“Friends” at 25 (Part II): The One with the Personal Stuff

Author’s Note: This is the second part of a five-part series on the legacy of Friends as it reaches its silver anniversary. Click here for Part I, in which I analyze the show’s place in pop culture history. Click here for Part III, where I take a deep dive into the classic Thanksgiving episodes. Click here for Part IV, where I rank the 25 best episodes of the show’s run. Click here for Part V, where I rank the best acting performances on the series. For my recap of the reunion special that aired in 2021, click here.

With very few exceptions, I spent every Thursday night from the age of 10 to the age of 20 watching Friends. I think it is fairly accurate to say that we grew up together. And now as the 25th anniversary of the series premiere approaches, I find myself waxing nostalgic not just for the series itself, but also all of the feelings and memories that the show evokes. I have decided to share a handful of these, listed chronologically.

September 22, 1994

I distinctly remember being 10 years old and slipping away to the kitchen on the night Friends premiered to watch it on the small television set that we had put in the kitchen to keep my mother company while she cooked. I don’t know what my parents were watching in the living room, but they were still screening “adult” television shows for me for objectionable content and I did not want to wait to get their approval before starting to watch Friends.

The only thing I remember knowing about Friends prior to its premiere was that it starred “that woman from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” (Courteney Cox). Presumably I had also seen some amusing commercials that caught my eye. Rewatching the pilot as an adult, I am astounded at how many of the jokes must have flown over my head, but I nevertheless loved what I saw and was determined to convince Mom and Dad to let me watch it every week. (Spoiler alert: We were watching episode together as a family within a few weeks.)

January 29, 1996

By this point, Friends was not just a hot new sitcom on NBC’s now legendary Must See TV Thursday lineup, but also a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Nearly 53 million people in the U.S. tuned in after Super Bowl XXX to see a supersized episode with a host of famous guest stars (including Julia Roberts, Brooke Shields, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Chris Isaak). I remember my sixth grade teacher asking us all to raise our hands if our parents had let us stay up until the end of the game. She then asked us to keep our hands up if our parents had allowed to stay up and watch Friends. I still remember the look of dismay on her face at the dozen or so overtired pre-teens whose hands were waving in the air.

I have always remembered this moment, but only recently did I realize why it was so significant to me. It was the first time I ever found out that something I liked was considered “cool.” As a 12-year-old boy who worshipped pop divas rather than rock stars and rappers, preferred school plays to team sports, and read Entertainment Weekly instead of comic books, I always lived in fear of being bullied or excluded. (I’m still not sure whether being bullied or being ignored was worse, but I got more than my fair share of both.) It was one of the only times I felt validated and normal at school the entire time I was growing up.

March 15, 1997

After the post-Super Bowl episode I went all in on my Friends obsession. Although I have virtually no memories of my 13th birthday, the batch of photos my mother recently mailed me from my childhood indicate that all I wanted that year was Friends paraphernalia. There I was with Harry Potter-style glasses and wind pants gleefully holding up the Friends poster that was about to go up in my room (the adorable one with the cast drinking milkshakes), a Friends hat (that I am pretty sure I only wore once or twice), and a big, hardcover collector’s book about the show (that I know I read cover to cover at least twice). I don’t remember the feeling of that day, but the photographic evidence suggested it was something akin to bliss.

May 7, 1998

My life had changed enormously between 1997 and 1998. My second brother had gone off to college leaving me an only child. I found only minor consolation in the fact that I was allowed to take over his (larger) bedroom when he moved to Boston. My dad retired from the Air Force due to the closing of the base in our town and both he and my mother (who was a stay-at-home mom for the first decade of my life) had gone to work as blackjack dealers at a casino on an Indian reservation where they worked strange hours and had atypical days off. By 6 or 7pm on most nights, one parent would be off to work and one would be asleep, leaving me largely on my own. Television was just about all I had to keep me company. (It would soon be supplemented by endless conversations with my friends on my cordless phone.)

I distinctly remember sitting in our living room on the edge of the coffee table during the final scene of the fourth season finale (“The One with Ross’s Wedding”) waiting to see if Ross was really going to marry that awful “British chippy” Emily or if Rachel was going to intervene in the wedding. And then, in one of the greatest sitcom cliffhangers of all time, Ross accidentally said Rachel’s name. The studio audience gasped. The priest said, “Shall I go on?” The episode (and season) abruptly ended. I was excited and overwhelmed and I just had to talk to someone all about it. But there was no one there. I still feel a pang of loneliness every time I see that scene.

September 27, 2001

Nothing was certain in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Would there be more attacks? Could NYC rise from the ashes? Would we go to war? Amidst all the devastation and confusion, there were very real questions about whether the show could still go on (so to speak) in Hollywood. Nevertheless, the 8th season premiere of Friends aired as planned 16 days after the attacks. The episode was not particularly memorable (the rejuvenation of the slightly sagging show by Rachel’s surprise pregnancy would not really occur until the following episode), but when the episode faded to black and the screen said “To the People of New York City” it packed an incredible emotional wallop.

