Pretty Much Pop #16 Considers the Sitcom “Friends” 25 Years Later

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt exam­ine the con­ven­tions, tech­niques, and stay­ing pow­er of the beloved ’90s sit­com. Are we sup­posed to iden­ti­fy with, or idol­ize, or mere­ly like these peo­ple? What makes the for­mu­la work, did it sus­tain itself over its 10-year run, was it suc­cess­ful­ly repli­cat­ed (like by How I Met Your Moth­er or by Chuck Lorre?), and what parts haven’t aged well?

We reviewed a ton of arti­cles to prep for this that you may want to read:

• “What the Crit­ics Said About the 1994 Debut of Friends” by Mar­garet Lyons
• “‘Friends’ Is Turn­ing 25. Here’s Why We Can’t Stop Watch­ing It” by Wes­ley Mor­ris
• “Why ‘Friends’ Is Still the World’s Favourite Sit­com, 25 Years On” by J.T. (at The Econ­o­mist)
• “‘Friends’ Is Get­ting Old. Its Fans Have Nev­er Been Younger” by Andrew Dal­ton
• “Friends Was a Great Show — That Just Hap­pened to Ruin TV Com­e­dy” by Emi­ly Todd Van­Der­W­erff
• “‘Friends’ Hasn’t Aged Well” by Scaachi Koul
• “‘Fat Mon­i­ca’ Is the Ghost That Con­tin­ues to Haunt Friends 25 Years Lat­er” from Enter­tain­ment Week­ly (no byline)
• “Friends at 25: Is the Sit­com Real­ly as Prob­lem­at­ic as Peo­ple Say? Styl­ist Inves­ti­gates” by Kayleigh Dray
• “Don’t Knock Friends. It’s Still Rel­e­vant, and Pro­gres­sive, Too” by Sarah Gosling
• “Why ‘Friends’ Won’t Get Reboot­ed” by Saul Auster­litz
• “A Par­ty Room and a Prison Cell Inside the Friends Writ­ers’ Room” by Saul Auster­litz
• “Tele­vi­sion With­out Pity” by Christo­pher Nixon
• “‘Friends’ Cre­ator Regrets One Of The Show’s Prob­lem­at­ic Ele­ments” by Nick Levine

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.