James Joyner gathered a number of bloggers’ reactions to the final episode of Friends. Like I pointed out yesterday, because of the time zone difference I saw it hours later than most of you. But, hey, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to put my two cents in.
I’m going to sound schmaltzy but I actually got teary-eyed when Rachel was standing in Ross’s apartment. Yes, it’s true. I had a tear in my eye. Then again, those old Cotton and AT&T commercials used to do the same thing to me. I guess, underneath all the venom, sometimes I’m a sucker for sweetness.
The thing is, I’ve watched Friends pretty regularly throughout its 10 years. I’ve always liked it because they were all my age (well, 2 years younger but who’s counting?). As their lives have settled down a bit, so has mine. Maybe that’s why it felt a bit personal to hear TV critics describing the show as the end of the Friends’ youth and the beginning of their lives as adults. Watching the finale was, in a sense, a coming of age rite for people my age.
Still, two things struck me as odd. First, when Rachel did think she was going to Paris, everyone was acting as if Ross would never see her again. It was a bad storyline in the sense that they have a child together and one would expect they’d see each other sometimes for Emma’s sake.
Second, it struck me odd was the sense they conveyed that the friendships were all ending. I mean, sure, Joey & Chandler implied that they’d see each other. But in the final scene when everyone handed over their keys, there was this sense of awkwardness as if they’d never see each other again when, presumably, the characters would go on being friends even though Friends itself was ending.
Anyway, once the show was over I did exactly what I do every evening at 9 p.m. I switched to our local station which runs Friends each night and started heading to the kitchen to do dishes only to realize that my local channel was airing the very first episode. There was something kind of neat about that. Maybe my youth isn’t entirely over, either.
UPDATE: If you were one of those who tried TiVo’ing the finale and got screwed because it ran past it’s scheduled end-time, the DVD is coming out on Monday.
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Friday, May 7th, 2004, 12:51 pm | 
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May 7, 2004 at 3:44 pm
you’re right about ross and rachel. plus, it would have been better if ross said he was going to move to paris, too. don’t you think?
May 7, 2004 at 8:52 pm
Perhaps, except that without being married and with no job, Ross would have found himself being kicked out of France in about six months (or whatever the current non-work tourist visa allows these days).
I do, however, understand the sadness (lord, how pitiful this sounds) of the characters moving out of the apartment. I’ve had friends relocate in Denver, only a city of 2 million people, and rather than being 10 minutes away, they’re now 40 minutes away if traffic cooperates. So, while you call the same city home – you don’t see each other nearly as much. I can only imagine that in the fictional Friends NYC, it is much worse, although I’d drive hours and hours to see Jennifer Aniston. Yum!
OK, uh, what was I saying?
May 8, 2004 at 5:49 pm
Dayum Kate you actually watch toob!
that show musta been in their 3rd or 4th
before i even heard of it
I guess that comes from being a crusty
old hermit.
May 9, 2004 at 1:46 pm
Like I’ve said before, I only watch about an hour of toob a week. For years, that hour has been Frasier and Friends, although for a while I’d given them up to watch 24 (until I got tired of feeling tense at the end of my viewing session). Now, I think I’ll just go back to watching Nick at Night when I need to unwind. Who can get tired of reruns of Cheers?