Shared with reservations; I recall Happy Days reruns having a similar attraction for the GenXers and the whole "burgeoning cultural fascination with young adulthood" pretty much drove the Brat Pack.
SNARK AHEAD DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REALLY TAKE SERIOUSLY OR REBUT JUST SNARK PREFACE TO SNARK: This article is subtitled, "Is ‘Friends’ Still the Most Popular Show on TV?" It seems to me as if we could answer this question simply by looking at data. Nowhere throughout this article do I encounter actual data. So let's just write a multipage article about thoughts instead of answering its 'premise', shall we? Now for nitpicking quotes and snark. Lots of snark. I'm sorry, can we see any sort of data to back this up other than the fact that if you say "Friends, the tv show," most people seem to know what you are talking about? In which case, dozens of TV series from several decades also fit the bill? This doesn't seem like a reasonable assertion at all. I say: M*A*A*S*H, Happy Days, The Andy Griffith Show, The Brady Bunch, SNL, Gilligan's Island, Three's Company, Who's The Boss? The only difference between these and Friends is that no one made the whole series of any of these available for streaming 20 years after they came out. Well, actually, SNL is available. Community had a running gag reference to "Who's the Boss." Raise your hand if you can't whistle (or remember) the theme song to Andy Griffith or quote, "a three hour tour," from Gilligan's Island. Is it possible no earlier TV shows had the same streaming opportunities as Friends did? Translation: Both of them write about anything that generates pageviews. Kayla just doesn't get paid for it. But that's okay, because she only got in at Buzzfeed because she had a sister there. Translation: "The fourth-most-popular post Krystie has ever written, with nearly 1.5 million views, at least 1/3 of which were from people not in their twenties, is "72 generic truisms that make you feel better about where you are now, which we're going to say is your twenties, but really could possibly extend from age 16 to 36. Especially if you're in denial about your age. " I'm sorry, Kayla. Real life has failed you. Get a job. Scratch that: cut your parental apronstrings, then get a job that will pay for your lifestyle. Oh, is that not possible? "Welcome to life, it sucks, you're going to love it." Ah, yes. I believe we have uncovered the nature of synopses. Translation: When I was a teenager being angsty and without any world experience, I thought Friends was the perfect expression of real life, and I've never been able to give that idea up since. (That's ok, hon. Sex and the City helped me through a bad breakup. What's not OK is thinking that somehow it reflected in any way real experience or life.) Translation 2: I should've just put on my big girl pants and cried once in a while instead. Who the fuck are you? Oh right, the generation that birthed and then loved emo. Dude, a) you turned 8 in 2000. All you know about the 90s is based on ideas, not facts. Oh, and this shitty TV show you idolize. b) What perfectly valid justifications for believing the '90s were a great time. You could smoke cigarettes everywhere. Ah, yes, the epitome of freedom and carefree, non-judged existence. Someone charismatic was in the White House. This: what truly matters. Coincidentally, these are all the reasons I pretend to/profess an exaggerated love for the 1970s. Translation: the author sucks. Dude, who readily admits they were Chandler? It's like readily admitting you couldn't get it up. It's like readily admitting you're the pearl-wearing Sex and the City girl. Charlotte. Translation: your friends suck. You know the one person I know, a former ex-roommate, who totally loves Friends? Yeah, she also adores Zooey Deschanel to such measure that she has adopted Zooey's New Girl haircut. For at least the past 3 years. She has been known to insist she can only get her haircut by a certain hairdresser in...wait for it...Seattle. Because no one else, apparently, can get bangs right. _______________________________________________ I didn't want to like this article, so I didn't. I acknowledge that. I still think Friends sucks, and I think people who think Friends is having a cultural resurgence phenomenon are shitty people who like Friends and marathon it with their shitty "life-was-so-much-better-for-adults-back-before-we-were-old-enough-to-experience-adulthood-in-that-era-isn't-Phoebe-so-batty-crazy-and-funny" rose-colored glasses historical glorification. Friends might truly be the Girls of the 90s, but let's be honest: both of them are self-indulgent narratives focused on spoiled, life-should-be-easy-for-me-because-it-always-has-been/I-don't-have-real-problems sets of people. 'Course, why would we want to watch TV, especially comedies, that pointed out the negative realities of life? Comedies are escapism. But let's not glorify them cuz they're 20 years old and act like they accurately reflected more than 10% of the experience of a certain time period. And let's be honest: that 10% accuracy is mostly style points. And yet, astonishingly, the show is arguably as popular as it ever was
It is, of course, slightly strange that a 20-year-old sitcom still retains such a magnetic appeal;
Now Krystie is a staff writer, and Kayla an intern, at BuzzFeed. Both of them write about Friends, a lot.
