Let’s look at the characters. Much like The Breakfast Club, the Friends crew have been type-cast into extremely limited boxes so any shithead watching at home can feel like they “get” it. Joey is simple. Phoebe is ditsy. Ross is a geek. Monica is clean. Chandler is sarcastic. Rachel makes up the numbers. Do you realise how easy it becomes to make jokes when everything is this stupid?
Most '90s sitcoms focused on banal, everyday, everyperson themes. But many of them have aged much more gracefully than Friends. Why is Seinfeld still marginally funny even though both it and Friends were products of the same era? It might have something to do with the fact that the situations Seinfeld's characters got tangled up in were absurd but just within the bounds of believability, and hence funny. Friends never travelled anywhere near the absurd, staying so far inside the bounds of believability that about the most interesting thing that happened in the average Friends episode is some joke about laundry, or those oh-so-annoying repetitive gags, like that one about the naked guy across the street. Other '90s shows had repetitive gags but they had the good sense to stop using them after a while. Friends revelled in the predictability of doing the opposite. Any time writers have an incentive to reach for those hacky tropes of sit-com-dom, you know you're watching a braodcast-quality turd.
Friends. The show that opened the door for Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place. (And Two and a Half Men after that!)
Friends. One time they went to see Hootie and the Blowfish.
Friends. Seriously, David fucking Schwimmer?
Friends. People wearing paisley-fronted vests and getting away with it, not to mention those God-awful John Lennon sunglasses.
Friends. The last show on TV to have a serious actor wear a moustache (can you think of any more recent?) .
Friends. It guest-starred Bruce Willis for a time in a non-action role. But his character was always threatening to turn in to McClane!
Friends. Justifiably typecasting actors who have done absolutely nothing since.
Friends. I’m not writing those stupid dots between the letters again.
