The thing about friends is that they’re often not there when the rain starts to pour. On the one hand, it makes outdoor activities unpleasant; for another, who wants to make a trek to their mate’s house when it’s tipping down?
What’s that, it’s a metaphor? Well, in that case, why did none of my friends ever tell me? Bastards.
The Friends reunion has got many people very misty-eyed this week. (We may see something similar when the Cummings/Johnson/Hancock reunion comes around in 2036.) I confess I have yet to see it, reluctant to besmirch memories of the show, and frankly unwilling to faff around with a free trial for the NOW television channel.
Still, I’m sure I will get around to it, especially having been fortified by some broadly positive reviews. After all, I could barely have been more peak Friends generation: I was 15 when it began and 24 when it ended. I watched it religiously in the early days, missed bits when I was at university and had no TV, then picked up the threads during the final few seasons.
In the years since it finished, I have watched a million repeats, including the show in its entirety during the first coronavirus lockdown.
Much has been written about how well – or otherwise – it has aged, and without question there are a few moments that are a little wince-inducing. The lack of ethnic diversity among the principal and main supporting characters is especially notable. Then again, if you believe in a progressive society, the fact of even a relatively recent show feeling a bit out of step can be seen as a positive.
The suggestion that David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston almost had a real-life romance is just what fans had dreamt of
In any case, there remains much to be admired about Friends. For all that the six main parts were caricatures (and which comedy doesn’t thrive off exaggerated characters?) they were often beautifully acted, and there are laugh out loud moments in every episode. And the story arc, while occasionally taking a strange twist (Ross’s anger issues?), ultimately left everyone satisfied.
As a teenager, Ross was my favourite (this was before the anger stuff). For one thing, the character had an emotional range the others did not; for another, he was just funnier. If I was like any of these goofballs, I thought, it’s him.
Inevitably, the character I was actually most like was Chandler Bing – or a version of him. Chanandler Bong, perhaps.
Perhaps the greatest danger of the Friends reunion was not that it would prove to be a bit pointless (inevitable) or cringy (James Corden is involved), but that the stars of the show would come across either as intolerably unpleasant and/or as hating each other.
Yet that doesn’t appear to have been the case. Indeed, the suggestion that David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston almost had a real-life romance is just what fans had dreamt of. We want these people not only to be our friends, but to be friends with one another. And most of all, we don’t want them to have changed in the years since we knew them.
As coronavirus restrictions ease, we are all embarking on our own friend reunions, and when I think of the friends I have remained closest to, the striking thing is just how little they have changed over the years – at least in the fundamentals. Those who were the loudest and most provocative in the 1990s are still the loudest and most provocative now (if a little more circumspect); those who were the most serious are doing the most serious jobs; those who were most like Chandler Bing are, regrettably, still most like Chandler Bing.
I would like to see more of my friends. And frankly, I’d quite like to watch more of Friends. Again. Does that make me a boring person? If it does, could I be any less bothered?
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