Shared with reservations; I recall Happy Days reruns having a similar attraction for the GenXers and the whole "burgeoning cultural fascination with young adulthood" pretty much drove the Brat Pack.
SNARK AHEAD
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REALLY TAKE SERIOUSLY OR REBUT
JUST SNARK
PREFACE TO SNARK: This article is subtitled, "Is ‘Friends’ Still the Most Popular Show on TV?" It seems to me as if we could answer this question simply by looking at data.
Nowhere throughout this article do I encounter actual data.
So let's just write a multipage article about thoughts instead of answering its 'premise', shall we?
Now for nitpicking quotes and snark. Lots of snark.
I'm sorry, can we see any sort of data to back this up other than the fact that if you say "Friends, the tv show," most people seem to know what you are talking about? In which case, dozens of TV series from several decades also fit the bill?
This doesn't seem like a reasonable assertion at all. I say: M*A*A*S*H, Happy Days, The Andy Griffith Show, The Brady Bunch, SNL, Gilligan's Island, Three's Company, Who's The Boss? The only difference between these and Friends is that no one made the whole series of any of these available for streaming 20 years after they came out. Well, actually, SNL is available. Community had a running gag reference to "Who's the Boss." Raise your hand if you can't whistle (or remember) the theme song to Andy Griffith or quote, "a three hour tour," from Gilligan's Island. Is it possible no earlier TV shows had the same streaming opportunities as Friends did?
Translation: Both of them write about anything that generates pageviews. Kayla just doesn't get paid for it. But that's okay, because she only got in at Buzzfeed because she had a sister there.
Translation: "The fourth-most-popular post Krystie has ever written, with nearly 1.5 million views, at least 1/3 of which were from people not in their twenties, is "72 generic truisms that make you feel better about where you are now, which we're going to say is your twenties, but really could possibly extend from age 16 to 36. Especially if you're in denial about your age. "
I'm sorry, Kayla. Real life has failed you. Get a job. Scratch that: cut your parental apronstrings, then get a job that will pay for your lifestyle. Oh, is that not possible? "Welcome to life, it sucks, you're going to love it."
Ah, yes. I believe we have uncovered the nature of synopses.
Translation: When I was a teenager being angsty and without any world experience, I thought Friends was the perfect expression of real life, and I've never been able to give that idea up since. (That's ok, hon. Sex and the City helped me through a bad breakup. What's not OK is thinking that somehow it reflected in any way real experience or life.)
Translation 2: I should've just put on my big girl pants and cried once in a while instead.
Who the fuck are you? Oh right, the generation that birthed and then loved emo.
Dude, a) you turned 8 in 2000. All you know about the 90s is based on ideas, not facts. Oh, and this shitty TV show you idolize.
b) What perfectly valid justifications for believing the '90s were a great time. You could smoke cigarettes everywhere. Ah, yes, the epitome of freedom and carefree, non-judged existence. Someone charismatic was in the White House. This: what truly matters.
Coincidentally, these are all the reasons I pretend to/profess an exaggerated love for the 1970s.
Translation: the author sucks. Dude, who readily admits they were Chandler? It's like readily admitting you couldn't get it up. It's like readily admitting you're the pearl-wearing Sex and the City girl. Charlotte.
Translation: your friends suck.
You know the one person I know, a former ex-roommate, who totally loves Friends?
Yeah, she also adores Zooey Deschanel to such measure that she has adopted Zooey's New Girl haircut. For at least the past 3 years. She has been known to insist she can only get her haircut by a certain hairdresser in...wait for it...Seattle. Because no one else, apparently, can get bangs right.
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I didn't want to like this article, so I didn't. I acknowledge that. I still think Friends sucks, and I think people who think Friends is having a cultural resurgence phenomenon are shitty people who like Friends and marathon it with their shitty "life-was-so-much-better-for-adults-back-before-we-were-old-enough-to-experience-adulthood-in-that-era-isn't-Phoebe-so-batty-crazy-and-funny" rose-colored glasses historical glorification.
Friends might truly be the Girls of the 90s, but let's be honest: both of them are self-indulgent narratives focused on spoiled, life-should-be-easy-for-me-because-it-always-has-been/I-don't-have-real-problems sets of people.
'Course, why would we want to watch TV, especially comedies, that pointed out the negative realities of life? Comedies are escapism. But let's not glorify them cuz they're 20 years old and act like they accurately reflected more than 10% of the experience of a certain time period. And let's be honest: that 10% accuracy is mostly style points.