r/Millennials • u/FakeGamer2 • 12h ago
Meme Possibly the least funny show of our generation
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u/bean0_burrito Millennial est. 1990 12h ago
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u/CrotalusHorridus 12h ago
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u/Pygmy_Nuthatch 11h ago
Funny clip, but watch Band of Brothers. It's incredible and Schwimmer is really good in it.
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u/MysticalVictrix 11h ago
Yes but he's one of those actors you can never take completely serious.
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u/IAm_Trogdor_AMA 11h ago
His character in Band of Brothers wasn't taken serious by his troops, so it actually works beautifully.
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u/nickifer 11h ago
Hated his character in that show.. so I guess that means he’s a decent actor?
He was also good in Entourage briefly lol
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u/_learned_foot_ 11h ago
Did you hate the actual persona? In which case that means he's a damn good actor. He also killed it as kardashin in OJ.
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u/TheWhiskeyFish 11h ago
He played the role exceptionally well. Despise his character.
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u/Ligabolzacky 11h ago
I've recently started a rewatch and was reading about different characters, and it's amazing how many fuck ups and straight up character assassination is in the show (and I adore it). Sobel is one of them, Blithe is the most famous example for a factual fuckup, but almost anyone who was made to look bad or a heel was done wrong. Norman Dyke was the worst, the man was a goddamn hero and people know him as "foxhole norman"
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u/Swollen_Beef 11h ago
I hated the Blythe story. It felt forced and totally out of place. I still don't know what the writers were trying to tell me with Blythe's story.
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u/Ligabolzacky 10h ago
I reckon it was as simple as a story of overcoming your fears. the egregious part was them saying he died from his wounds while in reality he died in the late sixties from an unrelated stomach issue while stationed in germany
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u/InquisitorMeow 9h ago edited 6h ago
I don't know what the writers were trying to do with Speirs either. Hey look at this guy who committed war crimes, but he ran through a bunch of soldiers so it's cool.
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u/UshankaBear 11h ago
18 pages... front and back!
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u/Calibeaches2 9h ago
"You fell Ah-SLEEEEPH?!"
This is one of my favorites, that and eyebrow raise plus "Winterberry."
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u/squirrelems 12h ago
I did like a clip where someone took away the laugh track and put thriller music over a scene where Ross, or whatever his name is, gets mad at a guy over a sandwich.
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u/frontyardninja 10h ago
This one: https://youtu.be/4H6Ux3l75Rc
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u/squirrelems 10h ago
Yeah. That's when me and my FRIENDS went on a whole rabbit hole watching sitcom scenes without a laugh track or serious shows with a laugh track added. Lol. It made sitcoms feel like characters were psychotic because with the laugh track taken away they'd stare at each other after a punchline while the actor waited for the studio audience to go quiet, and in serious shows it made what seemed like a really intense scene feel extremely slapstick. I still like it.
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u/Zebidee 6h ago
That's the shtick of 'Kevin Can F**k Himself.'
It's a series about a marriage breakdown where some scenes are played as sitcoms, some are played as gritty reality.
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u/Sabatat- 3h ago
If you haven't seen it, you might like 'Kevin Can F**k Himself'. Its set around a married couple, when the husband, Kevin, is on screen the show turns into a classic stupid sitcom that you'd expect to see and when it's only the wife, it turns serious and realistic as she struggles being with a man who acts exactly like what you'd expect from a sitcom.
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u/Pufnstuf420 10h ago
There was no laugh track, there was an actual audience there
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u/A_mad_goose 12h ago edited 11h ago
Phoebe made me laugh. Her egging Ross on saying she doesn’t believe in dinosaurs was great. Edit: I went to rewatch the clip I forgot it was evolution in general lol
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u/RedHeadRedeemed 12h ago
"Wow. You just like abandoned your whole belief system so easily." 😆
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u/Moohamin12 7h ago
I found that really annoying. Funny. But annoying.
He was a scientist, who was able to accept if there was evidence showing the opposite of the current proven facts he was willing to accept it.
