Why Friends Unhinges People in the Comments Section

I follow an excellent and well-curated Substack called Understandably, which recently published a guest post — a quaint little article about the much-loved sitcom Friends — which claims (hyperbolically?) that the show…

“may have triggered the downfall of western civilization with its embrace of anti-intellectualism.”

David Hopkins, the author, points out how Ross is, in many episodes, disparaged for his intellect. His friends fake falling asleep when he starts a sentence with, “Did you know, in the late Cretaceous period…” or they make homophobic sex jokes during his lecture on homoerectus. With the arguable exception of Phoebe, Ross’s gang is entertaining but pretty basic.

I noticed this same thing while bingeing the entire Friends catalog with my kids (six times through). You see different things when you watch a show with your kids 20 years later. Some of the problematic Friends humor (like the fat jokes) were phased out over the course of the series. The “it’s dorky and boring to care about science” bit was not. It’s a sophomoric joke that fittingly sided with anti-intellectualism.

The article spawned me some thoughts...

1. …not the least of which was the fact that another part of Ross’s character that doesn’t land well on the rewatch is his stalkery behavior toward women — his apparent inability to respect boundaries. When he and Rachel break up the first time, she asks him to leave HER OWN APARTMENT three times and he refuses. He hangs around, asking for forgiveness, for a conversation she does not want to have, until the wee hours of the morning. (Honestly, it’s a little triggering for me.) The rest of the friends are trapped in the bedroom and forced to eat leg wax for sustenance; that part is funny.

2. “Downfall of western civilization,” is inflammatory language probably designed less as truth and more as a way to get a rise out of people. Life does imitate art, but it works the other way around as well. And much like the nature versus nurture argument, it’s more complex than one or the other; there’s a continual interaction between our lived experience and how it is creatively expressed in art. Having grown up in the 80s, an era that spawned such gems as Revenge of the Nerds, I can tell you, anti-intellectualism was healthy and thriving way before Rachel showed up in a wedding dress at Central Perk.

   

   Lots of things have been called “the decline/downfall of western civilization,” but Google mostly gives me this movie on the LA Punk Rock scene.

I was musing over these ideas when I clicked on “Comments” to see if anyone had similar feedback. Wow. People have some strong and defensive feelings about Friends. While some people debated whether the show influenced our societal attitude toward geology professors, many focused solely on how they, the commenter, approached this topic in their own homes from their narrow, individual perspectives.

“Well, I…”

People were quick to defend the fact that they watched or liked Friends; they thought pointing out its flaws was overly sensitive or snowflakey. They’re just sitcoms, for chrissakes.* Then, there were commenters patting themselves on the back for being above watching it. Some of these latter took it upon themselves to give the rest of us mere mortals advice about killing our televisions (and our smartphones, for good measure.)

It reminds me of my late grandmother. Any time one of us brought up a social issue: racism, homophobia, etc., with the hopes of having an intellectual exchange, she would lean forward in her chair and, with her loud, projecting voice, begin, “Well, I…” Then she would proceed to explain all the ways in which she was not racist or homophobic or whathaveyou, even though no one accused her of anything. It was supposed to be a discussion topic, not an intervention.

Why is it when someone writes a critical article, our first reaction is to defend ourselves in its context?

Two thoughts:

1. Cancel culture has given us the fear that any criticism of something we love will result in its being stricken from the record and us being condemned as pariahs for ever having allowed it into our homes. We are defensive about a show like Friends because we don’t want to lose it.

2. We automatically take critique of something we love as a critique of us as people. Like if we watch Friends and it’s problematic, we are amoral. Conversely, if we don’t watch the show, we can comfortably take the other stance — that all sitcoms are vapid and evil, “the downfall of western civilization.” We can then have that nice, cozy feeling we all love — being right and feeling superior without doing any self-reflection or work.

Two responses:

1. We can be critical of something and still love it. In fact, we can be critical of something BECAUSE we love it. When you love something, you want it to be its best. Going back and watching the entire catalog of Friends in these modern times…

   (Did I mention we’ve seen it at least six times through? We had to let the kids watch How I Met Your Mother to save us from yet another Friends-a-thon.)

