Friends is the dopiest, most basic show

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:How old are you OP? You need to understand the time when this took place. It was also a time when you didn't need TV to make a statement, or demand something of you when you watch. It was simple, fun, and easy to absorb. It was pretty groundbreaking at the time due to the "ensemble" cast set up. It was awesome and I still enjoy an episode from time to time.

Try to have a little perspective OP. I promise you in 25-30 years people will look back at some show you enjoyed and declare it a pile a crap....

OP again--as i said above, I'm 45. Probably older than you and remember more shows

You still lack perspective. I posted upthread about what the appeal of Friends was when it aired. I’m your age and remember watching it sometimes in HS but was never a huge fan. But it seems obvious to me why it was a hit. Most very popular tv, movies, and music are very middle of the road and basic.

I find it surprising that you have a degree in media studies and wouldn’t get this. You don’t have to love it, but it should be easy to identify why it was made and had longevity (which was as much about its appeal to advertisers as audience, and Friends offered access to a broad and upwardly mobile swath of American, plus spurred their interest in consumer products like clothes, coffee, and furniture).

Hard disagree. (Furniture?!)

Pottery Barn.

The apothecary table!

Also, not sure where the couch was from, but I still yell PIVOT at least once a year.

[Anonymous]

I honestly could never get over that middle class goober Ross dating gorgeous women. That alone made the show unwatchable since so many episodes focused on his dating life and Rachel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People will say the same thing 30 years from now, about shows that are popular now.

I agree about Phoebe and Joey. I wasn't a fan of either character.

This is television, it wasn't supposed to be real. The only show I can think of off hand where the living situation shadowed real life financially is Theee's Company. They were often short on rent money, or broke until payday.

90s and early 00s shows just before cell phones are going to seem so ancient.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:How old are you OP? You need to understand the time when this took place. It was also a time when you didn't need TV to make a statement, or demand something of you when you watch. It was simple, fun, and easy to absorb. It was pretty groundbreaking at the time due to the "ensemble" cast set up. It was awesome and I still enjoy an episode from time to time.

Try to have a little perspective OP. I promise you in 25-30 years people will look back at some show you enjoyed and declare it a pile a crap....

OP again--as i said above, I'm 45. Probably older than you and remember more shows

You still lack perspective. I posted upthread about what the appeal of Friends was when it aired. I’m your age and remember watching it sometimes in HS but was never a huge fan. But it seems obvious to me why it was a hit. Most very popular tv, movies, and music are very middle of the road and basic.

I find it surprising that you have a degree in media studies and wouldn’t get this. You don’t have to love it, but it should be easy to identify why it was made and had longevity (which was as much about its appeal to advertisers as audience, and Friends offered access to a broad and upwardly mobile swath of American, plus spurred their interest in consumer products like clothes, coffee, and furniture).

Hard disagree. (Furniture?!)

Pottery Barn.

The apothecary table!

Also, not sure where the couch was from, but I still yell PIVOT at least once a year.

That meme comes up every time someone asks about moving a couch.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:After season 5 I stopped watching it except for the big storylines. I never likes Mondler getting married or staying together. First part of relationship was funny but that was it. Chandler wasn’t as funny once with Monica.

Didn’t like Ross dating a student. Added nothing to the show. Nor Charlie’s storyline.

Friends was supposed to end season 8. Pretty sure Rachel have the baby and Ross and her get married. Season 9 and 10 were not that good. Too many forced storylines. But who could say no to the money?

And in Big Bang could get their couples together and stay together and still be funny, why couldn’t Friends do the same for Ross and Rachel? Jen and David’s on screen chemistry was outstanding.

Big Bang? Never funny. Just a mean hearted show and I’m a trekkie lovin nerd.

Yeah, I really could not get into Big Bang Theory - those characters got on my nerves.

I don’t mean to hijack the thread but csn either of you say more. Why are they mean? I have never watched but was considering it.

I agree Matthew Perry was the funniest cast member of Friends.

They were all fairly cruel to each other all the time, with out downs and disdain and each full of “im a scientist” ego.