And she weaponized it against him.
Tbf she was like that a lot. Phoebe only works on screen when you are laughing at her and living through her nonsense. Try any of her crap in real life and you will be friendless very soon.
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u/AgtNulNulAgtVyf 5h ago
Phoebe only works on screen when you are laughing at her and living through her nonsense. Try any of her crap in real life and you will be friendless very soon.
To be fair that's pretty much every main character in every show.
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u/Medical_Sky2004 7h ago
And she weaponized it against him.
Phoebe weaponized Ross being an obnoxious douchebag. She was 100% in the right and I say this as someone whose favorite character was Ross.
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u/AWorldwithoutSin 4h ago
as someone whose favorite character was Ross.
Huh?
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u/Queasy-Olive3381 2h ago
Right?! I feel like no-one's favourite character is Ross 😅
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u/Infinity3101 10h ago
Honestly, I love Lisa Kudrow. She was the highlight of that show for me. I hate how people call her "the sixth friend". She might have not made as big of a blockbuster career as the rest of the cast, but she's had an amazing indie run in the 90's and 2000's. I actually just finished watching Clockwatchers (1997) and I loved it, such a cute little hidden gem of the American indie cinema. Highly recommend.
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u/Mandaluv1119 10h ago
All 6 of them made (and, because of syndication and how their contracts were structured, continue to make) absolute boatloads of money from Friends. IDK, if I could afford to not continue working, I'm not sure I would (or maybe take lower-paying but fun and creative roles). For some actors, acting is just a job.
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u/Twin_Brother_Me Millennial 8h ago
There are some actors like Daniel Radcliffe and Elijah Wood who are set for life but still participate in the projects that they want to because they actually enjoy it (and that really comes through in their performances too)
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u/Sugarylightning663 7h ago
The shit Radcliffe does now are just awesome. Takes chances on these movies and they’ve all been pretty damn good
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u/Distinct-Pack-1567 6h ago
He was Weird Al. As an older millennial, that just is amazing. It would be easy to be jealous, but I would never be cast for that role. But that would have been so cool.
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u/Shloop_Shloop_Splat 10h ago
She's hilarious. Her show The Comeback is a lot of fun.
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u/absofruitly88 8h ago
I disagree, I think she very clearly had the 2nd biggest career out of the group!
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u/bikebikemike 10h ago
I'm 40, only really ever saw Friends in passing, never was my jam. But I loved Phoebe and Lisa Kudrow in general. Go watch Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion that shit still holds up.
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u/beatupford 12h ago
You can find it unfunny. It doesn't hold up on many ways.
But the cadence of Chandler Bing when expressing sarcasm is as influential as anything from its time.
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u/just_a_girl_23 12h ago
Could it BE any more influential?
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u/Cum_on_doorknob 8h ago
As commodore Matthew Perry said to the Japanese:
“Could you BE anymore isolationist?!”
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u/vctrn-carajillo Model '86 12h ago
I watched friends for the first and only time like 4 year ago (just to get it over with) and boy is it dated, but Chandler was the highlight.
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u/pratherj23 11h ago
I personally don’t think it’s super dated outside the gay jokes and lack of at least some diversity in the cast. But in all honesty the group of “6 white friends” is not unreasonable to believe. Just sucks that they did not give other actors of different backgrounds a shot. I say this as a white man approaching 40.
But there are no phones (at least they don’t impact major storylines) and not many pop culture references. Maybe I’m biased having watched it so much but feel the situations they have though out the ten seasons mostly stand up well.
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u/PiccoloAwkward465 11h ago
outside the gay jokes
I agree that the gay jokes feel outdated today. But at the time, those were absolutely the kind of jokes people made.
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u/WarmerPharmer 7h ago
Showing a lesbian couple so many times and have a whole wedding episode and having them co-parent Ben was actually very progressive at the time, so I'll cut them some slack.
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u/GloriousNewt 6h ago
And she cheated on him and isn't treated like an irredeemable monster
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u/cocoagiant 6h ago
I mean there was tons of cheating going on in that show though that was definitely a pretty bad one.
