Unless you’ve been wilfully ignoring anything to do with 1990s sitcoms set in New York (but actually filmed in LA), you may have heard about this little event today called the Friends reunion.
Since Friends ended 17 years ago, the American comedy has remained beloved by fans original and new – and people who have rewatched the series at least 16 times are not rare beasts.
It’s genuinely a cultural phenomenon spawning countless catchphrases, memes, merch and themed pub quizzes. And obsessions. So, so many obsessions.
Tell someone that Chandler Bing’s TV Guide profile is Miss Chanandler Bong and they’ll crack a smile.
But is Friends worthy of the adulation it inspires or has everyone gone a bit mad?
Ahead of the Friends reunion, streaming from 5pm AEST on Binge*, news.com.au writers Poppy Taylor and Wenlei Ma debate this very important question at the heart of all human existence.
What on a scale of 1 to 10, how excited are you about the Friends reunion episode and why?
POPPY: 10. Could I BE any more excited? (Sorry, it had to be done).
When the show finished nearly 20 years ago, a significant Friends-sized hole was left in my heart. Fifty-two million people across the globe tuned into the final episode – that’s more than double Australia’s total population.
Fans have been begging for a reunion for years and we’ve finally got one – with no expense spared. The original set has been completely rebuilt, down to the tiniest of details.
Some might be disappointed that the reunion isn’t a “The One Where They All Grew Up” episode, but watching the six friends walk back into those same rooms is bound to be emotional.
Pass the tissue box, because I’m going to need it.
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WENLEI: Nope, not at all excited. I feel like everyone’s lost their minds – and not in a good way.
Honestly, if this much-hyped reunion episode had been a reunion in which all six actors are in character and we pop back into the lives of the fictional people, I’d be more excited. Well, I’d at least give it a three out of 10.
As it is, a reunion of Friends stars sitting on a couch and sharing memories? That’s a DVD special, or an extended episode of Jimmy Kimmel. Why is everyone hanging out for a clip show and some reminiscences? And after 26 years, are there really fresh stories from the set that haven’t already been raked over a gazillion times?
I don’t want to be a total contrarian but the histrionics for a non-canonical Friends reunion is exactly what’s wrong with so many parts of pop culture – a tendency to cling on to what was at the expense of new experiences.
Why do you think Friends is still such a cultural phenomenon after all this time – and does it deserve this status?
POPPY: It was summed up in the final episode, “Look around guys”, says Chandler to his two newborns as he and the rest of the gang say goodbye to the apartment for the last time.
“This was your first home. And it was a happy place, filled with love and laughter. But more importantly, because of rent-control, it was a friggin’ steal!”
Even decades on, the happy place Chandler describes feels like home for many – it’s the comfort food of television. Despite the show ending 17 years ago, its magnetic appeal is attracting a whole new generation – all of whom tweet, text and use Tinder.
Yet they embrace it all the same. Perhaps, for them, it feels like an idealism of the past – something that seems unbelievable, a place where friends sit in a coffee shop to catch up after work rather than on social media.
Monica’s iconic line in the pilot is still relevant today. “Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You’re gonna love it,” she tells Rachel. The line speaks to any new generation trying finding their feet.
The legacy of Friends isn’t the piles of awards and ratings – it’s how the show managed to relay the simplicity of mundane life. While we sat in our own living rooms, the show’s cleverly designed small set began to feel like home.
The show tapped into our collective neurosis like no other sitcom had done before. Friends revels in the idea that nothing is too ‘crazy’, no quirk or flaw is too much for your close pals to handle.
Rachel, Ross, Monica, Joey, Phoebe and Chandler were six of the most relatable characters of the nineties and early noughties.
WENLEI: Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Friends is a bad TV show. I even think it’s a good TV show.
I’ve seen it all the way through, at least one and a half times. I remember watching the series on Channel 9 on Monday nights growing up, and then I bought some dodgy DVDs on a trip to Asia about 15 years ago and rewatched the whole thing — (don’t pirate, kids, it’s wrong).
It’s a warm, relatable series with quotable jokes and characters you can easily invest in. They’re not perfect people but it’s the flaws that make them interesting.
But, and this is a big but (not unlike Emma Gellar’s favourite song – yeah, I’m full of Friends trivia) – it’s not the best TV show in the history of TV shows. It’s not even the best 90s American sitcom – Frasier was a much sharper series that had as much hilarity and heart as it did love for Eames armchairs, and there is a very strong argument to be made for the absurdity of Seinfeld. Also, just throwing a little love out there for NewsRadio.
So, the fact Friends remains a cultural phenomenon to the extent it has is bemusing. How did a series that ran out of steam around the time of Ross and Rachel’s second recoupling inspire such rabid devotion? I’m shaking my head even writing that sentence.
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On an objective level, I understand why people are still so married to the show. It’s an easy watch that’s generally inoffensive and unchallenging, and it’s nostalgic for a so-called less complicated time.
(Of course, there is no such thing as “a less complicated time”, only rose-tinted glasses sitting between blinders – that’s a different rant.)
And given that we’re now living through a time of so many entertainment options thanks to the 15-plus streaming services in Australia alone, choice paralysis is a real thing. Popping on Friends again means not having to make another decision. Yeah, I get it.
