On "Friends," especially during the early years of the swinging Clinton era, looking for love in all the wrong places was considered, if not a noble pursuit, then at least a fine way to kill time between congressional hearings. "Seinfeld" viewers, by contrast, were constantly reminded of why Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine were single - they were bad and deserved to be punished. "Friends'" principal innovation, other than assembling a group of people who looked like they might hang out together and letting them do so unsupervised, seems to have been its willingness to let the characters be single and likable. Of the show's six characters, only Ross, the most hapless of the bunch, pined for marriage - and was punished for it by winding up thrice-divorced. Although it was not the first Manhattan-based show to do so, "Friends" was the first to present the idea of the "urban tribe" as a desirable and attractive alternative to married family life. Her new "Friends" provided her with a utopian version of post-adolescence. "Friends" kicked off with Aniston's Rachel leaving her fiance at the altar with no particular plan in mind. Perhaps the most initially threatening thing about "Friends," though, was its tacit case for the indefinite postponement of marriage, an institution of which television - and sitcoms in particular - had been inordinately fond since way back when Ricky loved Lucy enough to wrangle her a studio audience. With "Friends," the family was surrogate and oddly prone to incest, but still. What began as a humble comedy about single kids looking for love in the absence of anything better to do quickly became that most venerated network institution: a beloved family comedy. The theory where the characters formed a luxury apartment-dwelling urban tribe whose members were allowed to sleep around without getting stoned to death in a public square, or criticized by Tipper Gore This made the friends what people in Burbank like to call "relatable." Meanwhile, standard, plot-imposed "hot girls" were played by the likes of supermodel Elle Macpherson. On "Friends," the characters' stellar looks were never mentioned except to make fun of them - Dudley Moore haircuts, ill-advised leather pants, previous lives as fat girls, girls with big noses, Flock of Seagulls and Lionel Richie costume-wearing dorks. Even then, conventionally handsome comedic actors, like "Cheers'" Ted Danson, often played their handsomeness as an amusing trait - preening, and vain or rakish. Sex symbol status has tended to elude sitcom stars, especially women, unless of course, they happened to be the sexy teen stars firmly ensconced in wholesome family comedies, like Lisa Bonet of "The Cosby Show." Until "Friends," either your name was Justine Bateman, or you were cute, funny or a guy. The theory where everyone was more or less equally cute and funny But was the show a cultural force? Or a pleasantly mesmerizing commercial delivery system? After 10 years, theories have proliferated like flattering People magazine covers. Love or hate it, the galactic influence of "Friends" has been undeniable. But fans of Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Joey wanted to copy their hair, wear their clothes, live in their town and mail them their underwear. Other characters on other sitcoms had been popular, widely recognized, iconic, funny even. In no time, the sextet of buddies in their early 20s (remember way back when?) frolicking in a storybook Manhattan (remember way back never?) became pop idols in ways few sitcom stars before them had. Canadian forests were felled in service to the subject of Aniston's hair. Entire magazines would spring fully formed from the head of Bonnie Fuller to track their various haircuts, drug addictions, weight fluctuations, romantic involvements and sweatpants preferences. Within a few short years of its debut, David Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox Arquette, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow and Matt LeBlanc would be canonized by Time Warner. HOLLYWOOD - As "Friends" - peerless sitcommernaut of the '90s and beyond - rolls out the last two installments in its 230-plus-episode, multibillion-dollar run, it's funny to remember what a hesitant, conflicted latecomer to the Gen X-ploitstation genre it was, way back in 1994.īut the show not only defied its own life expectancy, it outlived its original premise and the mostly media-manufactured "trend" that inspired it.
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