Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I didn't talk about the end of Friends after the final episode. Not because I'm too cool to waste time thinking annd writing about pop culture as though it's more important than it is, no; just because I never got around to it. To put this in perspective, I don't think Friends is as much of a Big Deal as, say, the whole Defense of Discrimination in Marriage thing, or access to health care, or people starving, or lies in the name of war -- heck, it's not as important as Buffy -- but I do think it's interesting enough art to warrant discussion in the context of the arts.

First, I wasn't unhappy to see the show end. It's not that I didn't like it -- I went from ignoring it because "why the Hell should I be interested in another dumb sitcom full of magazine-cover faces?" to actually caring about the characters, catching up on old episodes, and taping new shows each week to make sure I didn't miss them. (I started watching because a girlfriend was really into it, and discovered that it was more than just another stupid sitcom.) So I liked it, and I'll miss the characters and the writing, and yeah I see how many people had been watching the show "like forever" and how this counts as one of those "end of an era" things. So why don't I weep for the loss of Friends? Because it was (or turned into along the way) a story with an ending, it had reached the ending, and They Ended It Right.

I cried during the finale of Friends, but not for the fact that the show was ending. I cried because, as good artists can do, the writers and actors had suckered me into giving a damn about a bunch of people who don't exist, and I cared whether Ross and Rachel would live happily ever after and whether Joey could cope with all the changes.

Second, and tangentially, I thought Friends was much better than Seinfeld, and even if you disagree with me about that, I can still explain why *I* liked it better. Let me get the digression out of the way before I get to the main point, because a part of this tangent helps explain why I feel the story had an ending. One thing I do when I get interested enough in a television show to watch more than a few episodes is to ask myself, "what is this show really about?" For example, Ally McBeal was not, at its core, "a show about lawyers" -- that was just the setting. Ally was a show about loneliness. Look at the recurring themes, look at what the characters were most driven by or most afraid of, and look at which elements were behind the most moving moments. Similarly, Seinfeld wasn't really "a show about nothing"; it was a show about a bunch of self-centered ... well, jerks. There's humour in that, but it's not my favourite kind of humour. There are sitcoms in which the humour is mostly built around incompetence, perhaps a central character's incompetence in one particular domain despite competence in other contexts. There have been plenty of sitcoms centered on deception, where nearly every episode (or even the entire inital premise of the series) is about someone's scheme to conceal something from someone else. There was even a famous sitcom in which bigotry was a crucial element, a risky thing for artists to attempt in a comedy, but that show made it work and earned a place in the Smithsonian. Some of these are more comfortable for me to watch than others.

So what was Friends about? It would be easy to say, at least at first, that it was in the incompetence category, but they picked an interesting subset of that: it started off as a show about six immature people. Unlike Seinfeld, basically good people. Now there's only so far you can go with that before it gets repetetetetive, but a) something "clicked" between these six characters, and probably more importantly, between these six actors, and b) Friends deviated from the "classic sitcom" mold.

I didn't catch on to this myself -- someone had to point it out to me -- but in a classic sitcom, each episode is entirely or mostly self-contained. Events during an episode which could have lasting repercussions either are somehow undone by the end of the episode or are conveniently forgotten by the following week. Things don't change. There are, of course, exceptions ... series that break that pattern, and individual episodes with lasting effects in series that are otherwise "classic style" (e.g. the family dog dies because the writers decided the dog wasn't working; or because the animal used to portray it died ... a cast member leaves or is added ... the family moves to a new house). Nowadays we see a number of shows for which this is not true -- despite being basically sitcoms, events from one episode do carry over to the next. I'm not sure to what extent this is fallout from the popularity of dramas and "dramedies" with that trait and how much is simply natural growth of the form, and I haven't watched enough television to know whether Friends was an early example of the "new sitcom" or just one of the pack (yes, I can think of other examples), but in either case Friends is a story that builds on itself. Past episodes are not merely mentioned in passing so one character can get a dig in at another; they're part of an overall developing story that shapes each character's decisions. And knowing (or at least having caught on to enough of) that "history" is also important for the audience to "get" what makes some of the show's most powerful moments so significant. When Joey confesses to Ross his love for Rachel, it's not merely "Joey's in love with the woman Ross has been chasing" (the situation of the moment), but the entire history of Ross & Rachel, not just that Ross loves Rachel but that they've broken each other's hearts a few times already while we (and Joey) have watched, is built into that moment. There's been nine years of setup for that scene.

So what else does that mean besides an opportunity for the writers to suck fans into caring what happens to the characters over time? Well, the friends grow. Slowly and awkwardly, of course (hey, it's a sitcom), but most of them are not idiots, merely immature. And learning from their mistakes, they gradually grow out of that.

And that means that "a show about immaturity" doesn't get to stay that. So the story, not just the show, had to end or lose itself.

So the story of Friends had an ending, and the writers, through foresight or luck, wrote the show toward that ending. And in the final season, started wrapping things up. So this was no mere "tie up the loose ends" or "find an excuse to tack on a finale" thing; this was a story that really had an ending staying on television long enough to get to the end. The amazing thing about Friends was not the number of years that it stayed on the air, but that it had a real -- not "forced" or contrived -- ending to get to and that it stayed on the air long enough to reach that ending (oh yeah, and that it was worth watching the whole time). The number of years that took is secondary.

The show was over, folks. It hadn't lost itself, it didn't jump the shark, it didn't lose popularity and get cancelled, and it wasn't merely the cast deciding they were bored or the writers and producers deciding to "quit while still ahead". The story was over. The characters have more adventures, different stories ahead, which (except for Joey) we won't see, but this tale is finished. So I found myself feeling like I'd reached the end of a really good novel -- sorry that the ride was over but basically satisfied -- rather than feeling like "my show" had been yanked from me. And that's why I don't weep for Friends: because it didn't just go away; it ended, and it ended in a way consistent with itself and the path of the past few seasons. It stayed on the air long enough -- and was taken in the right places by its writers -- to get to the end of the story. It's a natural ending. Whatever these characters go off to do next, it'll be a new chapter in their lives -- a different story. This one's done, and IMNSHO, done very well.

Six immature people had adventures and explored their relationships. Love and heartache happened. There was much goofiness. And they grew up a little. Then they grew up a lot. Eventually they started noticing they were growing up and tried to figure out what that meant to them, how to be grown up. And that's how this story of immature people ends: they grew up.

And that's a good thing.