I didn't talk about the end of Friends after the
final episode. Not because I'm too cool to waste time
thinking annd writing about pop culture as though it's
more important than it is, no; just because I never got
around to it. To put this in perspective, I don't think
Friends is as much of a Big Deal as, say, the whole
Defense of Discrimination in Marriage thing, or access to
health care, or people starving, or lies in the name of war
-- heck, it's not as important as Buffy --
but I do think it's interesting enough art to warrant
discussion in the context of the arts.
First, I wasn't unhappy to see the show end. It's not
that I didn't like it -- I went from ignoring it because
"why the Hell should I be interested in another dumb
sitcom full of magazine-cover faces?" to actually caring
about the characters, catching up on old episodes, and
taping new shows each week to make sure I didn't miss
them. (I started watching because a girlfriend was really
into it, and discovered that it was more than just another
stupid sitcom.) So I liked it, and I'll miss the characters
and the writing, and yeah I see how many people had been
watching the show "like forever" and how this counts as one
of those "end of an era" things. So why don't I weep for
the loss of Friends? Because it was (or turned
into along the way) a story with an ending,
it had reached the ending, and They Ended It Right.
I cried during the finale of Friends, but not for
the fact that the show was ending. I cried because, as good
artists can do, the writers and actors had suckered me into
giving a damn about a bunch of people who don't exist, and I
cared whether Ross and Rachel would live happily ever after
and whether Joey could cope with all the changes.
Second, and tangentially, I thought Friends was
much better than Seinfeld, and even if you disagree
with me about that, I can still explain why *I* liked it
better. Let me get the digression out of the way before I
get to the main point, because a part of this tangent helps
explain why I feel the story had an ending. One thing I do
when I get interested enough in a television show to watch
more than a few episodes is to ask myself, "what is this show
really about?" For example, Ally McBeal
was not, at its core, "a show about lawyers" -- that was just
the setting. Ally was a show about loneliness.
Look at the recurring themes, look at what the characters were
most driven by or most afraid of, and look at which elements
were behind the most moving moments. Similarly, Seinfeld
wasn't really "a show about nothing"; it was a show about a
bunch of self-centered ... well, jerks. There's humour in
that, but it's not my favourite kind of humour. There are
sitcoms in which the humour is mostly built around incompetence,
perhaps a central character's incompetence in one particular
domain despite competence in other contexts. There have been
plenty of sitcoms centered on deception, where nearly every
episode (or even the entire inital premise of the series) is
about someone's scheme to conceal something from
someone else. There was even a famous sitcom in which
bigotry was a crucial element, a risky thing for artists to
attempt in a comedy, but that show made it work and earned
a place in the Smithsonian. Some of these are more comfortable
for me to watch than others.
So what was Friends about? It would be easy to
say, at least at first, that it was in the incompetence
category, but they picked an interesting subset of that:
it started off as a show about six immature people.
Unlike Seinfeld, basically good people.
Now there's only so far you can go with that before it gets
repetetetetive, but a) something "clicked" between these
six characters, and probably more importantly, between these
six actors, and b) Friends deviated from the "classic
sitcom" mold.
I didn't catch on to this myself -- someone had to point
it out to me -- but in a classic sitcom, each episode is
entirely or mostly self-contained. Events during an episode
which could have lasting repercussions either are somehow
undone by the end of the episode or are conveniently forgotten
by the following week. Things don't change. There are, of
course, exceptions ... series that break that pattern, and
individual episodes with lasting effects in series that are
otherwise "classic style" (e.g. the family dog dies because
the writers decided the dog wasn't working; or because the
animal used to portray it died ... a cast member leaves or
is added ... the family moves to a new house). Nowadays we
see a number of shows for which this is not true -- despite
being basically sitcoms, events from one episode do carry
over to the next. I'm not sure to what extent this is
fallout from the popularity of dramas and "dramedies" with
that trait and how much is simply natural growth of the
form, and I haven't watched enough television to know whether
Friends was an early example of the "new sitcom" or
just one of the pack (yes, I can think of other examples), but
in either case Friends is a story that builds on itself.
Past episodes are not merely mentioned in passing so one character
can get a dig in at another; they're part of an overall developing
story that shapes each character's decisions. And knowing (or at
least having caught on to enough of) that "history" is also
important for the audience to "get" what makes some of the show's
most powerful moments so significant. When Joey confesses to
Ross his love for Rachel, it's not merely "Joey's in love with
the woman Ross has been chasing" (the situation of the moment),
but the entire history of Ross & Rachel, not just that Ross
loves Rachel but that they've broken each other's hearts a few
times already while we (and Joey) have watched, is built into
that moment. There's been nine years of setup for that scene.
So what else does that mean besides an opportunity for the
writers to suck fans into caring what happens to the characters
over time? Well, the friends grow. Slowly and
awkwardly, of course (hey, it's a sitcom), but most of them
are not idiots, merely immature. And learning from their
mistakes, they gradually grow out of that.
And that means that "a show about immaturity" doesn't get
to stay that. So the story, not just the show, had
to end or lose itself.
So the story of Friends had an
ending, and the writers, through foresight or luck, wrote
the show toward that ending. And in the final season,
started wrapping things up. So this was no mere "tie up
the loose ends" or "find an excuse to tack on a finale"
thing; this was a story that really had an ending staying
on television long enough to get to the end. The amazing
thing about Friends was not the number of years that it
stayed on the air, but that it had a real -- not "forced"
or contrived -- ending to get to and that it stayed on
the air long enough to reach that ending (oh yeah, and
that it was worth watching the whole time). The number
of years that took is secondary.
The show was over, folks. It hadn't lost
itself, it didn't jump the shark, it didn't lose popularity
and get cancelled, and it wasn't merely the cast deciding
they were bored or the writers and producers deciding to
"quit while still ahead". The story was over.
The characters have more adventures, different stories ahead,
which (except for Joey) we won't see, but this tale
is finished. So I found myself feeling like I'd reached the
end of a really good novel -- sorry that the ride was over
but basically satisfied -- rather than feeling like "my show"
had been yanked from me. And that's why I don't weep for
Friends: because it didn't just go away; it ended,
and it ended in a way consistent with itself and the path
of the past few seasons. It stayed on the air long enough --
and was taken in the right places by its writers -- to get
to the end of the story. It's a natural ending. Whatever
these characters go off to do next, it'll be a new chapter in
their lives -- a different story. This one's done,
and IMNSHO, done very well.
Six immature people had adventures and explored their
relationships. Love and heartache happened. There was
much goofiness. And they grew up a little. Then they
grew up a lot. Eventually they started noticing they were
growing up and tried to figure out what that meant to them,
how to be grown up. And that's how this story of
immature people ends: they grew up.
And that's a good thing.