The one where the world stops to watch the Friends Reunion Special
So did you see “The one where the world stopped whatever it was doing to watch six people talk about the time back in the day when they were in an American sit-com”?
So did you see “The one where the world stopped whatever it was doing to watch six people talk about the time back in the day when they were in an American sit-com”?
The one where the fanatics hung on every word, no matter how trivial, uttered by a middle-aged ensemble who haven’t worked together for 17 years?
Thursday’s much-anticipated Friends: The Reunion may not have been deep but it was off-the-charts addictive for those of us who watched all 10 seasons – that’s 236 half-hour episodes – of the entertainment gift that just seems to keep on giving.
The star power of the six – Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow and Courteney Cox – is of the kind that allows them to reportedly charge at least $2.5 million each for 100 minutes of nostalgia, old clips, blooper tapes and chat, now streaming in Australia on Binge.
Billed as unscripted but mostly carefully crafted, the reunion had cameo appearances from people who starred briefly in the show back in the 1990s and 2000s: people like Reese Witherspoon, David Beckham, Tom Selleck and Elliott Gould.
There’s also a memorable appearance from Lady Gaga, sharing the couch with Kudrow for a rendition of Smelly Cat … and if you need to Google that feline reference, you never saw the show.
It’s not easy to judge what anyone who has not watched at least some episodes of Friends would have made of Thursday’s offering, but can there be many people on the planet who’ve not had some exposure to this popular culture phenomenon? About 52 million people watched the final show back in 2004 and hundreds and hundreds of millions have seen it over the decades thanks to the streaming services.
The show delivered enduring celebrity status to all six actors, some more than others, and we saw on Thursday that some have weathered better than others.
LeBlanc, the spunk of the show as Joey, is a chubby chap now who looks completely happy in his skin. Less so Perry, whose personal ups and down have been well-chronicled over the years: the Chandler magic was rarely on show on Thursday.
For aficionados, there were few revelations not already available on endless websites that detail so much about every twist and turn of the show that its creators pitched as simply being about “the time in your life when your friends are your family”.
One we maybe didn’t know was that Aniston and Schwimmer, whose on-again, off-again sexual attraction as Rachel and Ross was sustained through 10 years of the show, did have a thing for each other. Crushing on each other madly was the way Schwimmer put it, but never consummated apparently. Nice one.
And the writers revealed just how much audience feedback influenced the scripts. Chandler and Monica (Perry and Cox) sleep together in one episode in what the writers figured would be a fling, but the joyful applause from the studio audience at the duo getting it off changed the show so much they become a couple and finally married. Just imagine if it hadn’t been in front of a live audience.
OK, OK, this is all very trivial, but the power of Friends was just how well it captured the Zeitgeist.
Watching clips and blooper tapes – and even those 50-something stars — on Thursday, you can see why.
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