F.R.I.E.N.D.S - The studio, the sitcom, the cult
The cast of Friends Source: Vitya_maly / GoodFon.com.
In ‘the one with the cultural phenomenon’, American sitcom Friends gains a cult following. Even in New Zealand, miles from New York and decades after the show last aired, Friends is as popular with university students who were born after the show ended, as it once was with the young American adults who first watched it week to week on broadcast.
22 September 1994 - the first ever episode of Friends is aired. And what began as just another sitcom – with a laugh track and a Manhattan skyline – has become an icon of 90’s pop culture.
They live in New York, share apartments with their friends, gather on the same, always reserved couch at the Central Perk coffee shop, and learn to live an adult life. Spawning a language of quippy references, the sitcom has generated a whole genre of Buzzfeed personality quizzes, situational references, and t-shirts sporting Central Perk coffee mugs, umbrellas in the rain, and lobsters holding hands.
The enduring show, about six friends navigating life and love together in New York City, was the perfect typecast. There was the spoiled, well-meaning princess, the confident but naive cool guy, the kind and pretentious geek, the free-spirit hippy, the control freak, and the socially awkward but lovable jokester.
According to one 23-year-old Friends fan, the shows’ characters are now so familiar; “we can reduce them to labels now. Joey is the ‘dumb one’, Chandler the ‘snarky one’.
But in the early seasons, they felt like real people we might know.
“Specifically, real people in their mid-20s, telling disastrous date stories and struggling to pick up the bill at a restaurant,” said the Friends fanatic.
The show was a point of identity, expressed in well-worn cliches and insistences that ‘I’m a Monica, you’re a Rachel’. The popular cult of viewers could easily see themselves, or at least pieces of themselves, in each of these characters. And when Friends first aired in 1994, millions of viewers became the dedicated followers of Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, Joey, and Ross. Ever since, the show has attracted a ‘cult following’ that spans generations.
As the local Friends fan told Canta, “I recently rewatched the whole thing, from start to finish, and I finally admitted that I’m a total Monica.”
“I do think the characters stagnated – it’s so rare for 35-year-olds to spend as much time with their friend group as 25-year-olds do – and they became simpler, more predictable characters.”
For 10 years and 10 seasons, a generation of young millennials watched Friends religiously, as it aired once a week on prime-time TV, complete with adverts, and cliffhanging episodes that wouldn’t be resolved until the next week. And that coming-of-age experience, so oft-quoted by the 90’s generation, transcended decades.
“I truly grew up watching sitcoms and they totally shaped my humour. I feel more nostalgia for those shows than for the ones that were still airing when I was that age,” the fan told Canta.
The overwhelming popularity of Friends came in part from its gentle depiction of the struggles of early adulthood, in a way that is eminently relatable to younger generations; mostly, young-adults in their 20’s. Behind the comedy, and the culturally significant haircuts, like the ‘Rachel’ bob that Jennifer Aniston's Rachel Green so notoriously popularised, the show continues to resonate with an audience feeling nostalgic for a decade they never experienced.
The comedy is being discovered by a new generation of fans on Netflix, and although they are separated from the cast by more than a decade or two, the fears faced by 20 somethings in the ‘90’s are fears shared by 20 somethings today. Falling in love, finding somewhere to live with flatmates you like, worrying about the cost of rent, but still buying coffee out every episode.
Friends actualised the fears of the younger generation of the ‘90s, and presented them with humour, grace, and affable relatability. The studio sitcom and its live audience laugh track became a sensation almost immediately; the first episode was watched by 22 million viewers, and according to Television Academy, the final season finale, aired on May 6 2004, was watched by 52 million people.
Despite the easy binge-ability of Friends, most of us got a sense of what 90’s TV was like from reruns, not by streaming. And those reruns, played to the point of familiarity, are an essential part of the Friends story. They encapsulate the comforting feeling of something that is thoroughly known and thoroughly loved, and reruns created a shared experience for the whole generation that grew up with Friends’ episodes playing somewhere in the background.
Friends is intentionally constructed to be easily liked, to resonate universally and appeal to everyone, but has an incredibly narrow field of vision. The all white cast, in the centre of ‘melting-pot’ Manhattan, is certainly a restrictive representation. Maybe the fracturing of culture and modern media is more honest, a culture that reflects society and its diversities.
But it’s terribly lonely. Television sets require everyone to stay in the same room, at the same time, to get comfortable in the lounge instead of four different bedrooms. Everyone looks the same way and has the same experience; phones and laptops and tiny handheld screens mean that everybody has a separate, individual experience – even if they do all watch the same show.
Friends is not one of a kind. But it is the last of its kind, a show that was more unifying experience than it was sitcom.