{"id":15007,"date":"2014-09-22T10:22:56","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T10:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=15007"},"modified":"2016-06-10T18:35:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T22:35:43","slug":"the-pc-thug-i-dont-miss-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/22\/the-pc-thug-i-dont-miss-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"The PC Thug: I Don\u2019t Miss \u201cFriends\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PCThug-logo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I love nostalgia. I love to celebrate nostalgia, and I love re-living the nineties when I\u2019m bored or blue. But I certainly do have my limits when it comes to nostalgia and selling me nostalgia. There\u2019s a big difference between celebrating the nineties and buying any crap that\u2019s kind of from the nineties. I thought slap bracelets were cool, but I\u2019m not going to spend ten dollars for one on Ebay. And yes, at one time I watched and enjoyed \u201cFriends,\u201d but it\u2019s by no means the one of the best TV series of all time. Surely, it lasted ten seasons, but does that mean it should be celebrated? Am I the only one who remembers those last three awful seasons of the series where the writers were just making shit up and bringing on any guest stars? Does no one else remember \u201cJoey\u201d?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I watched \u201cFriends\u201d religiously years ago, but don\u2019t let nostalgia convince you that it was one of the best shows of all time. And if you think it\u2019s the best show of all time, great, but is it really as flawless as the sites celebrating its twentieth anniversary have boasted it as? The nostalgia band wagon has gone so far, we\u2019re seeing news items about potential reunions for \u201cSeventh Heaven,\u201d now! Talk about an excruciating patronizing piece of crap. And yes, I watched it when it was on the WB back in the nineties, but I eventually got so sick of it and turned the channel. And do we really need a \u201cFull House\u201d reunion series? Just because something is old, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s automatically great, and \u201cFriends\u201d is by no means a great show. It definitely has its funny episodes, and some raucous moments of comedy, but those moments are few and far between.<\/p>\n

When \u201cFriends\u201d wasn\u2019t completely mediocre, it was soapy, saccharine, sugary crap not even Gary Marshall would touch. How many times did we see someone chase someone else to the airport to confess their love? How many special episodes did we have featuring a birth or a marriage? Dear God, how awful was that series finale? And if you really look at it objectively, the series only starts being watchable after the first two seasons, and right when Monica and Chandler start having the affair after Ross\u2019 London wedding, the show completely runs on empty from thereon in. The only reason why those last seasons are worth anything is because of Paul Rudd, who is brought on to the show as a supporting player to inject actual comedy in to the series once again.<\/p>\n

\"friends-tv-show\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And for the time that he\u2019s allowed to be Paul Rudd, he gets the most laughter. His fierce ping pong match with Monica in the Barbados episode is funnier than most \u201cFriends\u201d episodes. Another fine casting move was Aisha Tyler, one of the few African American love interests on the series who also managed to inject her genuine comic talents during her short stint as a love interest. I remember reading that Jennifer Aniston didn\u2019t really want to come back to the final seasons but was persuaded by NBC big time, and who can blame her? The entire cast is on auto-pilot for those last seasons and the show gets even soapier and dramatic than ever. Monica and Chandler can\u2019t have a baby, so they adopt one from a woman who has twins. One boy and one girl.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine if life was just that kind to everyone? And let\u2019s face it, while every site on the internet is pretending that \u201cFriends\u201d was a milestone of pop culture in the nineties, no one is willing to admit that most of the cast were just much better off without the series. Jennifer Aniston just now managed to re-invent herself and has been doing a damn good job, Lisa Kudrow is still a brilliant character actress, and even Matt LeBlanc has found his own success. Nostalgia can do some fun things, including blocking out objectivity and letting us look through rose colored glasses. \u201cFriends\u201d was a very successful show from the 90\u2019s that has aged piss poorly and only a quarter of its episodes from its entire run are watchable.<\/p>\n

\u201cFriends\u201d had its time in the nineties, it had a long successful run, but one that was painfully imperfect and mildly entertaining for only four seasons. Let\u2019s quit celebrating its run by acting as if none of the junk involving the spin off, the monkey, the adoption, the Joey\/Rachel\/Ross love triangle, and the gradual dumbing down of its characters ever happened, shall we? And can we stop raising a ruckus every time a series coincidentally aired a decade or two ago?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love nostalgia. I love to celebrate nostalgia, and I love re-living the nineties when I\u2019m bored or blue. But I certainly do have my limits when it comes to nostalgia and selling me nostalgia. There\u2019s a big difference between celebrating the nineties and buying any crap that\u2019s kind of from the nineties. I thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pcthugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15007"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20977,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15007\/revisions\/20977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}