I personally liked friends, the later seasons sucked a little and the British woman and the Ross and Rachael situation was annoying sometimes, but didn’t lack in formula. But there were some who hated it all the way through, why? What was so unappealing about Friends?
I didn’t “hate it all the way through”, but they started as “twenty-somethings” and got progressively less mature. That was annoying as hell, and when I move back to the States after being away for 3 or so years it was impossible to enjoy. This would have been from 2001 onward. Before that I watched the show somewhat regularly, from inception until early 1998.
If I paraphrase what Vivian of the young ones said about The Good Life
“It’s all so nicey, nicey… it makes me sick.”
Sometimes I enjoy Friends, sometime it is sickeningly sweet.
Agreed, I also noticed more ‘slapstick’ behaviour in the later episodes, and the raising of the tone of Ross voice.
I didn’t hate it. It just never made me laugh, so I didn’t watch it. I don’t mind comedies that have soap-opera-y elements to them, but if they’re not funny to boot, there’s no point. I’m not gonna watch just for the melodrama.
Why was it unfunny to you? I generally liked the Male cast, the female ones had their moments, but the guys on a whole were alot more funnier.
Because all the guys acted like little girls. If I wanted to see that, I’d tune into The View.
I recall some folks being upset that the cast and show didn’t offer a diverse representation of life in New York, but then again neither did Seinfeld, really. Minority characters–with several prominent exceptions like Charlie and Ross’s Chinese girlfriend–were pretty much shunted to the side, narratively.
Now I watch reruns of Friends to try and catch glimpses of Matthew Perry’s missing fingertip on his right hand. When I see it, it makes every half-hour worthwhile.
Bear with me here…
When my daughter was about 3, she told her first joke:
Knock Knock
Who’s there?
Silly
Silly who?
Silly Bonk Head
Sure, it was a rather silly joke with no real point, but it was completely out of the blue and therefore quite amusing. But after she told it 10 or 100 times, it stopped being so amusing.
Friends reached that point in episode 3.
Yes but why should they have to appeal to every minority audience? Anyway I keep getting peeves cropping up as you all keep reminding me, how about the more and more times later on in the series where they just used closed sets, for example their holiday to barbados.
I actually thought it was funny at times, but still didn’t like it much. My main reason was that I didn’t like any of the characters, while the characters on Seinfeld (which I loved) were whiney and shallow, that was part of the joke while in Friends it seemed that their whiney and shallow moments were the ones that were supposed to take seriously. It was sort of depressing
Of course, obviously the formula worked for a lot of people, so some people must have been in to it.
It was one of those “vanilla ice cream shows” I’d watch if there was nothing else on or nothing to read, and I’d be assured of a pleasant, bland half-hour with maybe actually some witty dialogue (admit it, sometimes the writing was funny). The cast was . . . well, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow and Matthew Perry were talented, anyway.
Besides, I grew up with one of the producers, so I felt I kinda had to watch it.
Because it had absolutely nothing fresh or new to say about anything at all. It was depthless formulaic crap from beginning to end.
I thought the first season was pretty funny, but after that I felt like I was being herded into caring about these people. They were too shallow and whiny to care about, so I stopped watching.
I enjoyed it. I think that one thing that happens as a series goes on, especially as long as this one went, the characters become characatures of themselves, and it becomes somewhat predictable and less enjoyable.
There was an excellent re-run on last night - the one where Joey moves back in. Chandler wakes up to find his new roommate - the Eddie Munster looking dude - watching him sleep. I laughed out loud the first time that ran.
For me it was a case of when the show first started, I thought, “I know people just like that.”
Towards the end, I thought, “I knew people like that, but then they grew up.”
Twenty-somethings having hijinx is funny. Thirty-somethings having hijinx is pathetic.
The characters were unbelievably shallow. Oddly enough, the best episodes were the ones where they faced up to this fact (like Monica discovering that she only liked the teetotaler boyfriend when he was drinking, or Phoebe dropping strongly held principles whenever they came up to the smallest challenge, or Ross hitting on his students). Like Seinfeld before it, Friends acknowledged the disturbing truth that shallowness is an attractive quality to them.
I liked it. And I still watch reruns of it all the time. But, I also love Mama’s Family, so I guess I’m not that picky. 
I never got fanatical about it and eventually stopped watching altogether because I read an explanation of one of the apparent premises of the show (this was before the last couple seasons, by the way): The Friends are all just that. Friends. They’ve always been friends. They’ll always be friends. There will never be any new friends. These people, and these people alone, are always going to be here. If a plot comes along, even if it arches over several episodes, which seems to be driving one of the friends away, or two of the friends apart, or somebody’s trying to join the group, you knew that it wouldn’t work out in the long run.
This wasn’t necessarily in the Bible, or anything they deliberately tried to do (like making sure Jessica Alba got wet every episode of Dark Angel, for example). It just turned out that way, and it got very predictable and boring.
It started as a sitcom and ended as a soap.
The whole Ross and Rachel thing got very old, very fast, and her ending up with a guy that wimpy whiney and other things in W, is way too implausible. The last three years or so, I hade too mute the tv when he had a major exposition scene. The more he was in the background, the better it was.
OTOH, I know quite a lot of over ripe teenagers in their late 30äs and early 40’s, my self included. We don’t have kids though.
All in all, a passable sitcom that ran way too long, because everyone involved was greedy (not only actors).
The final episode would’ve been better ending with this:
[knocking on the door to Monica’s apt]
“Who is it?”
[cue Chevy Chase]
“Landshark”