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I can’t say I ever took to the show, but I take all these points. One of the weird things I find about Friends is how it framed itself as ‘life sucks’, e.g. your job’s a joke, etc., but by the late 90s this was totally overtaken by Dotcom Boom One optimism. And no one interesting lived in Manhattan after late 90s. Well, no Gen-Xer anyway. I imagine this was addressed somehow, but by then I lost interest. It started with a “reality bites” vibe that was surely gone by the time the show ended.

Do you mean Louise-Dreyfuss is through-and-through Gen X? Slightly unsure I followed.

For the record, I’ve no memory of Matthew Perry at Rockcliffe Park even though I was there at the same time. I think he made it up.

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This is totally incorrect. Matt Perry is our Gen X avatar? HA. Doug Coupland may have coined the term Gen x but he did so way before 1995. Friends was never a Gen X show. No. The Gen X character that stood out was Darlene Conner from Roseanne. The girl who rolled her eyes in the parking lot while a guy tried to get her to smoke pot and she said "I think I'm in the middle of a really bad afterschool special." That was real. It was grunge. And it had grit. And Darlene is doing ok. Friends was not. RIP Matt Perry, but he was only an avatar for addicts and sarcastic closet cases with a wordrobe allowance.

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I'll take that. I actually don't think Perry is in any sense a Gen X avatar. And Friends plays a weird place in the culture, which I might talk more about at some point. But, I always liked the little anecdote about Coupland mentioning Friends at his Con Hall event.

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I totally hope you write more about Friends! It held such an odd place in the 1990's-- it was the show about that period on your life when your friends were your family and you're just getting going and struggling. And yet it was wholly corporatized. I remember working at Bloomingdale's and helping the costumers buy the clothes we would see on TV the next week. Not to mention the Kosta-Boda home accessories. Phoebe AND Monica both insisted on low key inexpensive weddings that turned into $50k affairs. It was like going to see RENT on Broadway for a $150 ticket price.

And let's not even get into Joey with his BS-- how could they insult our collective intelligence with "my hand twin" or a god damned Boloney Foreskin!?-- that he needed or he wouldn't get a period-piece movie part. Then after his boloney fell off-- HE STILL GOT THE PART!!!

(also-- the big apt was rent controlled! Which was explained many times. I have no time for ppl that bitch about that. The bigger question is why Joey got to sponge off Chandler for so long with no issue or any BJ being offered.)

Fave Matt Perry episode-- hands down: The One Where Everyone Finds Out. Brilliant

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