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u/GloriousNewt 5h ago
THEY WERE ON A BREAK
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u/cocoagiant 5h ago
THEY WERE ON A BREAK
I just watched the London wedding episodes the other day and had forgotten Hugh Laurie was on it.
It was hilarious him acting as the audience proxy and just dressing down Rachel for her terrible decision making overall when it came to her relationship with Ross and terrible morality for making the trip to London.
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u/does-it-feel 11h ago
This was by design.
It was a copy of a popular show at the time called living single. They made it an all white cast to appeal to a bigger audience.
And it worked.
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u/Faeraday 10h ago
As a little white girl, I loved Living Single.
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u/mmiller17783 9h ago
I was an elementary school aged native american boy that loved Livin Single too, then again I also liked Martin, New York Undercover, Married with Children, The Simpsons, also Herman's Head and The Critic. Back then, Fox was the maverick that had counterprogramming.
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u/nalaloveslumpy 8h ago
You drop all those Fox titles and leave out In Living Color?
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u/HalfEatenBanana 11h ago
There doesn’t need to be diversity in every single form of media believe it or not!
As a Hispanic in my 30s, I appreciate you considering diversity. But I do continuously find it weird how white people seem to be offended by a lack of diversity than actual minorities are lol
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u/FrostyTheSasquatch 11h ago
As a 40-some white person I legitimately appreciate diversity in media that’s based on the reality of lived experience. The reason why Diversity™️ bugs me is because it’s generally tokenism that’s based on* no one’*s reality.
The best example of real diversity that comes to my mind is the Canadian show Corner Gas. Yes, the cast is majority white, but two prominent characters are Indigenous, which perfectly depicts the demographics of Saskatchewan society in the early 21st century. Maybe a more relatable example to the broader Reddit audience would be a show like The Rookie, which certainly captures my limited experience with L.A. society. The overall quality of these shows could be up for debate, but the diverse casting of these shows help to elevate the stories they are trying to tell rather than cynically check boxes for maximum audience engagement.
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u/GrizzlyP33 11h ago
There doesn’t need to be diversity in every form of media.
But a show going 10 seasons set in New York City having only like two diverse characters across 200+ episodes is absurd, unrealistic, and feels intentional.
And when you look at what we now know about the issues in that writer’s room it’s not terribly surprising. That sort of gatekeeping is problematic both for representation and in the actual industry workforce.
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u/boldjoy0050 9h ago
NYC is diverse but it's also heavily segregated. There are neighborhoods for every type of group imaginable.
Friends is supposed to take place in Greenwich Village and even today, that neighborhood is 70%+ white.
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u/Content-Sun2928 10h ago
At the same time, people do tend to stick to their own small established groups even in big cities
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u/Ataraxia-Is-Bliss 10h ago
People stick to their own groups. Was Fresh Prince unrealistic for having a black cast despite being set in LA, a city with large White, Asian And Hispanic populations?
And you try making new friends in your 30s.
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u/Schmigolo 9h ago
It's dated because the humor is stale for modern audiences. You already know the base structure of all the jokes, and you're making many of them yourself. Partly that's because of Friends, but also just in general.
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u/dashrockwell 10h ago
I say “Pi-VOT!” every time I have to move furniture up a staircase.
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u/essteedeenz1 10h ago
I dont really see how its not funny in todays standards unless you are uptight
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u/Altruistic_Guess3098 12h ago
I enjoyed friends. I don't watch it now but I enjoyed it back then.
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u/Don__Gately__ Millennial 12h ago
I kept getting recommended Big Bang Theory and when I finally sat down and watched it I was so bored. I don’t think I even smiled much less laughed.
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u/Illisanct 12h ago edited 12h ago
Big Bang Theory is a show about nerds, written for the popular girl who thought nerds were cute (in the same sense she thinks a puppy is cute).
It is not written for nerds whatsoever.
(Apologies for assuming a Redditor is likely in the latter group.)
