That's why Friends wasn't a very good show...

they really have a problem with Ann. Rashida Jones is too big to just be Leslie's best friend, so they have to shoehorn her into everything. That's been the number 1 problem (if i was forced to pick one) for most of the run.

I don't think Ann's a problem at all. Even when they've shoehorned it in, I think it's worked for the most part. I think it's more than they've had her playing against characters that range from painful to boring.

I don't mind the egg joke, but Ron's become such a cultural icon (at least in the parts of the internet I frequent) that every good thing he says quickly becomes so meme-ified that some of the call backs feel obvious and pandering. I'm not really sure how you fix that, or if it's something to be fixed. I think that joke plays a lot better if you're not shoulder deep in the internet like most of us.

Joker - was just rewatching American Psycho (just caught the first 10 minutes on AMC) - was pleased to be reminded that Theroux is in that flick!

Question - what is the general OOTV consensus on Friends? I am of the opinion that it was an outstanding sitcom that had an incredible run. Obviously not in the AD/Seinfeld elite tier, but very, very above average.

I agree Ann is "fine" as well.

I think one of the issues I've had (outside of the Tom-Ann subplot) is with the main storyline: Leslie has been fairly unlikeable during her campaign run, and I think they've gotten away from what made her character work (not able to articulate why...)

Also, Ben has absolutely saved this season, imo. What an awesome pickup.

Al, I never watched Friends throughout its original run. I worked on a bunch of DVD related stuff for the show (generally the best 2 or 3 episodes of each season), and probably ended up seeing stuff across 5-7 seasons. I thought it was solid, but not particularly funny. I thought Phoebe was the funny character, though not as much toward the end. Matthew Perry is great, though. I think they basically just tried to set up as many different demos to watch, as they could, and it worked. It wasn't my kind of show, though. The longer a show goes on, the more caricatured most characters become. It's really hard to keep it solid, most of the way, like Cheers did. I don't think I made it to the end of Seinfeld, though I will one day catch up on it.

I also don't get all the Ann hate, in the thread. Her character's running gag is that she has terrible taste in men. Andy...come on. She's the secondary straight man, and she is needed. They have really started to diminish the Ben character, in my opinion, and he can't be in every scene, anyway. There has to be an episode where Chris finally decides to bring Ben back, because you know that just has to happen. Leslie needs to lose, and we move on. Every time I see Tom try to put the moves on Ann, I'm expecting him to soften his touch, and then, boom, it's the same. It's really really cringeworthy, and my two favorite characters in the show are (were) Tom and April. They neutered April last season, and now they are injecting massive amounts of testosterone into Tom. Hopefully next season they will fix Tom, like they fixed April, this season.

I also think his script for Iron Man 2 is really underrated. There's lots of funny lines in that thing. Makes me sort of excited for Rock of Ages.

(He's also great in The Baxter).

I dont know. I personally loved it and made me, and still makes me, laugh a lot. But i just took friends as an example. I could've taken Community and do the same (the Dean being a huge queer with a crush on Jeff is reccurent, Abed being socially awkward, etc).

The result is the same. You cant have every character do "new jokes" out of their persona every week. Now that would no be consistent.

Obviously we don't want the show to fall into making the same joke over and over again, but the egg joke (or something like that) wasnt made in a while IMO, and i liked it.

Can't believe we've been writing for 3 pages about that joke tho.. lol.

Friends:

I thought the first two seasons were very good, the rest is just kinda meh. Hate Phoebe with a deep passion- IMO the show never justified why people would actually be friends with her at all.

Leslie prior to the campaign was crazy in a hyper passionate hyper competent way. Now she's out of her element and trying to apply that same zeal without the competency. I don't know that they've done the best job of pulling that off and they're going to the same well way too frequently.

Phoebe was easily the worst part of Friends. Least hot, least funny.

I guess I only got to see her good episodes...lol.

When Phoebe was good, she was really goddamn good. But she was only good in like 5-7 of the 236 eps.

I only saw about 15-21 of the episodes, and they were the ones the makers of the show did commentaries for, which were very likely the very best episodes of each season.

There is a difference between character traits and re-using jokes.

Just to elaborate why the eggs joke didn't work for me: Ron just getting the eggs and saying "We need more eggs" would probably have been fine. But then they add the exchange with Donna-- "What are you making?" "Eggs."-- and it becomes a "Get it? GET IT?" moment, as if we're too stupid to understand the joke without the punchline being spelled out for us.

Sigh, I added very because I didn't mean to imply it was bad, just that it was one of the reasons Friends isn't an elite comedy. Obviously, very doesn't really add any clarity to my comment.

I mean, I don't think anyone is saying this season of Parks is bad, just that it's dropping it out of the GOAT-tier comedies. I think we can still recover, though.

my perspective comes from watching seasons 2-4 over the span of about a week. having seen it all condensed like that it's painfully obvious that season 4 is a huge decline in quality overall. almost every character has been flanderized.

i would also say this about the latest episodes of Community fwiw and i am a huge fan of that show as well. but i think the community 'universe' / tone lends itself to that type of humor better than P&R does, so it hurts that show less than this hurts P&R.

The only thing worse than the way tom is acting is his horrendous nasally whining voice w/ baby words like "sniffles" and "fingy"

ugh stop ruining my show

That's part of Community's allure, imo.

Jerry's Painting with Tom as a baby was the most accurate depiction of his character imo

At first I read this like the bolded and smiled and agreed! Still fully agree without my misread though.

This +1million. And there i end my Friends rant.

Yea I see what you mean. I guess it still worked for me, but might have worked better as you described it.

I think there was only one line about Tom/Ann, much improved episode

The montage of people putting their mouths over the entire water fountain thing had me rolling, just the way the first guy did it

Perd=MVP of the episode. Had two lines at the beginning that made me lol.

I'm sort of over Perd, it's the same joke over and over. Liked the new campaign manager though, the campaign storyline needed something to kick it into gear, and having someone smarter than Ben and Leslie as an enemy should introduce some new ground that they haven't covered.

Haha me too. That was brilliant. They got me again when Andy did it