   …I enjoy it all over again. I belly laugh when Ross’s couch gets sawed in half after screaming, “pivot!” at Chandler and Rachel doesn’t coax it up the stairwell. We still quote Joey saying, “It’s a moo point — it’s a cow’s opinion; it doesn’t matter.” There are hilarious, relatable antics and dialogue on that show. There’s a reason it ran for so long.

   I can also wince when I see Courtney Cox in a fat suit or at the running joke about “ugly naked guy” across the street. We can admit this is problematic without condemning the whole show or television in general. It makes for good discussion and learning.

2. When we are compelled to respond to an article critiquing pop culture with, “Well, I...” maybe we should take a step back and realize this is not about us and our proclivities. It is about culture at large, where it’s been in the past and how we’d like it to be different going forward.

Last point, and this is more of a pet peeve.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO COMMENT. I mean, definitely comment on this post if you want to. Please comment.

But if there are lots of comments on an article, read them and “like” or riff off of someone else’s if they’ve already addressed what’s on your mind. And if you’re just commenting to tell everyone you’re better than whatever has been criticized, how YOU are not part of the problem, maybe ask yourself why you feel the need to do that.

What we deny most vehemently is usually the truth hidden underneath the layers of our surface.

Or to drag Shakespeare into it, “Methinks thou dost protest too much.” I have learned that when I have that defensive response, something more is going on there. Silly, simplistic example:

A lot of years ago, my first husband, Javier, and I were at ACL Fest with a new friend, rocking out in the crowd to whatever band was playing. Javier elbowed the friend (whose name has now fallen out of my brain) and yelled over the music, “My wife has a crush on you!”

I slugged Javier in the arm and immediately hollered, “I do NOT!” while turning beet red. (Have I mentioned I’m a terrible liar?) As I said, what we deny most vigorously usually has some unacknowledged truth to it.

You Can Love a Problematic TV Show.

Just acknowledge its flaws. Talk about them. Use them to think about where we are as a culture and what we would like to see change going forward. And if a short bit about a sitcom character awakens a defensive demon in you — one you feel compelled to unleash in the comment section — reflect on where those strong feelings are actually coming from.

I’ll close with a list of shows I’ve enjoyed lately. They are not perfect; I can’t promise you that you won’t smell a hint of misogyny in any of them, but they have taken the sitcom format to more open and inclusive heights. They are progress, and that is what we need to keep making. Progress.

• Shrill: The show follows Annie, described as a fat young woman who wants to change her life — but not her body. Annie is trying to make it as a journalist while juggling bad boyfriends, sick parents, and a perfectionist boss, while the world around her deems her not good enough because of her weight.

  Side note: Shrill is inspired by real events in the writer, Lindy West’s, life. I highly recommend anything she’s written. She is scathing and hilarious. Her Substack, Butt News, where “We are going to talk butts and watch movies,” has me laugh-crying over my keyboard on the regular.

• Hacks: Deborah Vance, a legendary Las Vegas stand-up comedy diva, needs to re-invent her aging act to avoid losing her residency at the Palmetto Casino. Ava is a young comedy writer who is unable to find work due to an insensitive tweet and her reputation for being self-centered and arrogant. When Ava's manager sends her to work as Deborah's new head writer, the two slowly bond as Ava pushes her new boss to take more risks and Deborah, in turn, helps Ava start to work through her personal problems.

• Fleabag: A dry-witted woman, known only as Fleabag, has no filter as she navigates life and love in London while trying to cope with tragedy. The angry, grief-riddled woman tries to heal while rejecting anyone who tries to help her, but Fleabag continues to keep up her bravado through it all.

• Sex Education: The series follows the lives of the students, staff and parents of the fictional Moordale Secondary School as they contend with various personal dilemmas, often related to sexual intimacy.

Note:

The above synopses were all taken from Wikipedia, with the exception of Fleabag. Whoever wrote their entry apparently doesn’t believe in succinct synopses. That one is from Rotten Tomatoes.

*No one actually wrote this. It’s my own, possibly reductionist, summary of several comments.