The great thing about holiday weekends is it gives you the freedom to relax, to do whatever you want, up to and including vegging out and watching meaningless TV or tackle projects around the house you’ve been putting off for too long. The problem with holiday weekends is we tend to do more of the former than anything else. That was my Memorial Day weekend. I watched the “Friends Reunion” on HBO Max.
I was an avid watcher of Friends when it was originally on, initially because it was on the same night as Seinfeld and I tried to make a point of never missing Seinfeld. Eventually, Friends became a show I really liked and made a point of watching even when Seinfeld ended.
When the news of a Friends reunion broke I was happy, though it was unclear whether or not it would be a new episode/TV movie or just the actors sitting around reminiscing. I was more interested in the idea of catching up with the characters than the idea of hearing behind the scenes stories, but either way I was in. Turns out it was going to be the “behind the scenes” version, which was fine.
Then COVID hit and the whole thing was put off.
Eventually, they were able to record it and it premiered over the weekend. I watched it and…it was fine.
The weird thing about TV characters is our brains associate the character with the person playing them. Having watched 10 years of Friends episodes, we think we know them. But we don’t.
We know Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, and Joey, but we have absolutely no idea what David Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, or Matt LaBlanc are like in any way, shape or form. That’s probably for the best, years of Hollywood spoiling makes most people insufferably detached from reality.
Still, the behind the scenes stories were fun to hear, the bloopers were great, and the reconstructed set were amazingly accurate.
Overall, if you were a fan of the show, like millions of Americans were, you’ll enjoy most of the two-hour show. Yet, there were some moments that didn’t make any sense.
When you think of Friends you think of the characters, the sets, “Central Perk,” Gunther, Janice, etc., etc. What you don’t think of is Lady Gaga, or David Beckham.
Like I said, you’ll enjoy the reunion if you liked the show, but there will be parts of it that shouldn’t be there. Lady Gaga shows up to play guitar with Lisa Kudrow. Kudrow’s Phoebe was comically bad at guitar and wrote silly songs. “Smelly Cat” was the one that became the most famous, so Gaga pops into the set of Central Perk to sing it with Kudrow. Then a choir joins in. It comes out of nowhere, makes no sense, and serves no purpose. Why waste the five minutes on someone not even remotely connected to the show when they clearly filmed a full day’s worth of the cast talking, both on set and in front of an audience? Did they think the show itself wouldn’t be enough to attract an audience that they had to insert gimmicks?
They do cut-aways to other famous people recounting what they loved about the show, which also wastes time. Who cares what David Beckham or Kit Harrington found appealing about the show? The audience for “Friends” at the time, and the reunion now, all have their own list of things they found appealing about the show, who gives a damn what some celebrity thinks?
That wasted time, about 10-15 minutes in total when you factor in random people from around the world giving their “testimonials,” would have been better spent focusing on the cast, the reason anyone would watch a reunion show in the first place. I get it, producers think the public loves random celebrities, but a reunion show is different from a telethon.
The reunion is worth your time, if you liked the show, but those disjointed moments will take you out of it, if only temporarily. Otherwise, the show is as good of a way as any to spend some time, when you have it and want to recall those memories you’ve probably forgotten you still have.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
