Editor’s Note: I personally think it is a mistake to venerate someone just because they passed away unexpectedly. That said, I think it’s worth taking a moment to remember Matthew Perry. Perry was an unquestionably flawed person who not only did flawed things, but also read flawed words as Chandler Bing, words that aren’t appropriate today and weren’t appropriate then. But he also made us laugh, a precious commodity in today’s world.
I present the article below, which originally ran in 2018, in honor of Matthew Perry. Friends is available on Max as well as on many local stations.
Millennials ruin everything. At least that’s what some of my more curmudgeonly friends say. I will admit that I’ve heard more than one millennial complain about Friends, that 1990s sitcom that sought to define the Gen-X experience 22 minutes at a time every Thursday. So let me make some stuff perfectly clear about this show.
Here are some things that we all knew about Friends and we just went with it, because, well, it was the 1990s and we didn’t expect TV to be that good.
- We knew that no one would ever be able to afford those apartments.
- We knew that there should have been more cultural diversity.
- We knew that there should have been fewer jokes about whether Chandler was gay.
- We knew that it made no sense for Ross to live in the village and for him to teach at Columbia. (Look it up, folks, they may as well be in different counties.)
- We knew that “being on a break” was not an excuse for anything.
- We knew that most people who work as bad waitresses will never become executives at Ralph Lauren.
- We knew that Chandler meets Monica like three different times in the show.
- We knew that Joey should probably have been homeless and Chandler should have been too, since he gave Joey all his money.
- We knew that no one gets to sit in the big couch at the coffee shop all the time.
- We knew that all the sets look incredibly fake and look nothing like New York in any universe.
So, putting aside the socially inappropriate stuff, which let’s be honest, we all should have done better and being in the 1990s wasn’t an excuse, most of this boils down to: this is what TV was like then. We knew it wasn’t real. When I hear millennials talking about this show, they always seem vaguely disappointed that life isn’t like that, like you should have this rock solid core of friends and you should always move up in your job and everything will be just fine at the end of every half hour.
Kids, we knew that wasn’t real life and you should have too. Now, sit back and enjoy the bloopers. Even millennials love bloopers, right?
