“FRIENDS” SEEM LIKE “GITS” NOW…

One of the less impressive aspects of having been given access to slightly more TV channels than I used to have, thanks to the digital switchover a couple of years ago is that we are able to watch endless reruns of once-popular comedy shows on an almost infinite loop.

Sometimes this is a good thing. Rediscovering “My Name is Earl” on E4 over recent weeks has been an absolute (er…) joy as the subtlety and life-affirming nature of the “karma comedy” (as the presenter seems to describe it almost every single time) is sometimes quite moving for a show I once thought of as being a tad cynical. E4 are showing two episodes a night, stripped across 5 days a week which means that the ongoing linked characters and in-jokes become a lot more obvious than they once did when it used to be a week between episodes and I used to miss them every so often. The beauty of that broadcasting pattern for that particular show is that, with only 90 or so episodes in total, the entire story rolls around in slightly over nine weeks, so if you miss one the first time around (damn you DVR and your annoying “missed programmes”) you can probably catch up with it again in a couple of months. It’s like doing a “Box Set Blitz” but without having to actually buy the DVDs.

Sometimes this is not such a good thing. Surrounding the tiny jewel that is “Earl” on E4 these days are endless reruns of that former Channel 4 staple, the (it seems) thousands of episodes of “Friends” that used to be almost the default position of that particular station. If “Poltergeist” were to be made today, I don’t think it would be static that the little girl is watching on her TV, it would be “Friends”. They don’t appear to be broadcast in any kind of order so whenever I surf through E4 I get to see Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Chandler, Joey and Ross from various times across their marathon ten year TV stint, with a wide range of hairstyles, at various stages in their, like, carmplicated relationships, and with a pretty broad spectrum of body shapes and sizes, sometimes without the aid of prosthetics. This was such a long-lasting TV phenomenon that it was even referenced in an episode of “Earl” I was watching on the same evening.

The thing is, though, despite the fact that “Friends” was obviously a very popular and successful series, enjoyed for many years by its many fans, whenever I see it now (and I inevitably join it mid-episode), this group of oh-so glamorous young New Yorkers just come across to me as just being basically smug gits.

There’s just something about them. They’re just so unutterably pleased with themselves, and frankly quite nauseatingly horrible to anyone who just dares to be not “them”. They’re just the kind of annoying, clique-y, self-assured, smug, cocky, full-of-themselves, self-righteous individuals that clog up hotels, airports and any other public event with their oh-so-witty observations on the shortcomings of absolutely everyone else and remain constantly convinced of how great they all are whilst being totally oblivious to the amount of hate for them that is brewing up amongst any of the “not-we” in their immediate vicinity. Sadly, I suspect that their “real world” equivalents grew up watching these sanctimonious gits and modelled what passes for their own “personalities” upon these very characters.

I used to have a slight problem with “Friends” anyway. You might not be able to believe this now but, once upon a long ago “Friends” was a brand new show that was being shown alongside the sublime “Frasier” in the Channel 4 “comedy hour” on Friday nights at a time when most of its target demographic were out at the pub. This was before the show got discovered to any great extent by the much younger teenage fanbase that it would subsequently attract. In fact, I rather suspect that I might have been the only person actually watching, judging by the blank looks I got whenever I mentioned to anyone that I’d been watching this smart and funny new US TV show on Friday evenings.

A year later, those very same people would be telling me about this “great new show” they’d started watching as if it was the first time they’d ever heard of it. By then, of course, I knew better. The show was already past its best and was falling into that turgid, predictable routine that all returning shows have to endure, the difficult second season.

By this time, of course, all of the actors involved were now “stars” and the desperate need for the show to be “funnier” and remain “in touch” with the young, money-rich demographic target audience was already creeping in, despite the fact that the six young actors involved now probably lived lifestyles that removed them so far from the “ordinary” people watching them that they might as well have been martians they had so little left in common with them.

To those of us who had enjoyed the first year, the second year struggled to inspire the same response and, despite the massive upsurge in popularity that ensured that ten year run, somehow it wasn’t the same. I drifted away from the show at about that time and, whenever I do make those unexpected return visits via E4’s bizarre scheduling policy, I am rather glad I did.

Ross is the worst. What an absolute git he is.