The fourth-most-popular post Krystie has ever written, with nearly 1.5 million views, is “72 Truths ‘Friends’ Taught You About Life in Your Twenties.”
“I watch shows like Girls and it feels like the raw reality of life,” says Kayla.
It’s a deceptively simple synopsis,
“When I was 14 years old, going on 15, I went through depression, fights with my own friends, a roller coaster of emotions,” she writes. “The ONLY thing that kept me from crying were the six New Yorkers that I grew up getting to know.”
“Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You’re gonna love it.”
“The ’90s were a great time,” says Chris Mustacchio, who is 24, works in New York, and estimates he’s seen every episode of Friends more than five times. Like more than a few people I talked to, he describes habitually falling asleep to the show. “If you think about it, back then there was little conflict. It was pre-9/11. You could smoke on airplanes, you could smoke in restaurants. Bill Clinton was in the White House. He was the best president of all time!”
(I was Chandler.)
No,” she said, “because you wouldn’t find six people doing nothing in the same room.” Or if they were, they’d all be on their phones, seeing what else is out there.
I've re-watched friends not too long ago because it was on Netflix and I was bored. It's so goddamn sexist ALL THE FREAKING TIME. And the characters are a bunch of whiny brats, that have no goddamn morals (like cheating, being passive agressive instead to just talking and being assholes to their supposed "friends"). It just feels so outdated! And shitty. Fuck friends.
Rory from Gilmore girls is portrayed as such a saint but can justifiably cheat because "she is sooo confuuuused"... And the parent/grandparent childish dynamic. Like, arnt these people ADULTS? Urgh. Maybe I should stop watching TV. I liked degrassi back in the day because people's shitty behaviour was not " excused". And kids got in trouble for the bad things. I think that's what bothers me most, people acting shitty but it being ignored like it's just normal in these shows.
Hey :( Emo is great if you avoid the second wave-ish Panic! At the Disco variety and predates Friends, outside of being nitpicky and taking you seriously...you and I hit the same points, just in a different number of words. Yours is more amusing, that's for sure.
Whatever this song is it was on the album I had sex to the most my freshman year of college. At the time, we called it "whiny grunge." The emo wave was useful for one thing: it removed all need for any goth to ever visit the mall again, because as soon as Hot Topic figured out that the emo kids were more likely to buy shit, they served the goth crew not at all.
My boss gave me a big chunk of keif (marijuana crystals) which I smoked before turning on the TV. A Friends marathon was on. I watched about 5 episodes in a row, it was about the funniest thing I ever watched. That's my story about the one time Friends was good and funny.
Lived with a girl that had a thing for 90210 and Melrose Place. We had a night - she called it 90210Taco - wherein I would make tacos and margeritas and proceed to suffer through 90120 and Melrose Place. It's hard to get discretely drunk enough to enjoy 90210. However, by the time MP rolled around I think I was just about as hammered as Jack Wagner and it wasn't too bad.
Who are all these people? "Friends" doesn't represent me, nor my friends, nor colleagues, it doesn't feel like there's some huge pull towards it from my generation. If anything it runs counter to what I and others around me want to experience. Ultimately this article is saying that that's what people want to go back to, some sort of vapid and shallow and homogeneous lifestyle because that's apparently what this generation thinks of when they think of the 90s? When we were all between the ages of what, 0-18 when Friends was actually on?. I shudder at that thought. If it isn't obvious I really don't like "Friends".Friends was not only born of that era but may, in hindsight, embody it more completely than any other TV show. Sexier than Cheers, less acerbic than Seinfeld, Friends existed at the sweet spot of populist mass entertainment and prescient pop escapism.