It was billed as “for nerds” but it took the things nerds loved and then very stealthily mocked them. I think this is why it was so popular — all the anti-science middle America loved to see the nerds going at it

A quote I came across:

“ I was in a university lecture a few weeks ago. The subject was about equality in STEM careers. The lecturer mentioned TBBT and how it was very stereotypical (in a negative way)- majority of characters are white, there's a blonde woman who is made out to be dumb and the men are physicists/an engineer at a top university. Even when they introduce Bernadette and Amy, they're both in biology-focused careers which reinforces another stereotype in science. Not sure if that's a reason others don't like it but that was the first time I'd come across any negativity towards the show”

This examines a lot of its flaws. https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/rvityo/the_big_bang_theory_is_a_terrible_show/

DH and I are research scientists and we LOVE The Big Bang Theory. The first seasons contain tons of misogynistic tropes, but that's the point - these men are developmentally behind and academically ahead. The beauty lies in the fact that all these scientists grow and learn (Howard has a particularly interesting learning curve, I think), and the women in their lives end up running the show! The last season is excellent.

There's another reason why we love this show. DH and DS have high-functioning autism. It was quite something for them to see themselves in Sheldon, the autistic genius who


SPOILER ALERT


ends up getting married and winning a Nobel WITH his wife.

PP, I'm curious do you like Young Sheldon too? I really like seeing Sheldon as a kid and the connections to TBBT. My uncle is a physicist and loves Big Bang Theory.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It is the Cheesecake Factory of TV shows. How on earth is it, or was it ever, popular? Truly.
Phoebe had no character beyond being a ditz and a flake. NOBODY acts like this in real life.
Shrewish Monica was unlikable and Cox couldn't act her way out of a paper sack.
Aniston was boring, blah, and basic.
Joey was one-note and LeBlanc was a painfully weak actor.
Schwimmer/Ross was punchable.
And poor Matthew Perry/Chandler Bing - he was actually a talented comic but was lost in this sad muddle of a cheezeball show.

Oh, and this was supposed to take place in NY? More like Disney.

People will say the same thing 30 years from now, about shows that are popular now.

I agree about Phoebe and Joey. I wasn't a fan of either character.

This is television, it wasn't supposed to be real. The only show I can think of off hand where the living situation shadowed real life financially is Theee's Company. They were often short on rent money, or broke until payday.

On Friends they all have money issues except Ross and Chandler.

There is a very memorable episode where Phoebe, Joey, and Rachel have frustrated with the other three for not understanding that they had very different incomes and can't necessarily do the same stuff (a fancy birthday dinner out and then tickets to a concert). The way they handled it is funny and was super relatable to me as a 20-something grad student with a lot of friends making real money or with spouses making real money. At one point Phoebe loses it at dinner and starts yelling at the others for suggesting they just split the check, when the rich friends have ordered like surf and turf and wine and the poor friends have ordered appetizers and water. It's the kind of thing you'd never actually say in quite that way, but it was super satisfying to hear someone articulate it because I have been in that exact situation.

Also, the concert they are going to is Hootie and the Blowfish which is a EXACTLY the band this particular group would be excited to go see.

The show is dopey and basic, but that's also part of what made it relatable and comforting to people. It's not cutting edge humor, but I enjoyed it when it was on.

[Anonymous]

I loved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This was before "prestige TV." Before Sopranos and Arrested Development and Mad Men and Veep and all of it. Television used to be called the boob tube. You didn't stream it, you couldn't even record it unless you have a VCR and many people didn't, or didn't know how to program them, or couldn't be bothered to buy the blank tapes to record shows.

So you just sat down to watch TV at the appointed time listed in the newspaper or TV guid (yes, newspapers used to print weekly or nightly TV schedules). There were four broadcast networks, so you had 4 choices.

Shows that came on in the first hour of prime time (8pm EST, 7pm Mtn and Pacific) had to be palatable to an entire family, from a 5 year old to an 80 year old. So you got a lot of family sitcoms this way -- Family Matters, Cosby, Growing Pains, etc. After that, the youngest would often go to bed, so then you could put on shows like Friends or Seinfeld, with more adult themes (people had sex, though not on camera, they had more caustic humor, but never used bad words). It was actually controversial and there would be debates about whether these shows were appropriate even for teenagers because they shows things like premarital sexual relationships, people drinking and smoking cigarettes, people being rude to strangers or even breaking the law. Seinfeld was particularly controversial in this regard. Then the final hours of television would be given to more adult programming, but the sitcoms would give way to 1 hour dramas like ER or thirtysomething.

Fox upended a lot of this. It put a show like the Simpsons, which was billed as a family show but had a lot of more adult and transgressive themes, on at 7pm. A lot of it's dramas were aimed at HS students, like Beverly Hills 90210 and Dawson's Creek (Melrose Place was also very controversial). Fox had a reputation for pushing the limits and what themes you could put on evening television and there was a LOT of hand wringing about it.

