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I’ll Be There For You: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Sitcom

I have a secret that I am ready to share with the world.  I am sure this may make people think less of me or maybe even stop liking me but I am just gonna say it because I am confident in my taste in and deep, obsessive knowledge of television. I love the show Friends. Phew, there I said it, it's out there. But I do, I love it. To this day if I wanna say “fuck you” to my brother while my mom is in the room I ball up my fists and double knock my wrists together. The show has been off the air for nearly 14 years and I still hear people say “how you doing?” 

This has been on my mind because I have been seeing a lot of backlash (Check out this Article by Thirsty) about it lately. Aside from that, I know a lot of other people just hate it but I have to rebuttal: writing was good, timing was good, and cast chemistry was amazing. Even if you hate it you have to admit: the show was tight as a drum. 

Before I go on, I feel the need to say that NO I do not condone transphobia, homophobia, fat shaming or lack of diversity which is what the show is being accused of, but I was a Visual Culture major in College.  Essentially what that means is that I am in debt but have a really pretty framed piece of paper. As a visual culturist?...visual culturer?... visual culture consultant? Yeah let’s go with that one; as a Visual Culture Consultant I was taught to start by considering the subject through the lens of the time and place in which it was created. 

Let’s take a trip back to 1994 when the show first aired. This was a time when people used to boo someone who was gay on the Ricki Lake show and some of us remember the “I am really a man” reveals on Maury, SO SO OFFENSIVE, right? But you have to realize that Ellen DeGeneres’ famous coming out cover on Time Magazine would not be published for another three years and a myriad of gay stars that we know and love today were still in the closet.  I’m not excusing bad behavior; I am just saying we hadn’t really started the conversation because the brave Sherpa’s who would eventually guide us through the valley were still figuring it out. To compare any show of the past to today’s social norms would be unfair. Do you really think a show would get picked up today if I pitched it by saying: uh it’s this Cuban band leader who is kind of famous and he has a white wife who is always trying to get in on the show and he gets irritated with her and yells at her in Spanish and then she gets pregnant but we can’t say pregnant on TV and she has a friend who is married to an old man. No. Not unless the Cuban band leader smuggled drugs and his white wife had a meth problem that she paid for by turning tricks. A show’s significance has to be measured through the lens of its generation, they are rarely timeless perfection.

I guess my main irritation with all of this is not that people don’t like Friends, but it is that some people choose when to be offended.  I had a colleague who hated Friday Night Lights (one of my favorite shows EVER) because she felt it glorified the misogyny that is often associated with football. She claimed she could find no favor or redeeming qualities in the privileged athletic white men of the show. However, she LOVED Mad Men, which is a show I loved too, but to me could be seen as way more misogynist.  FNL ended with the main character relocating to support his wives career dreams and gave thoughtful, well rounded goodbyes to the other characters, including the “town slut” who eventually used education as her ticket out of poverty. Yes that show had many flaws (can you say Landry the killer) but it was about so much more than football.  Mad Men ended with a womanizing Ad Exec finding a way to sell shit to a whole new generation of people. Of the three main female characters one of them gets cancer and refuses treatment because she doesn’t want to lose her beauty and ostensibly dies, one adjusts/ lowers her career expectations to be with the man she loves and the one who ends up the most empowered only does so after she sleeps with a client in exchange for a partnership in the firm.  But yeah, Friday Night Lights was bullshit.  Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t win much other than critical praise but at least that show runner hasn’t been accused of sexual impropriety by a former writer on his staff, amiright! My point being, she chose to single out FNL as a misogynistic show because it seemed like an easy and obvious choice, and maybe she just didn’t like the show but needed a reason not to watch it, which is fine, but let’s be real about it.  

Back to Friends. Most of the complaints I hear about Friends can also be said about Seinfeld. And most of the people complaining always throw in how Seinfeld is so superior. There were little to no minorities on that show, there was blatant homophobia and racism in certain episodes and of course a lot of good ole fashioned misogyny. Doesn’t one of the show’s most memorable lines come from an episode entirely about whether or not a woman’s tits are real? We’re picking and choosing again, but God forbid anyone saying anything negative about King Jerry and the greatest show of all time. You know what, I am gonna be brave again and go against popular opinion. I don’t like the show Seinfeld and I think my queen, Julia Louis Dreyfus is better off without it! There I said it. 

