In fact, in season nine's "The One with the Male Nanny", there's an entire plot about how Chandler thinks he's funny, and everyone else is humoring him. Around this time, he goes from being the guy who is genuinely funny to someone who is laughed at because of how unfunny he is. However, his basic character trait, that of the bitingly funny guy, gets muted once he marries Monica. He has serious commitment problems that get worked out in the later seasons. His father came out as a gay drag queen at a family Thanksgiving, and his mother was perpetually sleeping around. Chandler does have real issues that he has to resolve. She briefly flowers into a well-rounded character in season two as she has a relationship with Richard, a family friend of her father's, but the writers never gave her anything as good again. She has character traits-she's an obsessive-compulsive neat freak who used to be fat-but those traits never go beyond being the butt of jokes. Unfortunately, they never bothered to give Monica a real personality. Courteney Cox as Monica was originally meant to be the show's anchor, around which everyone else revolved, but the writers quickly realized that the ensemble was strong enough that no one specific actor had to act as the center. The big exceptions are Monica and Chandler. Rachel in particular has a great arc, going from the rich brat who came in from the rain to a strong, independent single mother. Ross and Rachel of course have their famous on-again, off-again relationship (that's really more off than on), but both also develop as individuals. Phoebe, who often appears to be a space cadet, is also the most perceptive, often knowing what everyone else thinks and feels before they do. You get to see the true size of Joey's big heart, and what happens when you break it an episode like "The One with Chandler in a Box". While this is a sitcom, the great thing about having ten seasons is that it gave almost everyone a chance to develop in a host of important situations. And as the show grew, it addressed a host of unconventional situations that more and more people in the real world found themselves in as traditional conceptions of marriage, children, and family were challenged.īut while the group might appear as every-people, the individual characters have wonderfully charming and three-dimensional personalities. Even watching it now, almost twenty years from the original premiere date, as a man in my 20s, I find the group and their situation very applicable to my life. They were neither overly successful nor in dire straits (although Phoebe had been a street urchin in the show's history). The cast, a group of virtually unknown twenty-somethings (only Courteney Cox was a name at the time of the show's premiere), felt like the kind of people that any audience member might spend their days hanging with. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it was incredibly relatable. There are two very simple reasons that 'Friends' became such a massive blockbuster hit. Over the course of ten seasons, people around the world would follow the antics of these six friends, turning the show into a TV phenomenon and catapulting the cast into the realm of stardom. The show opens with Rachel running out on her wedding to a wealthy but unexciting guy and re-entering the lives of Monica, her high school best friend, and Ross, who has long harbored a crush on her. 'Friends' follows six people, high-strung Ross Geller (David Schwimmer), his obsessive compulsive sister Monica (Courteney Cox), her spoiled roommate Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston), their across the hall neighbors Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) and Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc), and kooky musician/masseuse Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow). It was also one of the last critically acclaimed multicam sitcoms before Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant changed the face of televised scripted comedy with 'The Office'. A story about six twenty-somethings finding themselves together, the show was a massive blockbuster hit and a cultural touchstone whose influence can still be felt today. Concurrent to the rise of this concept was the original airing of the TV series 'Friends'. And in the best situations your friends accept you for who you are, not who they think you should be. Many people have nothing in common with their relatives, but everything in common with their buddies. You can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends. In many ways, this approach makes a lot of sense. There's a thought that postulates that families in the 21st century no longer revolve around nuclear groups, but rather a close, tight-knit group of friends.
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