Quote Originally Posted by Jim Kelly View Post
FRIENDS was a perfectly mediocre show. It was never very great and never very bad. It was just always in a holding pattern. But it filled that hole in the Thursday night schedule. The one thing that really bugged me was the way it was scripted to have all these set-ups to a joke punchline (usually from Chandler), as if it didn't really matter about the characters in the scene. In real life, if someone kept making dumb jokes out of everything instead of being real, you'd dump them as a friend.
FRIENDS normalized a lot of weird behavior and tics. I noticed that people in real life tried to act like that and people enabled that. There was also a lot of aspirational stuff like them hanging out in coffee shops in New York, living rent free and so on gave people unrealistic expectations and anxiety.

It was a show that only existed in TV-land and its main engine was the chemistry of the actors who really do work well as an ensemble. It doesn't have anything real to it. Aside from the finale where they all go their own separate ways.