Courteney Cox recently vetoed the idea of a Friends reunion, as did the creators. I’m assuming there are people bummed out by this, but I’m not amongst them. I love the show as much as anyone, it was a major part of my TV lexicon. But I don’t feel the need to see it again.
On every level, Friends was crazy successful. I prefer the earlier seasons slightly more than the last few, but it can still be argued that the show didn’t have a truly bad episode. There were always jokes that worked, and we went ten years without the departure of one single cast member.
That’s pretty big, I don’t care how much money the network had to throw around to pull it off. A decade without anyone leaving or suing or slandering each other, where the writing stayed fresh, that’s kind of crazy.
We had ten years with these people and the show never jumped the shark. And I was satisfied with the conclusion. It’s depressing how rarely that happens with long-running shows that I’m super invested in. Seriously, when I try to think of finales that really lived up to their shows and tied everything off satisfactorily there’s…maybe five? If I’m being generous. The longer a show goes, the more hype surrounding it, the harder it is to close things off in a great way. Friends did that. Ten years on, I still get emotional when Rachel gets off the plane, and when the group leaves the apartment for that last time. It just works.
Which is why I don’t feel the need for a reunion. The reunions I do get excited for are usually the ones that fix a badly written finale or a cliffhanger that never got unhung. Friends has neither of those problems.
I still get excited whenever one of the gang guests on another person’s project, I always will. And I’ll watch. And I’m not saying I’m against a reunion. I’d be right there with the rest of the world, doing a happy dance on my couch as I watched the continued hijinks. If the gang ever wants one last hurrah, I’ll be thrilled to have it with them.
But I’ll be okay if they don’t. They gave us a decade of consistently good entertainment, and they gave us closure. Which is more than we can expect from 95% of the rest of TV land.
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Why I Don't Need a Friends Reunion
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