My Thoughts on: Friends

Friends
1994-2004
David Crane, Marta Kauffman

These summer holidays I decided to finish all 10 seasons of Friends, the famous sitcom to rule them all. It obviously was a moderately sad and depressing goal considering I was sitting around in my dark room with food curled up in blankets while the rest of society was frolicking in the sun. But seriously I love this show. It captures the human experience and nothing seems to come close to capturing the beauty of the day-to-day.

It captures the joy and the sorrow, the love and the heartbreak in 6 distinct and individual characters that grow with you when you watch it. It always doesn't seem like you're watching characters on a screen. I think that is what makes 'Friends' so special; how genuine the characters are. Each of the 'Friends' seem to have their flaws and their strengths. Ross has his divorces yet has an deep and ever enduring love. Phoebe has a stubbornness but also a deep sense of care. Monica has her compulsive cleaning but a strong work ethic etc. etc. You can't help but laugh in their moments of happiness, feeling genuine love - such as the moment where Chandler and Monica got married, the time where Ross was telling people of the beautiful way he would have proposed to Rachel, but also the genuine sorrow and pangs of sympathy. A particular example of this was Ross's kindhearted willingness to go to the high school prom with Rachel when her date didn't show up, yet after getting ready, Rachel and Monica are exiting the house in glee as said date, arrived. Ross's indirect rejection from kindness is brutal to watch and plays a large emotional role, without needing gags of complexities.

The gang has a great sense of energy and chemistry, although there is only a strong stable main cast of six, they never get tiresome to watch. The script is always hilarious and zany and the acting is almost as if the actors are the characters themselves. It has an extremely great sense of consistency as it celebrates the necessity and the beauty that friends can do to enrich one's life. As Time magazine articulately put it 'the well-hidden secret of this show was that it called itself Friends, and was really about family'

The friend's gang slowly develops habit and tics that we begin to realize and become comfortable with as we watch. Monica's loud 'I KNOW!!!' is characteristic as well as Chandler's strange enunciation is picked up by the gang where they produce constant jests towards it. This further develops to a sense of continuation as well as deepening our relationship with these characters. After 10 season admittedly I got extremely emotional as I watch the perfect ending to the perfect sitcom. It came to the realization that people have to move on, but that's not necessarily bad. It's inevitable but it's poignantly beautiful; starting a new chapter in their lives, a new adventure. As I watched this I realized how much I had to apply this to my own life, and to celebrate and embrace the change rather than to shy away.