But also, I don’t get it.
Do you think it’s aged well? Does it matter?
POPPY: In the time since the series was on, children were born and are now adults. Yet we will still watch and rewatch the show. We find ways to weave the likes of “PIVOT!”, “my sandwich”, “Joey doesn’t share food” and “Oh. My. God” into our conversations.
Today, Friends is notable for encompassing the nineties, and what it meant to be young and muddling your way through the big city, but it’s also now notable for what it doesn’t have: smartphones, social media, dating apps and a lack of diverse characters.
You might expect the show to be buried deep in a barrel of nineties nostalgia, among other cultural antiques. But instead, the show lives on with a whole new generation of young people revelling in its pleasures.
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WENLEI: I could point out all the ways that Friends makes me grimace when I look back – the fashion, the gay panic, the fat-shaming and the very whiteness of its main and supporting cast.
But it’s also absolutely a product of its times – sure, we all should’ve known better even back then but most of us didn’t, and nothing can change that. The show can exist as it is without being too bogged down by that baggage.
Where it plays more awkwardly is the laugh track. It’s actually so weird thinking about how recent it was that multi-cam, studio audience sitcoms were the norm and not the outlier.
We’ve all seen those clips on YouTube where they take out the laugh track and how stilted the comedy and jokes are because of the interminable pauses. Ooph, cringe.
After two decades of comedies pivoting (!!) to more realistic single-cam set-ups and a rapid-ier pacing of joke set-ups, the format is much more glaring than the show’s nineties values. I mean, it’s just so broad and over-the-top it could be pantomime.
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How does it make you feel when you hear that theme song?
POPPY: There are few things more satisfying in life than sitting down to guaranteed giggles and that’s what the Friends theme tune evokes. It takes me to a familiar place that’s free of worries and full of laughter.
Theme tunes are designed to be catchy and the Friends theme tune was and still is everywhere. Everyone knows the lyrics and everyone claps along at the right part – even if we do press fast forward on the remote.
The Rembrandts recorded the song thinking no one would ever know it was them, oh how wrong they were. The single spent 11 weeks at the top of the charts and the band still receives royalties every single time an episode airs.
There couldn’t have been a more perfect lyric, “I’ll be there for you”, and of course Friends always was there for us.
WENLEI: I remember cutting out the lyrics for The Rembrandts’ song from a Smash Hits magazine so it’s certainly tied up in a lot of nostalgia. I still get a ping when I hear the song.
But you know what else I get every time? A reminder that people are so weirdly obsessed with Friends nearly three decades after that earworm invaded our lives. Move on, people.
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If you could only re-watch one show for the rest of your life, would it be Friends?
POPPY: There’s no doubt in my mind.
A sitcom such as Friends was perfect for the 1990s. A coming-of-age show full of pre-Tinder nostalgia – floppy haircuts, huge mobile phones and canned laughter.
It harks back to a time when people actually wrote their details down on paper serviettes in bars and coffee shops.
I relish in the show’s enduring charm, there is very little about the world of Friends that exists in today’s world. Friends is a safety net, I know exactly what I’m going to get. Almost every episode is a stand-alone micro-comedy packed with life lessons, style inspiration and iconic one-liners.
Whether I’m sitting on my sofa, at a friend’s house, on a plane, or in a hotel, hearing the lyrics, “I’ll be there for you” never fails to take me home.
WENLEI: Aha, this is a trick question – I know because I set them. That dogged determination to hold onto this one thing is exactly what I find most frustrating about the Friends phenomenon.
While I don’t begrudge people the comfort of re-watching something they know and love (god knows I’ve watched Buffy and 30 Rock more than once), it’s the fact it’s done at the expense of new experiences that makes me want to scream.
In the time it takes to do one rewatch of Friends, you could fit in all of Fleabag, Utopia, You’re the Worst, Happy Endings (a series very much influenced by Friends) and still have 16 hours left over to watch Flight of the Conchords one and a half times.
I don’t love the whole revival trend – do we really need to know what Carrie Bradshaw has to say about 2021 New York? – though I don’t have a problem with remakes because we should let another generation have a crack at a story if they have something to say about it through the prism of our current world.
And every time a TV network splashes millions and millions of dollars on a revival or reunion, that’s one less fresh idea it could’ve commissioned from a new voice.
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The propensity to hang onto something you know means you don’t open yourself to what else is out there. It’s like always going on holidays to the Gold Coast and never considering San Sebastian.
I know the world is scary and taking a chance on something new is a risk. What if you don’t like it? What if you’ve wasted that 30 minutes of your time?
But what if you find your new favourite series? Or you were introduced to a different perspective you hadn’t considered before?
Growing up, most of us watched Play School and each episode, the show took us through the windows into a different world.
And that’s what storytelling offers us, a chance to experience worlds different to the ones we know. Think of what you’re missing.
Friends reunion is streaming on Binge from 5pm AEST on Thursday, May 26
You can share your thoughts on Friends with @poppyblue_ and @wenleima on Twitter, or comment below
*Binge is majority owned by News Corp, publisher of news.com.au
https://news.google.com/__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?oc=5
2021-05-26 20:30:53Z
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