Friends

Growing up, I used to think everyone had a breakfast room in their house.  We did.  This doesn’t mean it was a massive mansion.  It was your standard four bedroom detached house in Surrey.  There was a dining room, but this was for best.  We sat in there on Christmas and select special occasions.  The breakfast room was a smaller affair right next to the kitchen, with a table and chairs for the four of us.  This is where we ate not only breakfast, but also lunch, dinner and any other snacks in between (so I can only apologise for the misleading name).  How does this relate to Friends?  Well, it’s where I first came across this programme in 1995.

You might have guessed I come from TV-viewing stock.  My dad can watch TV for hours.  At one point there was a TV in the garage so he didn’t miss old films while working on the car.  Because he couldn’t get through a meal without telly, we of course had a small set affixed to the wall in the hallowed breakfast room.  I don’t think I ever had tea without Neighbours AND Home & Away as an accompaniment.  I’m not sure why this meal lasted an hour.  As I came on for ten years old, I started to want to watch my own shows, and this meant leaving the comfy sofas of the lounge where my parents watched things that mums and dads like to watch.  And so, perched on one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs in the breakfast room, I came across my first episode of Friends one Friday evening while being daring and watching Channel 4.

Series 2, episode 1 opens with Phoebe recapping the latest in the star-crossed saga of Ross and Rachel: Ross has returned from China with Julie (Julie!) just as Rachel has realised he loves her.  I was hooked.  I had never heard people speak like this before.  They said cool things like “Hey” rather than “Hello” and peppered their sentences with “Like” which was brand new at the time and hadn’t yet ruined the ability to articulate of a generation of British school kids.  They were young, but they didn’t need grown-ups.  There was a sofa in their coffeehouse and, curiously, nobody else ever sat in it but them.

I have since seen all 236 episodes several times.  I think everyone has.  Twenty-two years after first meeting the Friends, I still end up watching around one and a half episodes a day.  It’s not on purpose, but it’s also something I allow to happen.  And this is a show whose last episode aired thirteen years ago.  For a while, I couldn’t bring myself to sit through any of the constant repeats on e4, so I would watch anything but Friends.  It was too soon.  If it came on by accident, I had to get the channel switched over before the claps at the beginning of the opening credits.  But now, Comedy Central is our default channel when the telly boots up and episode upon episode of Friends is lined up to catch young professionals getting in from work who want to be reminded of when they were a bit younger and less professional.  Of course, as a channel, its new home comes with an onslaught of promotional trailers for The Middle and Impractical Jokers (stop trying to make Impractical Jokers happen), but that can be forgiven, as it’s these old episodes that are so comforting after a day in the office.

Some jokes have dated.  Some storylines are from a distant age before mobile phones and the internet.  Some hairstyles and wardrobe choices seem unfathomable in 2017.  But I still laugh.  The better I know a scene and the more I know what’s coming next, the more I laugh.  I forgive punchlines I would never tolerate from a new show made in this day and age.  But this is because Friends practically defines the modern sitcom.  Ross even had a pet monkey in earlier series.  Could anything be any more sitcom?

So here we are, on an eternal cycle through all ten seasons.  Each time we go back to series one, the charm starts all over again.  I’m even now measuring my life in rotations of the entire Friends canon.  And by life, I mean crushing adult disappointment at how much time I spend watching TV.  My fear is that this behaviour will never end.  I will become my parents, who spent my childhood indulging themselves with repeats of Dad’s Army, Only Fools And Horses, Open All Hours and Are You Being Served?  Over time, their comments went from “Oh, what was he in last?” to “Oh, course, he’s dead now” – do I want to go through the same thing with the cast of Friends?

Just as I know where I was for the first episode I ever saw, I also know exactly where I was when the final episode of series 10 aired in the UK.  It was summer 2004 and I was in the first year of university.  I needed to find someone with a TV in their room, as did the rest of the freshers.  We piled in to a tiny dorm, pressed our faces to one of the tiny television sets we used to watch in those days and prepared ourselves for the end.  The girls cried.  The boys pretended they didn’t want to cry.  Life as the Friends knew it was changing, and so was a part of our lives.  We said goodbye to a show that had accompanied us for the best part of ten years.  With so many new shows available to us, the fact that I have welcomed Friends back is testament to the quality of not only its comedy, but its relatability.  That breakfast room might be in a house that belongs to a different family now, but Friends will always be my friends.