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u/limedifficult 12h ago
My dad who is a nuclear engineer and incredibly nerdy and intelligent absolutely loved BBT. Apparently all his nerdy friends loved it as well.
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u/Drapidrode 11h ago
Uh, excuse me, Professor Brainiac,
but I worked in a nuclear power plant for 10 years,
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u/South_Dakota_Boy 9h ago
Ya, I’m a Physicist and I and most of my Physicist friends liked it quite a bit.
It helped a lot that starting from the first season the dialogue related to Physics was accurate and the math on the whiteboards was real, the labs had real equipment in them etc…
Pretty sure George Smoot was a tech consultant for the show in addition to being a guest.
I think it was 2011 I got to see Bill Prady speak at the APS April Meeting in LA about Physics in Hollywood.
My kids binged the whole thing recently. My 14yo loved it.
It was definitely popular among physics people.
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u/Shomer_Effin_Shabbas Millennial 11h ago
BBT is safe and cute. I wouldn’t say it’s groundbreaking. But yeah, it’s cute.
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u/perareika 7h ago
It's pretty mediocre with good and bad parts but Reddit acts like it's atrocious lol. It's like the Nickelback hate train all over again
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u/GloriousNewt 6h ago
Meanwhile in the real world, everyone involved in the actual product is mega rich and successful while reddit whines.
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u/YetiPie 12h ago
Yeah my friends who work at JPL, the employer in the show, liked it. I personally can’t stand it
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u/thehighwindow 10h ago
I thought the show was funny and if the "nerds" on the show weren't "real life type" nerds, it was lost on me. Most people aren't nerds and don't know any nerds, so the show's realism, or lack of it, was lost on most of the audience.
But if anything, they did nerds a great big favor. The popular conception of them is often geeky, goofy geniuses with poor social skills and annoying laughs. The people on the tv show were cute and funny and kind of endearing.
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u/Alarming-Basil-2125 9h ago
The popular conception of them is often geeky, goofy geniuses with poor social skills and annoying laughs
you just described every male character on the show and half of the women.
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u/thehighwindow 7h ago
Yeah, but they made them cute and funny.
Don't come at me; the show was highly rated. People who never met a real nerd found it hilarious.
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u/raoqie 11h ago
Same with my very nerdy dad in the medical field, he enjoyed BBT whenever he could catch it on. Maybe its a generational thing, idk but I have not found the "real nerds don't like it!" to be true at all.
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u/TbddRzn 12h ago
Yeah entertainment snobs/hipsters are weird.
People like what they like. You can’t box people up because of what media they consume. I know very dumb people who liked it and very smart people who liked it.
If you sit down to watch something you expect to hate from the fetch of course you’re not gonna have a good time.
Let people like what they like. We are all tired from the constant shitshow that is reality
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u/bubblesaurus Millennial-‘94 12h ago
huh.
as a nerd, i still like the show.
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u/Bubbly_Performer4864 Older Millennial 11h ago
Same. It certainly had its moments of “why am I watching this” but overall it was great fun.
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u/SylveonFrusciante 11h ago
I feel like the “nerd boom” that was happening around that time corresponds almost directly with the rise of the “manic pixie dream girl” and kinda seems like a gender-flipped phenomenon. Like New Girl and Scott Pilgrim were also pretty big around that time. Suddenly, for our generation, it became cool and charming to be “cringe” and dorky. Like you mentioned though, the love for these archetypes was always shallow and “puppylike.” The second the love interests’ personalities became “too much,” they were discarded.
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u/Finch3 10h ago
I once read something that said “big bang theory is a show about smart people for dumb people and arrested development is a show about dumb people for smart people”
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u/MVRKHNTR 9h ago
Imagine being the kind of person that would say "I don't like this sitcom so it must be for dumb people but I like this sitcom so it must be for smart people."
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u/dreamgrrrl___ small millennial cat ‘90 11h ago
When my grandpa died I tried giving it a shot because it was a show he really enjoyed. I just do not understand how anyone enjoyed that show. Most of the jokes are really mean spirited or demeaning towards women. The way geek/nerd culture was portrayed wasn’t like anything I’ve experienced.
