How the Hell is This Show Still So Relevant 20 Years Later?
By: Jeff McDonough
Monday was the 236th day of the year, as
August 24 always is on non-leap years. The significance of this date — beyond
being Cal Ripken’s 55th birthday — is that if you started watching Friends on a strict episode-a-day
regimen when Netflix released all 236 episodes
after the ball dropped this New Year’s, you’d be all
finished! In reality, nobody binge-watches TV this way, with that level of
self-control. You either end up getting distracted by something else and
flaking on your show, or you power through it in embarrassingly quick fashion
with only Doritos crumbs in your bed and a laptop burn on your tummy to show
for it.
Regardless, there has been adequate time for anyone interested in doing so to run through the entire series, whether for the first time or the 51st time. Why does this deal even matter? The episodes have been in reruns nonstop, since even before the show ended, on TBS and Nick at Nite and many local broadcast affiliates. Well, the answer to this question is really a sign of how things are in 2015 in general: we want our content when we want it however we want it.
Netflix has become a TV juggernaut, despite not actually being a TV channel or provider at all. It has award-winning original content like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. It has a large library of popular television series from many genres on which to binge, or just flip on in the background. It has a puzzlingly-limited/random spattering of B-movies. Seriously though, you have “flicks” in your name. I take no solace in the fact that the movie I want to watch is available but on “DVD only.” I’m not doubling up my subscription fee so I can rent movies like a divorced dad in the ‘90s …Anyway, Netflix managed to land a big fish this year by adding the complete Friends collection to its library — Warner Bros. previously wouldn’t allow the episodes to go to a streaming service for years due to the popularity and high sales of the DVDs. It was a great fit for Netflix’s clientele of binge-thirsty millennials. For the record, just to put this question to bed for good, a millennial is loosely defined as any person who was born before but had not yet reached adulthood by 2000; so anybody born from 1982 to 1999.
Regardless, there has been adequate time for anyone interested in doing so to run through the entire series, whether for the first time or the 51st time. Why does this deal even matter? The episodes have been in reruns nonstop, since even before the show ended, on TBS and Nick at Nite and many local broadcast affiliates. Well, the answer to this question is really a sign of how things are in 2015 in general: we want our content when we want it however we want it.
Netflix has become a TV juggernaut, despite not actually being a TV channel or provider at all. It has award-winning original content like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. It has a large library of popular television series from many genres on which to binge, or just flip on in the background. It has a puzzlingly-limited/random spattering of B-movies. Seriously though, you have “flicks” in your name. I take no solace in the fact that the movie I want to watch is available but on “DVD only.” I’m not doubling up my subscription fee so I can rent movies like a divorced dad in the ‘90s …Anyway, Netflix managed to land a big fish this year by adding the complete Friends collection to its library — Warner Bros. previously wouldn’t allow the episodes to go to a streaming service for years due to the popularity and high sales of the DVDs. It was a great fit for Netflix’s clientele of binge-thirsty millennials. For the record, just to put this question to bed for good, a millennial is loosely defined as any person who was born before but had not yet reached adulthood by 2000; so anybody born from 1982 to 1999.
It’s not just Netflix. Buzzfeed and sites of its ilk have inundated the interwebs with pointless Friends trivia games and lists of varying levels of tediousness. This burgeoning cottage industry of Friends nostalgia porn is really having a moment. Around this time last year, fans flocked to NYC and lined up around the block to visit a replica setup of “Central Perk,” the coffee house and focal meeting ground of the series. London is doing a similar thing this year — this time featuring Monica’s apartment as well! The New York pop up shop was to commemorate the show’s 20th anniversary. Okay, that seems reasonable at least. The London dealio is to celebrate the fact that Comedy Central UK has signed a syndication deal to keep reruns on its station through 2019. Huh? Well, at least we know its not just Netflix. In fact, I think Friends may even be more popular per capita over there — more white people, I guess? It was like Beatlemania Redux when the show’s Season 4 finale was shot on location in London.
It’s not just these attempts to recreate the past though. Friends is still permeating pop culture in the present. Stories about the girls being invited to Jennifer Anniston’s recent wedding but NOT the guys are still drawing eyeballs to People Magazine in 2015. Taylor Swift, the biggest pop star in the world, invited Lisa Kudrow on stage to perform a duet of her legendarily abhorrent ditty “Smelly Cat.”
Even more strange was when she brought out Matt LeBlanc another night... to just awkwardly stand there with Chris Rock. Then there was this fan-proposed alternate ending to Friends that is tonally similar to a madman’s manifesto and will haunt your dreams, but is interesting and actually pretty prescient. And while everyone continues to clamor for a reunion that will never happen, Jimmy Kimmel gave us a small taste of that with his own bit of fanfic. C’mon, people. They’re too old for that. This show, as the creators will tell you, was about that moment in your life when your friends are your family, before you actually have your own family. Matthew Perry is the youngest cast member at 46, and it ranges all the way up to Lisa Kudrow at 52. Jeepers...
Friends has been off the air for over a decade and began its run on NBC over two decades ago.
