I used to think that, until I watched his shows a few times. Fall on the floor funny.
"Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories" (I'm Rick James, b%^ch!)
The white family with the last name "Niggas"
Posted on 05/06/2004 9:44:11 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
If you never pick up a newspaper, turn on the television, or listen to the radio, you just might have missed the news that NBC’s situation comedy Friends is ending its ten-year run. The media is giving this event about as much coverage as it would give the second coming of Christ—maybe even more. USA Today alone has published so many features on the show in the past several months that NBC ought to have the paper on its payroll as a publicity agent.
The popular show about six glamorous and appealing young New Yorkers is widely seen as a cultural milestone. Perhaps the most bizarre sign of the show’s perceived importance was a rash of articles that came out not long after September 11, celebrating Friends as the kind of “comfort TV” that would help us all feel normal again.
And while that’s debatable, for sure, no one can deny that Friends has had a deep impact—deep, but regrettably not very positive.
Look at some of what are considered the show’s classic moments: a lesbian wedding (in which the ex-husband of one of the women gave her away); a drunken Las Vegas wedding that soon ended in divorce; various premarital sexual relationships and partner swapping; and one character’s foray into unwed motherhood—the television kind of motherhood, that is, where the baby hardly ever inconveniences anyone or even shows up. Nearly every week, using winsome characters, the show reached levels of vulgarity and sexual frankness that continued to define deviancy downward.
Am I—like the media—taking Friends too seriously? After all, it’s only supposed to be comic relief. But comedy is what made the show so dangerous. Comedy gets under our radar in a way that political debates don’t.
Consider a study commissioned by the RAND Corporation and published in the journal Pediatrics a few months ago. The researchers came to the incredible conclusion that Friends and shows like it were useful for sex education, because teenagers remembered their sexual messages so well. The fact that these messages were unhealthy somehow escaped the researchers’ notice. And this is all the more disturbing since a large percentage of Friends’s audience is teenagers and even preteens. And for an increasing number of them, nobody is stepping in to counteract the sexual lessons that they’ve learned from Friends.
It’s hard to argue that Friends presented a false picture of what goes on in our culture. Premarital sex is widespread among both adults and teens—even in the church. But the real problem with Friends was that it made this kind of lifestyle look like fun. Even a show like Sex and the City, with all its bed-hopping, showed someone getting hurt once in a while. On Friends, by contrast, it was all in good fun. No sexual relationship was ever so damaging that it couldn’t be healed by a new one within the next few weeks. That’s a picture that has nothing at all to do with reality.
Yes, the critics are right, as overblown as they sometimes sound: Friends has left a lasting mark on our popular culture. And Christian parents, pastors, and youth ministers need to face up to the damage and step up to the task of reconstruction.
Not true. Joey and Pheobe never slept together. Joey and Rachel didn't (she kept reaction slapping him, which was hysterical). Rachel and Chandler never slept together. Phoebe and Ross never slept together. Chandler and Phoebe didn't, but came close as part of a plot to reveal Chandler and Monica were a couple. Joey and Monica never slept together. And of course, Ross and Monica never slept together.
I loved this show and will miss it a lot. Although I can't identify with the chartacters, I have identified with some of their situations on the show. It muses the lives of gen x'ers, and has done so wonderfully. Were there stupid moments? Sure. What show doesn't have them?
Definately the most clever ending of any show I've ever seen.
Nothing will ever top the bit at the end when he wakes up and he's in bed with Suzanne Pleshette! Funniest bit ever!
Perhaps, but like I said, if it was good enough for Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore...
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