Fraters Libertas

I Wasn't (and Won't Be Tonight) There For You

Yesterday Mitch Berg had a post at Shot In The Dark that consisted of nothing more than this:

"Friends" ends its very, very long run tonight.

I've still never seen it.

It drew twenty one comments, including one from yours truly where I opined that Friends is probably the most overrated sitcom in history and can't hold a candle to the true greats of the genre such as Seinfeld. There has always been something about Friends that has bothered me too. More than just the fact that it wasn't really all that funny.

S.T. Karnick nails it in this piece at NRO:

Friends, on the other hand, was much more straightforward and, well, friendly. The strength of the show was in its quirky but basically likable and accessible characters. I say "basically likable" because, in reality, I certainly would not wish to be around them — they are far too squirrelly for me. I'd rather have to deal with the openly self-centered Seinfeld crowd. After all, you would know precisely what Jerry and the gang wanted from you — entertainment — and could give it or withhold it as you chose.

The characters in Friends, however, wanted affection, something that is both difficult to give and just as hard to withhold. If you don't feel affection, after all, it's hard to fake it; but if you don't find a way to give it, it's difficult to justify yourself in a world where being thought to be nice is such an important thing. In such a place, what excuse can I have for failing to "be there for you"? The fact that I find your endless prattle about your love life thoroughly annoying and in fact mind-bogglingly adolescent seems a perfect justification to me, but surely will not appear so to you. Hence, I am forced either to pretend to listen and to refrain from informing you that you are an idiot (which would be the truly loving and helpful thing to do), or I must withdraw. In the case of Friends, I quickly withdrew, unable to watch more than a few episodes during its long, popular run — and even then only as a scientist, with notepad close to hand and dissecting tools always at the ready.

The truth of the matter is that my friends and acquaintances, and my relationships with them, are much closer to what you see on Seinfeld than on Friends. It ain't always pretty, but it is real. And like Karnick, I'd rather hang with them than with the Friends crew.

Then there's this clincher:

Instead, Friends provided an escape into an emotional dream realm where people are nice, and care about one another, and pursue sexual gratification from morning until night, however fallible and inept at helping they might be. It was the perfect entertainment for a society that enforced political correctness wherever possible, that instituted the idea that the height of civilization is in pretending to like people whose behavior you find entirely abhorrent, and that was in fact striving relentlessly to establish the rule of niceness.

So long Friends. You had a nice run. Too nice of a run.