Well with Friends finally over, there have been officially 236 episodes of
Friends in all. (Hour-long episodes, such as the series finale, count as 2
episodes). Wow, that's a lot. Maybe Tennant Stuart can answer this; he
always comes up with lists on this; how does the total # of Friends episodes
measure up against other long-running comedies? I know it has more episodes
than Seinfeld (which only lasted 9 years) and probably fewer than Cheers and
Frasier (11 years each) but that's all I know.
Actually, you can answer this question easily for yourself by going to epguides.com and looking up some of the long-running sitcoms of the past: MASH, Roseanne, Dick van Dyke, et al. When DVD was on the air, they did 39 episodes a year, so they added up a lot faster.
Although, looking it up:
DVD - 158 Roseanne - 222 MASH - 255 Cheers - 270 Frasier - 264 (when it finishes) Mary Tyler MOore - 168 Seinfeld - 180 Mad About You - 164 Leave It to Beaver - 234 I Love Lucy - 179 Murphy Brown - 247
So it's pretty high up there in the list (although there are probably long-running sitcoms I've utterly forgotten).
I will say, though, that the quality of the last year or two of Friends (and the quality of the last *three* years of Mad About You, which had a dreadful last year) has been very spotty. This year in particular they seemed to be marking time. And that's one thing that's admirable about Frasier -- people complained it had a bad year last year, but it's been very good this year. And the thing I do like about Frasier is that it's been absolutely true to itself; you don't have wild character swings and the show never jettisoned intelligent humor for stupidity or the totally outlandish.
that doesn't surprise me, as it was on from 1960-1972. Back in the 60's, a season was much longer than it is now, so they packed alot more episodes in a 12 year run than a show would nowadays. The Simpsons is up to like 330+, with no end in sight. Alice had 202 episodes. It's not listed on epguides (at least I haven't found it yet) but Ozzie and Harriett had alot of episodes too, spanning onto radio before it was on TV. A few other high totals: Family Matters: 215, Full House: 192, Beverly Hillbillies: 274, Petticoat Junction: 222, Home Improvement: 204, Bewitched: 252, Cosby Show: 201, Andy Griffith: 249, Facts of Life: 209, Jeffersons: 253. Of course, if you include dramas and westerns, here's a staggering number, Gunsmoke had 635 episodes!