RIP Matthew Perry

Back on topic...

I have never seen a full episode of Friends. Just not interesting to me. If other people like it, they do and more power to them. Best to let people enjoy things, really. My taste tends to run toward interesting characters, arcs, and sometimes a level of self-awareness. (e.g. Community, Outsourced, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Taxi...)

 

Studio 60 had its moments but it had two key issues.

1) The premise was that the genius creators had returned and brought greatness back to the show… but the glimpses we got of the show were painfully unfunny. They started doing cutting edge, brilliant comedy like a game show called “Who is the Jew?” Oy.

2) Much of the show felt like a parody of Aaron Sorkin, because Aaron Sorkin just can’t help himself. Actual clip from the show:

 

SNL Transcripts: Tom Hanks: 10/08/88: Jew, Not a Jew - SNL Transcripts Tonight

Still a pretender to the champion "¿Quién es más macho?"

 

Heaven must have needed a transponster

 

I was nearing the end of college when Friends debuted and I initially hated it b/c I was already committed to the bit of being a dumbass sportswriter and already bemoaning how poor I'd be for the rest of my natural born life, so the sight of these rich spoiled brats living high off the hog with no apparent income in New York City pissed me off (HE'S A TRANSPONDSTER). I think I got hooked on the Super Bowl episode in S2, when, to tie this all together, I enjoyed piling into someone's room on the floor of my dorm and watching the show, knowing such days were growing ever rarer and rarer.

Over the next few years, I think a lot of us saw a little bit of ourselves in Friends--certainly not the well-off nature, at least in my case, but the bond between friends in that little pocket of time before everyone gets married and starts having kids and the time friends spend with one another dwindles for no reason other than everyone is married and having kids. That's why I like that there was never an attempt at a Friends reboot. They left it at the turning point, where Chandler & Monica had their babies and Phoebe married Mike and Ross got ready to fuck up a good thing again with Rachel. (Let's not discuss "Joey," or AfterFRIENDS) We don't have to confirm that things changed. Just leave it at everyone walking out of their common apartment, being together one more time.

 

Lorne Michaels used to bristle when anyone referred to their setpieces as "skits" or "sketches." Admittedly, some of the longer form pieces by Marilyn Suzanne Miller and Rosie Shuster were more like short plays.

None of the material on S60oSS ever struck me as particularly funny. I often wondered if his creative wires got crossed somewhere between Studio 60 and The Newsroom. No one on Sports Night seemed to think they were on some kind of mission to save the world. Then you come to Studio 60 and The Newsroom. It seemed like the characters on the former took themselves and their jobs far more seriously than Will McAvoy, et al on the latter. Sorkin didn't seem to get his equilibrium back until The West Wing. (Apologies if my show chronologies are off.)

 

This is definitely a fair defense of Friends and the criticism it absorbed. And yes, it does feel as if the waves of bad news crash ashore much faster and regularly than post-9/11 and that's another reason why it connects with viewers who weren't around for the initial run.

(Also, prance motherfucker)

 

It certainly couldn't be mentioned in the same sentence as "Seinfeld."

Or paragraph.

Or .... (fill in the blank)

 

Why is everyone else wrong (or miserable) for being turned-off by a group of white people living large in the big city and complaining all the while? This acting troupe invented entitlement.

I've noticed this show presents a raw cultural nerve, which is why I usually say nothing. But when it's held up as something better than Groucho because an actor died, you can't help but protest.

 

Me, too. That episode/those scenes also included one of the most poignant ever between Mike and Carol as brother and sister, as he was telling about the phone call and she loses it, yelling at him, punching him and sobbing, and he just takes it, gently, achingly, which, for them, was a reversal of form. Truly one of the best episodes of "Growing Pains," although there were quite a few really good ones. That show actually wasn't all fluff. Mostly, but not all.

 

Friends was part of NBC's Must-See TV Thursday block with Seinfeld from 1994 until Seinfeld aired its series finale in May 1998.

 

But enough about "Dallas."