Last night, I watched the final episode of Friends on E4 for the last time, seven years after it initially aired. I am distraught. To quote Rachel/Monica: it's the end of an era. Everyday at 5pm, for as long as I can remember, E4 has shown two episodes at 5pm, and then again at 8pm. Taking into account E4+1, this makes four hours of Friends every day. I have been known to watch all four showings of an episode in a day as I really am that sad.
For the record, I don't really like comedies. I like The Office (the original UK version), Summer Heights High, and occasionally Family Guy/South Park. I actively detest American comedies with canned laughter (except Friends obvs). Shows such as How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men, King of Queens etc. are all annoyingly unfunny for me. Similarly, 'classic' British comedies like Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and Blackadder have absolutely no appeal. At school, when we were allowed to watch Holy Grail at the end of term as a 'treat', I would have preferred to have continued reading A Tale of Two Cities, which is by no means a book I enjoyed.
Friends very rarely makes me lol, especially when I've seen an episode 20 times and know exactly what's coming. It's the familiarity which I enjoy. I like the fact that I know what's coming, and the jokes, even on the 20th viewing, can make me smile. It has a power which no other show has in that it can be watched again and again and again. So much has been written about why Friends is a popular show, but its ability to never get boring is inexplicable. I guess it's something to do with the fact that it's always about the journey rather than the destination, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
The fact that it is so well known everywhere is also an appeal of the show. One of the best ways to understand people you have recently met, whether at home or abroad, is to ask them to list the show's characters in order of preference. Mine has always been Ross, Phoebe, Monica, Chandler, Rachel, Joey. This causes a lot of debate, and subsequently I invented a game; when watching Friends, keep a tally of each character's funniness. I did it with three columns: lols (2 points), smiles (1 point) and fails (-1 point). Using this methodology, Phoebe came out ahead of Ross, but of course funniness isn't the only reason for liking a character. Unsurprisingly, for me, Joey finished on minus points. He's a Marmite character, and I consider him the worst thing about Friends. Is it really funny to bang on about how slow/stupid/horny he is? I don't think so, and I am not exactly shocked that his spin-off failed. Anyhow, try the game, and see how it ends up.
So as you can see from my gimpiness, daily Friends will be a loss for me. Today at 5 o'clock I hit 136 on my Sky remote, and was greeted with Big Bang Theory, one of the aforementioned American comedies I hate. I know that Friends will be back in October on Comedy Central, but who knows what time it will be on? 5pm was just perfect. And how many episodes will they show and how often? And does Comedy Central +1 even exist? Reluctantly I will add the channel to my favourites, but unfortunately I do not see myself watching the same episode four times in a day ever again :(
