Someone stop the insanity!!!

[Sad Max]

Three's Company is why I decided to move to Southern California.

Don't you go messing with Three's Company, now.

Every time I hear about 'the masses' I want to reach for my copy of Das Kapital...

 

[MattinSTL]

Friends had hot chicks and cute guys and a mix of comedy and soap opera type storylines... I wouldn't put Friends in the same category as Seinfeld either... and certainly no where near Arrested Development. The reason AD didn't have the cultural impact of these other shows ties directly into the whole subject of these last few pages. 90% of the viewing public couldn't follow it and didn't get the jokes.

Nobody admits when they don't get jokes... they only say that it's not funny. In Friends you would have to be in a vegetative state to miss the jokes. If AD had a laugh track it probably would have done better among the masses. <that is truth and sarcasm simultaneously.

 

[DeSica]

"Coasted along" . . . for six more years? 60% of its run?

I think you may be overstating your case.

Nope, not at all. NBC had very little to offer on Thursday nights, so Friends ended up being an important show for them. Jesse was an absolute piece of junk, and it lasted two seasons, due in part to the network trying to build up Thursdays again.

Jason Alexander was on Charlie Rose one day, and he spoke of how NBC was going crazy, trying to solidify it's sitcom base. He mentioned how they had signed the leads from Mad About You for a million bucks each per episode, and questioned if it was worth it, since the show wasn't even top ten in the ratings. This was just after the standoff over residuals. Alexander thought NBC had screwed up by giving him, Richards, and Louis-Dreyfus the ridiculous salaries they asked for instead of a piece of the syndication, and that they opened the door for all kinds of inflated contracts. In the end, NBC was right. They overpaid a few people, but Seinfeld has been a cash cow in reruns, and draws more viewers than some first run shows.

I'm not saying Friends wasn't popular....I'm saying it wasn't great. Wasn't Frasier a superior show? It lasted a long time, beat out Seinfeld for emmys, and was well received by critics.

Arrested Developement was genius.

 

[David Jimerson]

What you said is that Friends "coasted along," implying that the only reason anyone watched it was because it was on the same night as Seinfeld. It was consistently a top-rated sitcom for its entire run (and continues to do extremely well in syndication), with or without Seinfeld. That's not "coasting."

Were there superior shows? Absolutely. Frasier was indeed one of them (and proof that you don't have to be rude or crass to be side-splittingly funny). But you're being a little too dismissive of how popular Friends was.

 

[DeSica]

I guess with that logic Friends is also a rip-off of Three's Company as well.

I don't see how.

What made Friends unique was having 6 main roles,

No...that was part of what they took from Living Single. That is one of the things that made it derivative. They lifted the concept and "whitened" it up. This was discussed in the media quite a bit at the time.

Having a monkey named Marcel on the show did more to make it unique. What it did for the quality of the show is another matter.

and the fact that it went 10 years is a testament to how people got attatched to these characters.

Yup...and how empty the creative vault at NBC was. Kramer was right when he told Jerry that (paraphrsing) "people will watch it because it's on tv."

What needs to happen is some creative idea to show up and change the way the masses approaches things, then that idea will get ripped off over and over till the next one comes along.

Perhaps...but Friends isn't one of those shows.

I knew when I originally typed 'coasted' that someone, somewhere, was going to have issue with that statement. What I was getting at was that by the time Seinfeld ended, Friends had a solid fan base, and it used that momentum to continue along. The show never was really that good to begin with, it didn't really get any better, and it didn't really innovate in any way. It was just more of the same, sans simian.

Once again...yes, Friends was a popular show. Pound for pound, it may be the most popular show ever, since it was light on content and heavy on popularity. It was nowhere near great.

I think the word I am searching for in describing Friends is 'overrated'.