My stepdaughter was obsessed with Friends, and I can tell you exactly why. She didn't have many friends. And, being a typical girl, she felt superior to every member of her family, so. . . she fantasized, and, in truth, actually believed to a certain extent, that these were her real friends, or at least the real friends that she deserved to have.
When you think of the nineties, and on into the early two thousands, you get the rise of the helicopter parents, and the isolation in many ways of children, the cocooning, and the over protectiveness, you are seeing the beginning of the millennial mindset, remembering that we are excluding members of this forum, so let's not go down that road, and what you see is children who feel simultaneously insecure and transcendent.
Friends came out at a time just before kids had the option of instant messaging, texting, and whatever the name of that thing before Facebook, oh yeah, Myspace, so what you had was a whole generation of people turning inward, fine tuning their own personal preferences and predilections, and turning away from the actual people who they lived with and had communication with every day.
But, SAD FACE, no Tumblr yet. Guess I will just have to customize my desktop all over again.
Now, as pleased with themselves as this whole cohort became, deep down inside they knew on some primordial inchoate level that there was something big missing in their lives, something they couldn't quite put their fingers on.
And ta da! Friends comes along, and fills this need for community exactly.
Finally, said kids like my stepdaughter, I have found my tribe.
These are the people I should know, this is where I belong, this is my home.
So in a way, analyzing the writing or the acting is completely irrelevant.
Friends was exactly what this show was, friends for the friendless, but without the risk of actually going out and having to make friends with real people. At about the time that sites like Friendster were coming out.
Just think how it solved the friend problem for the inflated egos of so many scared little people. It was inspirational and aspirational, these six good looking ,basically interchangeable, affluent young men and women, who seemed to always be there for each other, and whose lives were so filled with fun and laughter and white people problems.
Couldn't the chubby little preteen to teenage girl just think, yeah, this is the life I was meant to have, as soon as I get away from my disaster of a family? Didn't she have three guys to moon over? And three non threatening and cute girls to identify with?
I don't think it was popular because of any great insight or writing, no, it was the timing. It came out and fulfilled a need for a bunch of lonely youngsters at the perfect time in history, and now that need is being fulfilled by social media, and Friends is no longer really necessary, except as nostalgia for people who happened to grow up with it, and you can't blame anyone for the things they grew up with. People grow out of this stuff naturally anyway.
It fulfilled a need, in a particular time and place, no more, no less.
Although, full disclosure, I did and do think Lisa Kudrow is pretty fucking funny.
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