I'll start with a disclaimer, nay, a warning. If you do not like long-running, award-winning, jolly American sitcom Friends or have not ever watched it, this blog post may not have much in it for you. This blog is not going to be earthshattering, important, or even well written. It's just about Friends.
Screw the journo thing of doing a pithy bit of context for the uninitiated. Friends has been on one channel or another four times a day your entire life. If you ain't a fan now, I can't change you. And even if I could, I probably wouldn't because quite frankly, we number many and we're just fine.
Plus there's just too damned much to explain. I can say "In LONDON!" incredulously whenever I want, and the boy, the best friend and occasionally the mother (if she's taken her clarity meds) will understand the reference. Sometimes just saying any word in the same tone as "In LONDON!" works. This post may run along those lines. You might think something like, "Oh, I didn't realise the irritating precocious child actor talking to Joey in Chandler and Monica's new house was Dakota Fanning" and that's okay. Saying, "Oh, was Brad Pitt in it once then?" means you should probably stop reading now.
So let's crack on. I am sad Friends will no longer be on free telly at a time when nothing much else is on. That when I leave work or work-related things before 10pm, there is no longer a back-up to stick on in the background as I throw myself on the sofa and force the boy to make dinner. I am sad that it will no longer be the main reason I would ever watch T4 and thus pretend to be young and hip. So I'm just going to talk it out for a bit, okay?
A school friend of mine was America obsessed. My So Called Life, Sweet Valley High books, Boy Meets World, Dawson's Creek. I rarely caught on (Christian Slater in Heathers, I was totally on board with) but Friends we devoured together. We loved Ross and that bit in one of the opening credits where he wiggled his eyebrows in the fountain (maybe just me). Now, I look back and think "God, why Ross?" He was such a wanker in the last few series, right? I'm such a Joey girl these days, I'm basically shallower. Anyway. We had calendars, pencil cases, script books, sweatshirts (just me again, AND I was 15 when I got that). I didn't really do boyband devotion, but Friends? I'd have been 100% clad in overpriced merchandise from the now defunct Warner Bros shop in Meadowhall if my parents hadn't stepped in with that whole annoying not-buying-you-shit thing.
In fact, my dad was fast developing an aversion to Friends just as I left home, but it didn't quite reach the heights of his ongoing problem with EastEnders. To elaborate with that context thingy I so readily shunned earlier, when he hears the EastEnders theme tune or sometimes just a cockney accent, he shuts his eyes lest the telly infect him and flails around blindly for the remote groaning and shouting, "No, nooo, not this miserable shit again, what's wrong with you, family? Surely Only Fools And Horses is on?" Even if he's in another room.
And so to university and parent-free TV. New episodes were still on when I started my course, and we were on repeats by the time I finished. Up in the attic room of our shared house, when the boy moved in for the last few weeks of term he brought with him a full set of ripped off Friends DVDs. That was basically why I let him move in. At a time when maybe we should have been making the most of the last dregs of our university life together before he moved to China (bastard) we absorbed the entire ten seasons again. I'm a little embarrassed to admit this - though it was by no means the worst of my gross uni behavoiur - but I believe we had two TVs and sat side by side, me with Friends and smokes, and him on the PlayStation, one ear on Friends. In our pants, probably.
After that I had another year of studying while he swanned off to Chinese-ier climes, so I took those crappy rip offs, and I watched them again with my new housemates. It took us a wee while to realise in our box-of-pear-wine haze that when we were fastforwarding the end credits, our rubbish player was skipping three episodes at a time. You see though, I wouldn't change that for anything. The joy of realising we had so many more when we thought we were done, some that maybe, maybe we hadn't seen before? Well, obviously we had seen them before, but some of them like, only three times or something. When we got to the end of the last series, we were craving the first. Since then, between the DVDs and the TV repeats, I am confident I've seen every episode at least... lots of times.
I'm worried I should be explaining why I like it so much, chat about the easy-watching thing, why I STILL laugh at Ross slapping himself in the face with a talc-and-lotion hand. Actually, I know why I love that so much - it's because it caught me by surprise and I laughed out loud the first time I saw it, alone in student halls, then my best mate Suzy rang me straight after and we couldn't breathe for laughing. So when I see it now, I think about that. By the way, Suzy is also responsible for my favourite Friends epiphany ever - she pointed out once that Ross and Rachel are clearly stoned in Vegas, not drunk. They totes are, serious. Watch it.
Yeah anyway, the truth is it's much easier to tell you what niggles me rather than discuss its crazy success. Bloody Anna Faris playing pregnant redneck giving away her baby with ne'er a care in the world, that niggles me.
Yeah you, Anna. Everything about that storyline and her crap acting really got on my tits (probably because it meant more chance of Chandler's 'emotional' voice which sounds like a low refridgerator hum). The whooping audience, they're annoying, especially when everyone KNEW Phoebe would accept Mike's proposal, fools! Dakota Fanning saying, "[pause] I really don't" to Joey, now rendered such a childish caricature that he's asking an actual child for advice. Wanker Ross screaming and shouting and basically acting a bit demented. The times when they gave Rachel one liners she couldn't pull off. But the reason these are easier to reel off than pinpoint than what I like about Friends is probably because I never bloody well thought about it before. It was just always there.
It's not an obsession (seriously, despite this entire post) as I doubt I could go on Mastermind and chat about dates, extras, previous careers et al of the six main stars. Except Jennifer Aniston, whose lovelife I kind of have to know about these days. But I actually find I view the former stars of the show as not really anything to do with it. I've spoken to Ms Aniston on a red carpet and I wasn't in awe or touching her inappropriately. Though I did meet the guy who played Gunther at a party - watch your feet, I'm dropping names all over the shop - and was more excited, but it figures that he is keen to hold on (the party was the opening of a pretend Central Perk in London) and Jennifer is perhaps, not.
So well anyway, it's over now, for C4, E4 and T4 at least. Comedy Central snapped it up, which I believe is a paid for channel. I've got the proper boxset now, but I don't know if I'll actually go to the effort of putting it on and stuff. It just breaks my telly heart that the next generations won't have Friends in the same way. And I can see how it'll go, even now. I'll be so old I fart or worse when I laugh, and I'll be invited out of pity to someone's house for Christmas. I'll be grabbing some of said generation, my offspring's offspring maybe, the offspring of others, and making them telepathically switch the channel (we're in the FUTURE guys) and watch the repeat of one of the Thanksgiving episodes. I'll be speaking too loudly telling them how funny it is and how much I love it and therefore they should love it too. Then I might cry, incredulously, "In LONDON!" and they'll say, "Jeez grandma, get back in your hover chair and reattach your Botox drip" and I will. But I'll be saying to myself, quietly, wonderously: "Is this... is this... is this MY Only Fools and Horses?"
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