How has it remained so relevant with people who, not only didn’t watch it when it was actually airing on TV, but weren’t even alive when it came on the air, in some cases? We like the goofy outfits, and dated hairstyles, and throwback references, and maybe even the cheesy laugh track even if we don’t admit it. If that was all it took, then why aren’t a bunch of 20 and 30 year-old shows saturating the culture to this level? Sure, Seinfeld’s reruns are still going, and it was a nice get for Hulu to land all its episodes in a much less talked about Friends-to-Netflix-style deal. It is probably even the more critically-renowned show of the two. It just isn’t still generating the perpetual conversation that Friends seems to be. My theory is that it has to do with the fact that the Seinfeld gang is made up of abjectly terrible people. While it was a smart and clever and hysterical show, the people aren’t as likable. Friends also showed it’s romantic side and got “deep” much more often, which would explain some of the emotional investment of its ravenous fanbase.
My tone throughout this piece has been pointedly cynical, which may come as a surprise, because as many of you know, I am a longtime fan of the show. Friends was introduced into my household by two separate aunts of mine who watched this new hit comedy and let my mom know about it. From my mom’s very casual fandom eventually emerged the seeds of obsession amongst my siblings. We had a "Best Of" DVD and a "Best Of" VHS tape, but it wasn’t until my older sister was gifted the first two seasons for Christmas when they came out on DVD in 2002 that this thing really took off. Friends became a shared experience amongst my siblings, an entity of which we were all well versed in, a language of references for us all to pull from. Aside from the DVD sets that’d eventually pile up in our home, I remember watching the last few seasons as they aired on television. Thursday nights were quite overwhelming for me as a child in the pre-DVR days, as Friends, Survivor and Smackdown! all ran concurrently from 8:00 to 8:30. Eventually, I was one of those 52.5 million people to watch the series finale in 2004, as was my older sister. I have a vivid memory of her crying.
The series had ended and then the last of the seasons was released on DVD a year and a half later, and I thought that was pretty much it for this Friends thing. I thought it would just be an old show that my younger siblings and I would loop on DVD as sort of background noise, without any larger conversation from anyone else. I mean, I knew it was immensely popular and we'd come across other fans, but I wasn't expecting this. Well, I took my DVDs to college and got my roommate hooked. He moved into a new apartment and got his three new roommates hooked. I leant the DVDs to my girlfriend and she got hooked. The chain from which this seed of obsession has been passed down is quite lengthy at this point. My best friend has also joined the club, but as one of the next-genners to loop the whole series on Netflix this year. So my inner circle has remained steadfast, but this national level of infatuation has not died down either as I expected. It may have gotten even stronger this past year, with the 20th anniversary and the Netflix release largely responsible, I believe.
My favorite television writer Andy Greenwald of Grantland, told a story on his podcast recently about visiting a high school and talking to the kids there. He asked what shows they were currently digging, attempting to gage the youth culture of the moment. They said, “Yeah, we’re really into this show Friends on Netflix. You know it?” There was a great scene on the not-great second season of True Detective where Colin Farrell’s son asks to watch Friends, much to his father’s confusion. The video below that I stumbled upon while searching for said clip is even better (Spoilers Galore):
Oh my, how I love you, internet. The thing I first noticed with the Friends-to-Netflix announcement wasn’t the resurgence it has facilitated, but something much nerdier. You see, the DVDs contain about two more minutes per episode of extra content than what originally aired on NBC — which usually amounts to five jokes that were cut from the final show for time. This made for a nice little treat when the DVDs were released. It has also spoiled any Friends fanatic and DVD owner who then attempts to watch an episode on Nick at Nite only to have the joke they were anticipating never come. When the Friends Blu-rays came out, all the footage had been restored into beautiful HD widescreen — since that was the format of the camera they originally used to shoot the show, they just edited it after the fact because remember when TVs were square? When Friends came to Netflix, the Blu-ray versions of the episodes joined. So while these episodes look better than the DVDs, they sound worst, in a way. It’s a sitcom, not a 3-D action film; an old sitcom I’ve seen a million times, at that. What does the look matter? I just want to hear the jokes.
I’m not looking for anything new here. They can dig up old
clips of the cast in a tutorial showing us how to use Windows 95. Or this video released in 2007 could go viral, like it did this
week:
That was a scene that had to be deleted because of how insensitive it would have come across just weeks after 9/11. A similar situation happened this week, when the finale of the phenomenal first season of Mr. Robot was pulled after a scene in it was said to too closely resemble the real-life onscreen deaths of a Virginia news crew earlier that same day. So we have another parallel to Friends with their unaired "bomb in the airport" scene. Even with this video surfacing, and then resurfacing, there isn’t anything new here. And I’m fine with that. In fact the reason I like Friends, and I believe the reason many others do, is because it doesn’t change. It's a constant. They're a likeable, fun crew you have no problem inviting into your home all these years for some gentle comedy. Sure, the suspense of Mr. Robot and Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad is thrilling, but sometimes you just want to relax. Back on the 20th anniversary, I wrote that Friends is like comfort food — mac n’ cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. I think that description holds true and sheds some light on the appeal of the show to many others. Is it the best show ever? No. How about the funniest, or the smartest, or any other superlative? Probably not. But sometimes you don’t need something to be the best. Sometimes you just want someone to be there for you.
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