I hate sitcoms. Watch them without the forced laugh track to see how horrible they are. The Big Bang Theory is a horrible, non-funny show, for example.
If you're looking for something to turn your mind off on, sitcoms are your thing. Granted, it isn't the best time-spender - the haled video games at least take hand-eye coordination or other skills - but if you can not afford giving another thing any more thought because you're drained, they're great. I once spent a whole day, from 4 AM to 6 PM, walking through a big city I particularly like, just taking everything in. By the end of the day, waiting for the bus back home, I just sat in front of the bus station TV and watched a family-oriented silly sitcom I wouldn't otherwise even consider. At that moment, the jokes were pretty damn funny and the humour seemed quite reasonable. I spent the next hour and a half glued to the screen and left satisfied.
Never heard of it, thanks for mentioning it ! I will give it a try. There are some good sitcoms. I personally really liked Arrested Development and Louie.
Personally, I don't really consider Friends to be worth watching. Freshman year, the hot girls would all assemble in the TV room to watch Friends and ER. Therefore, all the boys that didn't understand the meaning of "friendzoned" would assemble in the TV room to watch the hot girls watch Friends and ER. ER was okay. It had its moments. The one where the kid from Fame gets his arm cut off by a helicopter needs no preamble. Friends had probably one moment, which is the one where Phoebe says "he's her lobster" but in order to get to the point where it makes sense you have to slog through 38 episodes of tedious entitled white people problems. What's the line from Breakfast Club? "A brain, an athlete, a princess, a basketcase and a criminal?" Friends is a douche, a bitch, a dweeb, another bitch, an idiot and a ditz.
wear it like a badge of honor. And look... I don't actually hate on friends that much. It is exactly what it is. It was a dumb sitcom that was a cultural phenomenon. A lot of the jokes and humor weren't even that funny, but the social-quotability was something that people could laugh together about.
Nope. Breaking Bad isn't really worth it. Everyone thinks Breaking Bad is worth it because the last season essentially pays off for the previous 5. Therefore, everyone has super positive memories about the series because the last that they saw of it was that memorable and "good," which really translates into "judiciously satisfying." However, as someone who watched it marathoning after it went off air, I absolutely do not find the first 5 seasons really worth suffering through to get to the 6th. cc OftenBen
Not everyone thinks that. I've been following the show in real time since about the second season on, and while it has its hiccups, it also brings to the table something that rare other show does. It doesn't shy away from the dirty sides of life: not the blood and swearing, but the complexity of human beings, the dirt with the marble. Walter is a brilliant chemist who takes great pride of his work and has great ego, who cares for his family but uses this as an excuse to continue working in the illegal field that finally brings him joy and allows him to feel, as he puts it, "alive". He left his own company and has been jealous of their success ever since, especially - as it has been hinted - because his partner took his girl and made her a partner instead. He's arrogant and selfish, but brilliant nonetheless, and while a big part of me wants to smash him like a bug, there's a sparkle of compassion that Walter raises. Jessie is an addict because he has ambitions which he can't realize, with genuine and deep care for children, who doesn't shy away from being a criminal and a meth cook and follows through thick and thin one of the people to whose expectations he didn't live up to - until he snaps, grows a spine and quits. I can go on for a long time. To say nothing of the gorgeous storytelling and the camera work. All of this is very satisfying to watch. No, it isn't about the season five, which you imply to be somehow miraculous in comparison: it's about the whole story, with season five being its long-awaited culmination (with, I grant you, quite a few award-worthy episodes like Ozymandias). To watch the main characters grow in different ways, each with their own motivations clashing and working hand in hand - now that, my dear, is a powerful story, like very few of the available can provide.Everyone thinks Breaking Bad is worth it because the last season essentially pays off for the previous 5.
Interesting... As someone who watched it a little closer to real time... I really liked it. And - I liked it up until season 4 and just labored through 5 & 6, which were fine, but felt a little like "whoops - we got picked up for two more seasons... What crazy hijinks do Walt and Jessie come up with now?"