BY: OLIVIA WHITE
FEATURES EDITOR
Netflix’s decision to release all ten seasons of NBC’s beloved sitcom “Friends” on January first garnered cheers of satisfaction and delight from veteran fans, 90’s nostalgia junkies, and Millennials alike. It doomed these demographics and plenty of other fans, from the bandwagon to the die hard, to countless hours of one on one time with their computers as they commenced binge watching the classic saga of six buddies tackling their late twenties and early thirties in the Big Apple. These binges laughed in the faces of New Years Resolutions to get out of bed, stop eating cookie dough from the tube, and go to the gym. They introduced watchers to a warm, velvet couch in the Central Perk coffee shop and insisted they stay, ignore their real life troubles, and instead become invested in the antics of six fictional characters.
A cursory analysis of any good sitcom reveals that it contains at least a few of the following tropes: a hapless hopeless romantic; a goofball with all the punch-lines; a wannabe Lothario; a dream girl; multiple break ups and botched relationships; marriages; and maybe a few pregnancies. In the case of Friends, many of these traits are personified by the members of a group of six fabulous friends with various talents, backstories, quirks, and reactions to the previously mentioned situations. It is effortless to become almost immediately invested in each character’s personal problems, goals, and heartbreaks. Viewers want the characters’ problems to grow deeper and more intertwined with the problems of others because this allows them further insight into the flaws, fetishes, and habits of those onscreen. The deeper the issues, the more intricate the plotlines, and the more emotionally involved the viewer becomes. It becomes so easy to imagine that a life like that of Rachel and Monica’s, a tedious romance like Rachel and Ross’s, and an epic bromance like Chandler and Joey’s actually exists. It feels so deceptively real.
Then, ten seasons later, suddenly the last episode comes and goes. Monica, Phoebe, Ross, Chandler, Rachel and Joey no longer live in one’s computer. They’re gone. All one can do is take sad Buzzfeed quizzes regarding “Which of Ross’s ex-girlfriends” he or she is. Not only were the six aforementioned characters friends, they were best Friends. Your Friends/friends.
Sitcoms, in general, are toxic for the human morale. They lure us in with their laugh tracks and characters that we wish we could play tennis with or take to the new sushi bar. Season after season, after the hook’s been sunk into our cheeks like we’re unfortunate fish in a stocked pond, they reel us in. The show and the characters are important to us. Characters remind us of our friends and family, only better.
It’s false advertising.
Maybe this is a little heartbreaking. Casually lounging in coffee shops, discussing the up’s and down’s of (scripted) life is a twenty-something’s dream. Almost every complication is promised a happy ending, usually including a wedding, a long-awaited promotion, or a perfect kiss in some kind of drastic weather. Sitcom world is a promising, escapist fantasy. Totally fulfilling, totally fake, and totally misleading.
There is good news, however, in the hard truth that Sitcom World is a false promise. In real life, we won’t go through the cliffhanger dramas every other week. We’ll have different friends at different points of our lives, and we’ll probably learn something different from them. The adventures and mishaps we experience will be special, because they won’t have to forcibly occur in order to make a central conflict for a show in a competitive time slot.
Friends, and shows like Friends, are great because they allow us to look at the lives of the characters, and then look at our own lives and appreciate the people who remind us of our favorite characters. But our real-life favorite characters exist in a preferable manner that, if stated, will only make me sound redundant. They’re real.
Ross, Rachel and the gang are quirky and loveable in a comfortingly familiar way, but they’re all probably insane for being so co-dependent. They’re selfish and exclusive. They portray an idea of life that many people (most minorities for example) don’t exist in. But despite the façade, we appreciate them for allowing us to escape to another place and dream of an idealized life. They demonstrate the immense, long-lasting impact one person can have on another’s story.
So be excited to see who impacts yours. Be excited to impact some else’s, or wonder who’s you’ve already impacted. There are millions of life story-strings criss-crossing every instant, and it doesn’t happen in a single coffee shop.