Less than 24 hours from now, NBC will air the last episode of
television's best sitcom.
I still can't believe it.
For the last ten years, Thursday nights were off limits. College
courses were scheduled around the 8PM time slot. Dinners were cut
short. Appointments had to be rescheduled. Thursday nights belonged
to "Friends." The success of all NBC's other Thursday night shows...
from
"ER" to "Scrubs" to "Will & Grace"... they all came back to "Friends."
Tomorrow, it will all be over.
And yes, we'll have "Joey," but there is no way the magic of the
full cast can be recaptured in a spinoff. The whole was always greater
than the sum of the individual parts, and while no disrespect is
intended
towards the acting abilities of Perry, Aniston, LeBlanc, Cox, Schwimmer,
and Kudrow, there was something special about the way the six interacted
together that will probably never be duplicated on television.
Let's face it... the end of "Friends" almost certainly marks the end
of the television sitcom as we know it. Somewhere around 1999,
producers stopped trying to recreate Bright, Kauffman and Crane's
masterpiece and started to rely on "reality television." Name one
sitcom developed after "Friends" that has become a cultural phenomenon.
Can't do it, can you? In ten years, "Friends" has remained at the top
of the ratings, on the tip of our tongues, in the back of our minds,
at the forefront of our culture, on the covers of magazines and tabloids
across the nation.
You may know people who don't watch "Friends," but do you know
anyone who doesn't know who Ross and Rachel are? Survivor contestants
will come and go. In twenty years, no one will remember a single winner
of "Fear Factor." People will remember Chandler. People will remember
Monica. People will remember where they were when Rachel kissed Ross
after watching the prom video, where they were when Monica peeked out
from under the covers of Chandler's bed, where they were when Phoebe
gave birth and when Joey fell in love with Rachel.
There is a reason that tomorrow's broadcast of the final episode
of "Friends" is attracting Superbowlesque attention. The reason is that
even for those who don't watch the show religiously, it is easily
to recognize that the series was a major force in our culture for the
past decade. Scripted television rarely holds an audience's attention.
"Friends" did it for ten years.
Seven seasons of "Friends" are now available on DVD. Episodes
are regularly run in syndication. And even now, ten years later, reruns
still seem as fresh as they were when they first aired; in some cases,
older episodes become even better in the second or third viewing.
Even now, I find it hard to leave the room while an episode of
"Friends" is on, even one I have seen a dozen times, even one I can
watch at my leisure on DVD.
"Friends" somehow managed to achieve that perfect blend of
humor and emotion, reality and fantasy, drama and comedy. It was
not a perfect show, and some episodes are clearly superior to others.
But it was, and will probably remain, the greatest sitcom television
has ever seen, and it is truly sad to see it go.
Six years ago, I wrote an imaginary "Friends" script depicting
the way I thought the show should end. It was a labor of love, my
personal tribute to a show that had entertained me for so long. It was
entitled "The Last One." And as I sit here tonight, dreading the
inevitability of tomorrow, it strikes me that I never thought I
would actually have to watch "The Last One." It always seemed
like something that would never happen, the way that on your first
day of school, graduation seems like an eternity away. But I suppose
nothing lasts forever.
I hope you all enjoy tomorrow's episode, and I hope that anyone
associated with the series who happens to read this message realizes
how much laughter they have helped deliver to a world in dire need
of it.Until tomorrow... Dan Silverstein