How <em>Friends</em> Became a Reality Show

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But the Friends special is not merely a cast reunion. It is also an advertisement for the show’s move to HBO Max. Any good ad will feature testimonials, and much of this one is dedicated to the argument that Friends is a really good sitcom. We get endorsements of the show from celebrities who guest-starred on it (Reese Witherspoon, Tom Selleck) and celebrities who simply love it (David Beckham, Kit Harington, Mindy Kaling, the members of BTS). These cameos have a teasing lack of logic to them (Jon Snow??), and the chaos is illustrative: When you have achieved the hegemony that Friends has achieved, you don’t have to explain yourself. You can include in your celebration a fashion show that finds Justin Bieber dressed as a potato, and rest assured that people will roll with it. There’s an ease that comes with creating an ad for something so many people have already bought.

The special thus treats nostalgia as a kind of absolution. Friends, after all, has not just failed to age well; it showed its failings even when it was young. Its jokes are sometimes homophobic; its plots are occasionally cruel; its cast, and its world, are almost entirely white. The show is popular, and it is, as a separate proposition, beloved. But the affection tends to come with an asterisk. Many other series have similar problems, and use their versions of a reunion or reboot to acknowledge that the world has moved forward around them. The Friends version, instead, goes out of its way to change the subject.

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One of the most striking segments of the reunion features a series of fans from around the world attesting to Friends as a fact of globalization. Vivian, from Ghana, tells the audience what it meant to her that Monica proposed to Chandler, rather than vice versa. “Watching that episode,” she says, “got me thinking that I can also take charge of my own relationship.” A man in India says that Friends helped him grieve after his father died. Liz, from Mexico, talks about the isolation of being queer, and how Friends helped her feel a little less lonely. The finale to these testimonials is an endorsement from Malala Yousafzai, the education-equality activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, and her best friend, Vee. “You’re Joey with a hint of Phoebe,” Vee tells her friend. Malala grins at this. Later, she adds: “Friends brought friends together.”

A reason Friends has become so popular with people who were not yet born when it premiered, critics have surmised, is that the show revels in the constraints of physical immediacy. Friends’ world is hermetic. Its characters interact not over the cool distance of the digital—text, TikTok—but rather in person. They live next door to one another, across the street from one another, down the block from one another. Their lives are shaped by the fatalism of actual proximity.