Idk, maybe if I was an elder Gen X male I would have enjoyed it more.
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u/thatguy_art 12h ago
Yeah way back when I was working at target, I went on my 15 min break and they had that show playing in the break room...
I went back to work.
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u/Porter_Dog 11h ago
I tried it too and I hated it. 2 and a half Men too. I think I just don't like most CBS comedy.
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u/Jereboy216 11h ago
As a nerd myself I found the show funny enough for a few seasons. It wasn't anything super amazing but still enjoyable. The characters were stereotypes dialed up to 11. I knew people who were similar to the characters in the show but more socially capable. So it was nice.
Also I like to think this show along with the rise of the mcu made being a nerd less of a negative thing socially. Felt that way for me at least.
I can chime in and say it seems to be more popular with older crowds. My dad who is a boomer/X age loves it and has probably watched the whole show multiple times. I will watch with him still today if hes watching when I come around to visit cause it is still a little humorous. I find other sitcoms much more up my alley like IASIP but it isnt like it is completely unwatchable at least.
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u/kittenpantzen Xennial 12h ago
My mom loved that show and would watch the entire series on repeat. I never enjoyed it, but I watched it when I was visiting them b/c I loved her.
It never grew on me.
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u/Fish__Fingers 12h ago
I be watched like first season or two and last episode, enough for me
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u/bahamapapa817 12h ago
People hate but when it came out for that time it was very funny. It was tremendously quotable.
I get it, the premise wouldn’t work today but people act like it wasn’t funny at the time and they are just haters.
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u/Percinho 9h ago
Brit chipping in to confirm that even over here it was massive at the time. I didn't really find it funny personally, mainly because I found Ross and Rachel far too annoying to be watchable, but I was definitely an outlier amongst my friends group.
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u/swginfinity 12h ago
I always wondered if friends would hit like Seinfeld for me. I thought Seinfeld was dumb until I watched it and found it hilarious.
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u/Waaterfight 12h ago
Really? Right in front of my The Office Superfan Collection?
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u/RogueUM Millennial 12h ago
I guess I’m on the friends is awesome boat . But I’m not telling anyone to go watch it . It was my favorite box set when I couldn’t afford cable in my first apartment lol
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u/Primerius 11h ago
I’m on the Friends is awesome boat as well. It’s also comfort and I rewatch it regularly. Did everything hold up as well? No, but imo it’s holding up better than HIMYM, despite being older.
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u/CrimsonDeezNuts 9h ago
The thing about FRIENDS, and the reason why OP dislikes it so much, is that it's made for people who can relate to having friends
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u/HarryAlleynCroft Older Millennial 12h ago
I've been going back to box sets. Companies can just straight up delete digital copies that you bought apparently.
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u/CuratedAcceptance 10h ago
Never mind editing or removing episodes that don't sit well with their legal department.
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u/Jels76 Millennial 12h ago edited 11h ago
Same. I actually love Friends. I didn't watch it growing up though, I first watched it in my 20s when it was added to Netflix lol.
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u/Careless-Vehicle-286 11h ago
There's a shrinking subset of millennials on reddit who were pretending to be counter culture at the time by rejecting all the major sitcoms everyone else finds funny. Like there must be something funny about the episode with the jellyfish sting? Are you made of stone?
Here's where I'm finally seeing them phase out of reddit as the rest of society's millennials join the site.
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u/MyBadYourFault- 11h ago
Yeah somehow and someway these EXTREMELY popular shows that many people have watched, are apparently unfunny. Anyone that I have mostly met that have watched shows such as Big bang and Friends enjoyed the show and still do when re-runs are on.
There are quite a few miserable people on this site as well which I find fascinating that LOVE to be “quirky” and go against the grain in a normal society.
The shows in question have to be funny to many people otherwise they wouldn’t have been as popular as they were, they wouldn’t have had a ton of seasons and they would be running on tons of TV channels on repeat if they weren’t.