It is an interesting coincidence that the creative resurgence Friends experienced late in its run coincided with a national tragedy that led people to seek out comfort and familiarity in their entertainment. It was surely this confluence of events that lead the show’s 8th season to become its most successful (it ranked as the most watched television series of the 2001–2002 season and won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series). I clearly was far from the only one who Friends meant something to that year.

May 6, 2004

As Friends started its 9th season, I went off to college. The show was still appointment viewing for me despite my new life of extracurricular activities, late night study sessions, and trips to the dive bar in the village. In fact, I think it was the only show that I watched in high school that I continued to keep up with after I went to college. (I would begin many new obsessions in college, particularly Desperate Housewives, Alias, and 24).

As the series finale approached, I remember being torn about whether I wanted to invite people over to my dorm room and make it an event or watch it in seclusion so I could unashamedly cry my eyes out. I ended up watching it with my two best friends from freshman year. We had grown apart a bit as they joined their Greek houses and got into very serious relationships, two spheres of life that I could not even remotely relate to as an insecure and freshly out of the closet gay man. They had watched much of the show’s run and were fans themselves, but I always knew on some level that they came over to watch it to be with me. Because they knew it meant a lot to me. In some way, to let me know that even though we did not see each other as much as we used to, they were still there for me and were not going anywhere.

I certainly shed some tears during the emotional final scenes, but they were about far more than just what was happening on screen.

Late 2006

My four years at Colgate University changed me and my life in countless ways, all for the better. I made life long friends, embraced my long-suppressed sexual identity, and discovered my passion for psychology and writing. I studied abroad in Europe and Australia, I had my first romance (dysfunctional as it was), and I held my first real job. Graduating and moving to Boston, MA for a job at Massachusetts General Hospital was an incredibly jarring transition. I went from a small campus where I was always busy with fulfilling activities and surrounded by familiar, loving faces to a bustling city where I could count the number of people I was close to on less than one hand. I was lucky to have a job I loved and a lively house where I lived with a few friends from college. But I struggled enormously with the lack of constant activities, social gatherings, and intellectual stimulation. I started to sink into a mild depression, the type that is barely perceptible to those around you but nevertheless hits you like a punch to the gut.

One Saturday morning, I decided I had to snap myself out of it. I got out a notebook and started brainstorming every activity I could do in Boston — every famous landmark I could visit by foot or train, every museum I could tour, and every delicious food I could try. I then made a list of movies and TV shows I had always meant to watch and books I had always wanted to read. I decided that whenever I was feeling stuck or bored or lonely I would pick something off the list and just do it to see if it made me feel better. For the most part, it worked.

What does this have to do with Friends? Well the first mood-boosting activity I picked from the list was to open up the box of DVDs I had in my room and take out the first disc of Season One of Friends. I spent the next several months rewatching the series from start to finish and it brought back a great deal of joy for me that had gone missing.

Early 2015

Pretty much everything in my life changed between 2006 and 2015. I had moved 3,000 miles away to Los Angeles, obtained my Ph.D., fell in love, and got married. With my dissertation defense and the wedding freshly behind us, my husband and I made a deliberate effort to spent quality time together on our newly freed up weeknights. During this time, we discovered that neither of us had watched the other’s all time favorite show. My husband had never seen more than a handful of episodes of Friends and I had never seen a single episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We decided to show each other our favorite shows — which as of January 2015 were both available to stream on Netflix.

Over the next 15 months, I showed him all 236 episodes. Of course he drove me crazy at times by expressing love for my least favorite episodes and getting distracted by his phone during the most emotional twists, but it was a terrific experience that brought us closer together. (And, in case you’re wondering, we just hit the halfway point of Star Trek and I am committed to finishing it.)

A Few Sundays Ago

A few weeks ago, my husband and I had our first Sunday at home with no plans in what felt like months and I decided to catch up on chores. I had multiple loads of laundry to fold so I decided to turn on Netflix while I worked. The interface had the Friends logo right on top under the command “Watch it again.” So I did. I decided to watch my pick for the most underrated episode of the show’s run (the Season Two premiere “The One with Ross’s New Girlfriend”). It was the fist time I had watched an episode of Friends in at least a year and I was filled with immense joy as I recited every line (“Isn’t that just kick you in the crotch and spit on your neck fantastic?”). I paused it several times to text my Friends-loving friends and family and wax nostalgic about the show.

I decided several months ago that I was going to write about Friends when the 25th anniversary approached, but it wasn’t until that moment that I knew that in addition to writing about the show’s misunderstood legacy and ranking my all time favorite episodes, I would also feel compelled to share my evolving emotional connection to the series. For me, the show is inextricably intertwined with key moments of my life and the bevy of complicated emotions their memory elicits. And I know this is the case for many, many others.

Happy Anniversary, Friends. Thank you for always being there for me (’cause I was there for you, too).