant to the question posed in this thread, but just the other night I had a dream that I guest-starred in an episode of Friends, as Rachel’s new boyfriend. Off-camera, Jennifer Aniston seemed to really like me, but none of the rest of the cast would talk to me.
I don’t know what this means.
So you’re saying you run away from it?
How YOU doin’…?
Friends was a good sitcom with great casting and some great episodes.
Seinfeld was a great sitcom with great casting and some episodes that were artistic masterpieces.
QFT. One of those times I wish there was a Like button.
Having grown up in New York state (born and lived in NYC for a few years, then raised in the suburbs), I could relate to a whole lot of Seinfeld, which was as authentic a New York sitcom as I’ve ever seen. Friends was just ‘ok’. I completely lost interest in it before the series ended. It just seemed phony and superficial compared with Seinfeld. Friends was a typical sitcom and had all of the failings that stereotypical sitcoms have. Seinfeld, on the other hand, seemed like authentic New York. And it was different. Friends was ok, not even, imho, among the better sitcoms of the day. But it was occasionally funny. Seinfeld was something that transcended the whole sitcom mold.
There were a whole lot of sitcoms that I liked better than Friends. Friends was ordinary. But there is very little that has ever come close to Seinfeld in its humor and originality.
***Sitcoms better than Seinfeld: ***
MAS*H
All in the Family
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Barney Miller (which is an even more accurate snapshot of NYC)
Taxi
Get Smart
Mary Tyler Moore Show
WKRP
Community
The Good Place
Futurama
The Simpsons (well first 12 years)
I actually like Scrubs more, though I acknowledge that is an odd choice.
I Love Lucy at its best was better and really created the sitcom genre that All in the Family shook up.
I see you don’t have Friends on that list. 
A very average sitcom at best. The list of > Friends would be 100 long not a dozen or so.
Has to be Seinfeld. I don’t love it but at least understand it. Friends loses me with their extravagant lifestyle. Those apartments can’t all be passed along rent-controlled.
I tried to watch Friends twice, but gave up. So plastic and phony and unfunny. Odd how some people hate the Seinfeld characters when it’s the Friends characters who are repulsive to me. Seinfeld characters had their quirks, but were believable as real people, and so many episodes were genius. Friends was fake, fake, fake, fake.
Also, Seinfeld was the first of the “friends” shows. Seinfeld was a midsummer replacement that took a little while to catch on, but Ellen DeGeneres’s sitcom was a copy called “These Friends of Mine” (later changed to the Ellen DeGeneres Show). Friends came next and was a rip-off of a rip-off and the paleness of its imitation was really clear. David Schwimmer makes my skin crawl so there’s that, too.
Whenever I say the word “pony” now I can’t help but say it in the accent of that old Polish lady.
That was the story – Chandler and Joey were in a rent-controlled apartment, Monica took over her grandmother’s, Ross was making enough money not to worry about it, and Phoebe always lived with someone else. It has as much logic as Kramer being able to sublease an apartment next door to Jerry (and from Paul Buchman of* Mad about You*, no less.)
There are reasons to love or hate both shows, but when you start picking apart premises like how characters can afford to live like that, everything unravels.
The last sitcom characters who could actually afford to live where they did were Mary and Rhoda in * Mary Tyler Moore* show - in the Midwest, in rooms converted to studio apartments, upstairs from the owner/landlord.
Will & Grace (well, at least Will)
I’m in the group ‘love Seinfeld and have seen every episode many times, but have never seen a Friends episode all the way through.’
As for the ‘Seinfeld characters are awful people’ idea: I love that the show commented on this many times. One episode from the widely-derided (and admittedly disappointing) eighth season accomplished this masterfully: The Bizarro Jerry. I never pass up a chance to watch the coda, and never fail to laugh out loud.
Given the accolades for Friends posted in this thread, I’ll try to watch it again. (I do think Lisa Kudrow is a comic genius, and I loved her shows The Comeback and Web Therapy.) But I doubt there’s any way Friends could ever displace Seinfeld in my esteem.
Yeah, same here. I like both, just prefer Friends. I, too, don’t understand the loathing for either show.
I prefer Seinfeld. With Friends, I felt like I was obligated to laugh after each line. It’s the same feeling had watching the original Roseanne show.
The first few years of Roseanne I thought were pretty good, it didn’t keep up the quality and completely nosedived the last few years of course. So very uneven. But at its best, it was better done than friends and at its worst it was a terrible sitcom, worse than the generic sitcoms.
Roseanne also stood out as one of the rare realistic working class sitcoms in the 80s. We had a bunch in the 70s (thanks to Norman Lear) and the 50s had them. But in the 80s, we had Roseanne. Married with Children & Simpsons played far less realistic and used very broad humor.
Both shows were very good, but Seinfeld was better. The best Friends episodes were better than the least funny Seinfelds, but Seinfeld was on average a funnier show, and had almost no BAD episodes.
Sitcoms about a bunch of friends didn’t start with “Seinfeld.”
I did take a look at ‘Joey’. I think a program about a struggling actor trying to get ahead in L.A. would be interesting. It was such a disappointing pile of lame sit-com horse shit, wasn’t he involved with a female relative or something? Wasn’t there a smart-mouth kid involved? My memory is hazy, but I think IRL if there was any justice in the world, ‘Joey’ would have overdosed behind the dumpster at the restaurant where he makes a living bussing tables.