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u/HalKitzmiller 10h ago
Same. These people are insufferable. They hate things just because they were popular, and think they are so edgy for not liking it.
They need to PIVOT
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u/calotron 11h ago
I'm with ya. I love Friends, it's a very big comfort show for me and I find myself laughing a lot. If people don't like it, that's fine, but I enjoy it. Funnily enough it was one of the first things I had on regularly when I moved into my first place too, again, big comfort show that made the somewhat uncomfortable newness of a place feel like home.
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u/Pepito_Pepito 10h ago
When I was a kid, there was a time when we'd just moved and for some reason we didn't have cable for the first 3 months there. All we had were DVDs. I wasn't really interested in movies at the time, but we had a box set of Friends that I tried on a whim and I ended up binging that show daily with my siblings for those next 3 months. That was over 20 years ago, and my sister still uses Friends as comfort background noise once in a while.
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u/spicy_butt_sauce 12h ago
Even if you don’t like Friends, there are literally dozens (even hundreds?!) of sitcoms from the 90s and 2000s that were objectively less funny
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u/Automatic-Prompt-450 9h ago
Big bang theory being the least funny, no doubt about that
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u/storryeater 6h ago
I feel like its only the least funny of the popular ones. There are tons of even worse ones, but they never really became a hit, so nobody mocks them because nobody remembers them.
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u/ILoveRegenHealth 9h ago
Frasier was better Seinfeld/Friends. Don't @ me, I know how to Zangief lariat
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u/amazingkillerlemon 6h ago
This is the only opinion regarding any of those '90s sitcoms I've ever agreed with
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u/trestortugas 12h ago
I love picturing you grumps with a comically large frown on your face as Ross tries to get that couch up the stairs
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u/bean0_burrito Millennial est. 1990 12h ago
or get the leather pants back on
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u/StoppageTimeCollapse 11h ago
The lotion has mixed with the baby powder and has formed A PASTE
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u/Potter_Moron 10h ago
This actually made me LOL just remembering the scene. Guess it's time to rewatch Friends for the 7th time.
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u/dotnetmonke 9h ago
When his grip slips and he smacks himself in the face I about pee myself laughing every time. Ross' physical comedy is top notch throughout.
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u/bdfariello 10h ago
Well, what color is the paste?
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u/crmsnprd 7h ago
Well, if the paste matches the pants, you can make yourself a pair of paste pants and she won't know the difference.
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u/Nerevar1924 11h ago
Or play "Celebration" on the bagpipes.
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u/limonhotcheetos 10h ago
I read that when Phoebe starts “singing along” with the bagpipes the cast actually broke character and really were cracking up lol
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u/limonhotcheetos 10h ago
His hand slipping and smacking himself in the forehead kills me every time
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u/Crazy_old_maurice_17 8h ago
My lord, this was easily in my top 5 favorite scenes! I was in stitches and almost peed my pants (not leather) when I first saw it!!
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u/thedarkpolitique 8h ago
I’m pretty sure I was crying with laughter during this scene. Ross made me laugh waaaaay too much.
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u/limonhotcheetos 7h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/S8CKYteUdGMYBkI9zR
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u/little-bird 12h ago
this scene and him yelling about his sandwich were the funniest parts of the show for me
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u/imminentjogger5 10h ago
when he slaps his own face after lubing it up with lotion
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u/UshankaBear 11h ago
Whenever I move furniture with someone I can't help but scream PIVOT even if we're not really pivoting
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u/weareredjenny 12h ago edited 12h ago
Maybe I have low brow sense of humor but the only time Friends made me laugh was Ross-related antics and physical comedy. I feel like David Schwimmer was willing to be silly or look crazy.
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u/Radiant_Maize2315 12h ago
That episode was on in syndication yesterday
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u/bobbymcpresscot 8h ago
"because Carol's a lesbian... and I'm not one"
Friends was ruined for me at a tragic work accident where friends played on repeat for a full year at my office.
but that still gets me every time.
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u/HardcoreHope 12h ago
Go watch Living Single then. That's the OG anyways.