I have had endless debates and discussions about where we should draw the line in comedy. As comedians, if we continuously censor ourselves in hopes of not offending anyone are we being the true social barometers we are all aspiring to be? Generally the agreement is that there is no line in comedy as long as it answers one simple question: IS IT FUNNY?  In terms of Friends, the answer for the most part is: yes. And of course it wasn’t a perfect show, some seasons were just plain boring and the characters could get stale. But looking at the show as a whole, it had some pretty great moments. Ross and Rachel’s first kiss, Monica and Chandler hooking up in London, Pheobe having the triplets, we were on a break, I knew it! Come on you guys, that was some good TV. How many Friends knock offs have we seen since that don’t even come close to matching the shows wit.

And if I must go on you could also argue that maybe it didn’t age as gracefully as we would have liked it to but you can also rebuttal some of the complaints:

• Homophobia- The show also portrayed the positive same sex relationship between Carol and Susan, as well as successful co-parenting in non-traditional families (Ross, Susan, Carol and Ben) which was written even before the whole Demi, Ashton, Bruce and company era.
• Transphobia- yes it is pretty cringe worthy at times and would never get written today but I also feel the need to point out Monica convinced Chandler to make amends and accept his trans parent by inviting her to their wedding because family and love mattered more than any issues Chandler had. The intentions could be considered noble. 
• Body Shaming- Fat Monica dancing is so offensive, what a cheap ploy for a sitcom, this has never been done on anything else! Alright I will give them that, it’s in poor taste. I’ll just go back to reading today’s articles referring to women who DARE to be bigger than a size 4 as brave.  The world is so much better and accepting! Look: I have been a fat girl my entire life, I remember a doctor giving my mom a pamphlet to send me to an actual fat camp, if we weren’t so broke I could have been like the kid on Heavyweights. Hell, I lost 70 pounds last year and I am still chubby. So on behalf of me and the rest of the BBW community: Give.Me.A.Fucking.Break.
• May-December Romance- People think Monica’s relationship with Richard was gross. Oh come on, now you’re offending me. Some people (like me) prefer a gentleman who is a little seasoned.  Also, if you think Tom Selleck isn’t a panty dropper to any woman old enough for a mustache ride you are sadly, sadly mistaken.  
• Misogyny-Wow, like this isn’t happening in TV anymore, I am so happy about how times have changed I could just grab myself in the pussy.  Again I am not saying we should just let grandma be racist because she is from a different time, but may I point out that Monica was a successful chef that ultimately became the breadwinner of her family. Rachel went from being a rich daddy’s girl with a credit card to an independent career woman and Pheobe never compromised who she was or sold out as an artist. Plus, she got to marry Paul Rudd. Jealous. In addition to that, all three characters had healthy active sex lives without remorse. And finally, they always had each other’s back. It was chicks before dicks with these ladies. So sure, there was misogyny, but look at the picture as a whole. 
• In conclusion, if you want to be mad about the shows political incorrectness, be mad about ALL OF IT. Seinfeld, All in the Family, The Honeymooners, even I Love Lucy the list is endless! It’s the same annoying people who hate Dave Chappelle but worship Lenny Bruce, they only find offensive things in what’s convenient but it’s really two sides of the same coin. Let’s continue to have important conversations and change and grow and be better; but I feel like if you shut your ears and eyes to things just because you don’t like it or agree with it, you will be left with nothing to enjoy. So try to enjoy some of it. 

I could not agree more.  Plus, I also use the balled-fist, double-wrist bump to flip off my work husband when there are managers in the area.

Agree?  Disagree?  Want to expand on the points here?  Hit us up in the comments section, or if you want to write your own unique piece, send it to me at nicole@thebeentheredonethatproject.com.

Alright gang, I'm 91% through The Wife Between Us, and I gotta figure out what happens at the end.  See you guys in the AM.