In that context, Friends was actually pretty sophisticated for the era. It showed young people dating and having sex outside of marriage, pursuing various careers in sometimes non-traditional ways (like Phoebe being a masseuse or Chandler leaving his corporate job to go into advertising -- things people did in real life but that were considered outside the norm by middle America). And it did this in a comedy sitcom, not a "serious" drama. So Friends actually felt really fresh and cutting edge at the time. It had more DNA in common with Laverne & Shirley, Taxi, or Mary Tyler Moore than with the family sitcoms that populated most of 80s television. Even though it was filmed on a soundstage in LA, merely setting it in downtown Manhattan felt gritty in comparison. Similar with Seinfeld, also not filmed in NYC.

Friends is not a 2023 sitcom. Of course it feels old-fashioned and silly to you now. Things change.

Spot. On.

[Anonymous]

that’s what Friends are for

[Anonymous]

Friends is basic. I am basic. I like Friends.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It’s easy. It’s a lot of good looking people and it really was funny. Back in the day at least. I’m not sure how clever you want a comedy to be? It’s a show anyone with friends can identify with. They also stayed together for the series which usually does not happen.

None of the characters were relatable or even believable as legitimate friends. Oh yes, my circle includes a guy with a romance novelist mom, a ditzy masseur, a chef who somehow seems to never work, a barista with a bottomless budget, and a soap actor. Oh yes. Def.

Monica and Ross were siblings. It is believable they would be friends.

Ross and Chandler were college roommates and both have professional, white collar jobs. It makes sense that they would still be friends and that Chandler would wind up in Monica's apartment building (that's how post-college networks often work).

Rachel was Monica's best friend growing up. They grew apart during college (which was culinary school for Monica) but in the first episode, Rachel has just stood up her fiancé at the altar and winds up in a coffee shop where Monica and Ross are (I can't remember if this is intentional or an accident -- it's intended to be over the top ridiculous so I will grant them this license). Monica and Ross (who holds a candle for Rachel dating to high school) both help her because they know her and feel bad for her. Monica has a spare room (she lives in her grandmother's rent controlled apartment) and offers to let her stay until she's on her feet. None of those relationships are crazy.

Joey and Phoebe are the wildcards. Joey is easily explained though -- Chandler needed a roommate (NYC rents) and Joey is an actor in need of a cheap apartment. They become friends because they are roommates, and they become friends with Monica and then Rachel because they are similarly aged neighbors and are connected via Ross.

Phoebe is the biggest outlier, but it is explained that she previously lived with Monica. As a chef in NYC (working in restaurants at night creates some weird relationships), and as a bit of an odd duck herself despite growing up on Long Island, it's not that weird to me that Monica would have collected Phoebe as a friend, either by renting a room to her or through random people she met in her industry. It is weird that Phoebe would focus her social life around Monica and the others, but again, it's a TV show. It can take some artistic liberties. She is there to stir the pot and enhance the humor. Like Urkel on Family Matters or Kramer on Seinfeld. It's a common comedy trope -- the weird interloper who does nutty things and then all the more standard characters react.

Oh and Rachel only becomes a waitress because she needs money after leaving her fiancé -- she was supposed to marry rich (dentist) and then become a SAHM on Long Island. Instead she gets the first job she can find waiting tables and then pursues a dream of working in fashion, starting with some very menial jobs as a personal shopper and a buyer's assistant in a department store, believable jobs for the daughter of a wealthy doctor who grew up in the NYC area at the time.

Phoebe is also the twin sister of Ursula from Mad About You.

[Anonymous]

It's dopey to you now but in the 90s it embodied the free-spirit of that time period before social media, before influencers, before iphones and all the crap that has basically ruined things for us now where we can't watch something without dissecting it apart a thousand ways. Friends worked then. It was sort of one-dimensional and dopey and that's what made it great. Just silly, fun tv that made you feel like you were hanging out with your friends. That's why I always loved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Friends is basic. I am basic. I like Friends.

+1 I absolutely love being basic!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's dopey to you now but in the 90s it embodied the free-spirit of that time period before social media, before influencers, before iphones and all the crap that has basically ruined things for us now where we can't watch something without dissecting it apart a thousand ways. Friends worked then. It was sort of one-dimensional and dopey and that's what made it great. Just silly, fun tv that made you feel like you were hanging out with your friends. That's why I always loved it.

If OP thinks Friends is dopey, she has never watched, “Alf”, “Small Wonder”, “Silver Spoons”, “Mr. Belvedere” or other 80’s sitcoms!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Friends is basic. I am basic. I like Friends.

+1 I absolutely love being basic!

Of course you do!