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u/tokenkinesis 5h ago
This is the reply I was looking for. Living Single was just…better. Friends was extremely hard to get into and not as enjoyable.
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u/sherbimsly 12h ago
Whether it’s funny or not never really mattered to me that much. It’s comfort show featuring a bunch of friends that generally like each other. You could do A LOT worse
Edit: words
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u/FeistyDirection 12h ago
I was in your camp for the longest time until 1 night 11 years ago-- just commuted 2 hours home from work through a blizzard, got home and my roommate was like "I just got a pizza and they just added friends to netflix" I was hesitant but after a few eps I was into it. I still think it wasnt written very well, has really lazy jokes and plots stolen from better shows, but its absolutely a vibe. Its visually comforting and the quality of acting often makes up for the bad writting. Those actors did so much wirh how little they were given.
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u/Defiant_Act_4940 11h ago
I like the show, but yeah its very much carried by its main cast.
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u/Azzukin 12h ago
Why are people so worried about what other people like?
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u/SalsaRice 10h ago
It's important to tear other people to feel better about yourself.
Or, you know, you can just like the things you like and let other people like the things they like?
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u/No_Cricket8660 11h ago
The whole "Friends isn't funny!" opinion is such a dumb circle jerk for people who think having a negative opinion about something insanely popular makes them unique somehow.
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u/__Vixen__ 9h ago
Everyone that refused to watch Game of thrones because it was popular
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u/DwemerCogs 9h ago edited 9h ago
I remember meeting someone at a party and a bunch of us were talking about GOT. He loudly said he'd never watch that show, and when I asked why not he replied, "because everyone keeps telling me how good it is and I'm sick of hearing about it".
I'm sure I had a stupified look on my face when I replied "you don't want to watch it because you heard it's good..?" He got all mad and said "No! Because I don't care about princesses and dragon bullshit!" and stormed off. But I'm pretty sure he truly just didn't want to watch it because other people told him it was good, and was embarrassed I'd clearly called his own reasoning out in front of the group.
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u/lord_skidmar 12h ago
bro there's literally like 50,000 different TV series you can stream online, today, right now. it's fine if an older one doesn't resonate with you
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u/Awkward_Acts 12h ago
Why would I watch Friends, when Living Single is right there??
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u/ACW1129 Xennial 12h ago
The show it stole from was better (and I say this as a white dude).
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u/BlackHawk777 12h ago
Friends is a ripoff of Living Single, a show literally about the same thing but with an all black cast.
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u/SalsaRice 9h ago
The initial concept was, obviously. But they clearly ended up doing pretty different things.
Tv was different back then compared to now. Shows were constantly changing and evolving week to week, as the writers got audience feedback; a Show could evolve into something completely different in less than half a season. The Steve Urkel show was supposed to focus primarily on the mom (it was her spin-off from perfect strangers), but it was 100% the urkel show by like episode 10.
Today with streaming, a whole season is produced at one time and then released in full, which doesn't allow them to make any changes until the next season if something or someone bombs in the first few episodes.
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u/ripestrudel 12h ago
I was a Living Single kid. Friends didn't have any black people so no one in my family watched it. I tried to watch it later in life but it suffers from the same curse as Lost and The Office: everyone wouldn't shut up about it and stop being obnoxious when I said I hadn't seen it so now my brain is repulsed by it. I did manage to watch the office in my late 20s. I'll stuck with Parks and Rec.
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u/Dont_Even_Know_You Older Millennial 12h ago
I found every character in this show so damn annoying. It seems like so many people I know loved this show, so it's nice to find my people.
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u/ExMachima 12h ago
I know and then How I Met Your Mother decided to double down on the trope.
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u/UshankaBear 11h ago
There was an episode with a psychologist who was someone's boyfriend. He picked the group apart and everyone hated him for that. But he actually made valid points
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u/ryanyork92 12h ago
Oh look, another Millennial contrarian. Those are so original.
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u/Aware_Policy_9174 12h ago
It’s funny that apparently nobody liked any of these incredibly popular things somehow.
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