Friends, Apparently

I watched Friends some for its first season or two (I honestly can't remember when I stopped), mainly because I had been in the habit of watching NBC's Thursday night block since its 80s heyday, and I think it was adjacent to Seinfeld, which I was watching religiously.

I remember almost nothing about the show beyond the broad strokes. I couldn't tell you the plot to a single episode.

I watched all but the last season or two of the show. I have watched the show enough, that when I was going to Planet Fitness, I could run on the treadmills and watch Friends on one of the monitors with no sound, and pretty much know what they were saying.

Not sure how many viewings that would take. I wasn't that big a fan of the show, but yeah it was on around the same day as Seinfeld or Just Shoot Me or Veronica's Closet, so I watched it.

Are you skipping the bulk of seasons 1 and 2 of TNG as well?

But how will your daughter ever understand what’s going on in the Slideshow Bob episodes without watching the first one?

We watched a few curated episodes to establish that he actually liked the show from S1, one from S2, a small scattering from S3 and S4 then once we were sure he enjoyed it have gone back to fill in the blanks. But, you know, not every episode from the early seasons because they're episodes from the early seasons. So plenty of skipping yes, but for example we watched Skin Of Evil tonight, which is crap episode but Tasha dies so you kinda have to get through it.

Also, there's the fact that Patrick Stewart is in his list of top 5 fuckable celebrities, though I would add that only came about because we started watching TNG. What have I done...

So time to get started with some initial observations.

Obviously, it's an easy show to like. It's designed as a hang-out show - indeed it's the ultimate hang-out show - and in this there's really no doubting how solidly it hits the mark. You turn up, you hang out for 25 minutes, you go on. Plot beats are just that - beats - and while they give shape to episodes don't tend to get in the way of why anyone's watching, which is to see Your Favourite Characters turn up and Do Stuff Together. And that's what the show exists for. Speaking of those characters, or more specifically the actors behind them, let's have a quick round-up / reminder, shall we? My first impressions are:

Jenifer Anniston: Really, really hard to warm to. She delivers all of her lines like she already expects the laugh so can't quite be bothered to exert herself to deliver them. There's odd exceptions (The One With The Flashback gives a rare example of her bothering) but mostly she seems to be a wig on a stick and servers little purpose beyond that. Can a delivery be described as "entitled"? If so, she's that at this stage.
Lisa Kudrow: Very charming, and getting noticeably better as things progress. The few episodes of S1 I saw made Phoebe out to be a standard-issue kook of a type that could get quite wearing but by the time the S3 episodes have rolled round Kudrow has found a way to add real likability and heart to her character. She's getting better lines now too, which helps and I have a sneaking feeling she might just end up being the MVP. Watch this space!
Courtney Cox: Weird. There's a sense that she has so much force of personality she's actively having to dial it down to bring herself to sitcom-level delivery. She's got huge screen presence but at least from the episodes I've seen so far the show isn't doing much with it. Plenty of scope for development and will be interesting to see where it goes.
Matt LeBlanc: Effortlessly the most charismatic of the bunch. It might have been a bust but it's not hard to see why he got the spin-off when nobody else did. He's perfect sitcom fodder - funny, great sense of timing, enough charm to work as a lead but juuuuust enough humility to not be a complete twat. It's a fine line but the show and LeBlanc are getting it right pretty much every time, which is impressive. An expressive face helps a lot too and he's great at being able to go just far enough over the top but not so far it undermines scenes. Also getting better as the show progresses.
Matthew Perry: A bit too broad at this stage and playing everything to the back rows, though obviously with some talent. He's a bit like a Warner Brothers cartoon, all bulging eyes, exaggerated delivery and over-expressive hand gestures. While he remains watchable (and him and LeBlanc are a great pairing - an excellent double-act that always enlivens the material) he's a little more effective when he brings it down just a touch.
David Schwimmer: Eh. I want to like him but Ross is just annoying at this stage rather than being the appealing doofus that the show wants to portray him as. He's better either on his own or away from Rachel, with whom he has little rapport (The One With The Princess Leia Fantasy was wildly wide of the mark, and not just because even in 1996 the "Leia Bikini Costume" gags were lame) but again there's loads of space to develop. Having seen Schwimmer in other things (he's the only one I have, other than LeBlanc) I know he's a good actor so hopefully the show will find a bit more for him to do.

I am enjoying the show! We're clipping through it at a pace of an episode every other night or so at the moment and it's always a welcome distraction from the trials and tribulations of the Shoutbox working day. Which is as it should be. I'm looking forward to seeing how the show develops - ten seasons is a lot of material to cover but at this point I'm getting a real impressions of ability yet to be fully deployed. That's not to criticise what I've seen so far, rather more to suggest that there's plenty of scope for more to come. Shows always take time to come to the fore - it's interesting (to me anyway) that both Friends and TNG seem to hit their stride in their third season and I'd certainly never judge the future quality of TNG against it's first couple of seasons (which, also like Friends, are brimming with potential yet to be fulfilled). 

Anyway, that gets us out of the gate. More observations to come!

Matt LeBlanc is very fun playing against his persona on Episodes (so good at it that I sometimes forget he was on Friends first, even).

Also, I'm realizing that this thread implies that Prole has never watched Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. How much do I have to pay you to watch that?

Was there a Friend in SSonSS?

By the time the show ended I thought Kudrow and Perry were consistently giving the best performances. I liked Cox and LeBlanc okay, but I thought the later seasons had terrible writing for LeBlanc. I didn't really like Aniston that much. I thought Schwimmer was okay, but he got the most bad writing.

Phoebe is the best Friend, no doubt.

I also started with S2 when I introduced my kid to the Simpsons - in my case largely because I couldn’t find S1 through, shall we say, “illegal” means. 

While S2 may not technically be golden age, it does have some very good episodes – Lisa’s Substitute, Itchy & Scratchy & Marge, Three Men and a Comic Book, etc. It’s also got a more grounded tone, as the show was still basically an animated family sitcom at the time, which may be an easier in for kids who aren’t as well-versed in densely-packed joke-a-second comedy.

In the case of my kid it worked – she’s kinda obsessed with the show now and has watched far more of it than I have. At last count I believe she’s watched 29 entire seasons (most of them more than once)

I dunno, I like it. Admittedly I might be more fond of it than it deserves since it’s the first episode I can remember watching on its initial airing and I therefore have a generally positive view of it.

My family was big into Friends, so between first-run eps and the unavoidable syndicated blocks on multiple channels--ah, to be a latchkey kid in the pre-streaming era--I've almost certainly seen each episode at least three times. I'd say the first three or four seasons are probably the strongest, when the show really was kind of a hip, refreshing, Gen-X take on the traditional sitcom and the jokes were relatively sharp. After that point the characters become increasingly terrible versions of themselves--Monica becomes an unbearable type-A shrew, Chandler becomes an unbearable puerile buffoon, Ross becomes an unbearable neurotic jackass, Rachel becomes...eh, she was always unbearable, etc.