Tribute to FRIENDS

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Started watching old episodes of Friends from season 2 & 3 last week, & it was definitely well worth the time. My cousin received the complete set of Friends episodes as her b'day present and she left it at singapore when she returned to US for her undergrad course. It has been lying on top of the TV set for a while and nobody was even close to pickin' it up, until I did it last week.

The first time when I watched an episode of Friends was probably while I was still a primary school kid at indo. Couldn't have possibly understood much english back then, so I must have been attracted to it because of Rachel Green, aka. Jennifer Aniston (yes, I'm a fan!). After I moved to Singapore later, it became a regular routine to catch it on the english tv channel, partly to test my english level since I still wasn't very comfortable with using it back then. Since then, I had been religiously following the storyline, & it wasn't exactly that difficult as it is shown in so many channels, even at indo too!

The first time when I really appreciated the performance of the cast members would have to be when I was at Oz, during the start of the 8th season. It was roughly the time when Rachel had the baby and the plot started to tweak to cater to that development. Although I had watched many episodes of the previous seasons then, I had little recollection of the events as different tv stations were showing episodes from different seasons, so it was all pretty much jumbled up. (That aside, I think part of the appeal is because you wouldn't have to know about the previous episodes to understand the story. Yes the eps are linked, but yet it is still possible to follow the jokes/story without actually watching the previous ones).

Coming back to the 8th season, by the time I watched it on Oz tv (I think it was on channel 9...), I realised their performances have really matured by a huge leap (you would really see this if you watched season 1), and I was entirely absorbed by the intensity of their performance. It was like they weren't on-screen personas anymore, but rather a part of my life. You could totally relate to what they were going through because you grew up with all of them, and you thought how great it would be to have pals like them.

When the show came to an end at Season 10, I remember telling Derr how there won't be a comedy sitcom that would ever match up to Friends again, and how Monday nights (when channel 9 used to show Friends eps) would officially suck and I wouldn't know what to do with it. It did get boring/empty for a while, and channel 9 played the sequel Joey (spin-off from Friends), which wasn't half as good as the real deal. The magic lies in the interplay between all the equal standing between the characters in the show, and when that was taken away, the sparkle diminished and it was something that can never be replaced.

Although what I predicted at that time didn't exactly come true, ie. life still went on without Friends, I would definitely have preferred to have it continue on. Many pretenders/contenders to the top comedy sitcom such as Everybody loves Raymond (which I rate 2nd only to Friends), 2 and a half men, to the not-so typical Desperate housewife came and went to fight for the crown, but in my opinion none of it came close to matching Friends' cult status.

While Friends has stopped running for a while now and the whole comedy sitcom genre has not exactly collapsed now (in fact it is running at full steam now as I have noticed an increase in the number of those sitcoms produced), it does mean that the genre does not have a clear winner and the market is fragmented. It will be hard to come up with that as Friends is only one winning bet in the thousands of shows produced by NBC, and therefore the odds of discovering another gem like that are pretty small.

Re-watching those old eps really brought back the nostalgic feeling each time, something that's probably on equal footing with my memories on when my first house at Indo was burnt down (ironically I always think of how Phoebe will say this out with her nonchalant yeah-that-was-just-some-normal-stuff-I-experienced tone whenever I think of my own childhood days) & how my whole 'mini-library' of more than a thousand comic books were burned down along with it.

Oh yeah I always thought Phoebe & Chandler were the 2 best comedians in the show, & they had been consistent throughout the 10 seasons, keeping this honour even during the 1st season when the jokes were really, really bad (by Friends standard, anyway). Chandler was always great with the punchlines, and Phoebe with her many anecdotes of her (crazy yet exciting) pre-Friends life. Joey has got to be the most improved as I thought he was great from Season 4 onwards. The rest of the cast (Rachel, Ross, & Monica) provided the bulk of the entertainment with their intertwining accounts as they were already acquainted way before the rest of the cast came to know each other.

(Just a side thought. One thing I've learnt from all the great comedians is that they're willing to make themselves the butt of their own jokes, which is what I believe draws them to the audience faster, whether they're stand-up comedians or actors in sitcoms. David Letterman is a great example of this theory & I really love his show!)

Thank you for bringing so much entertainment to my life, and even though the show has ended, the spirit of each of you will live on...

P.S. if you liked Friends as well, please leave your comment!