My lover, partner and husband pointed out a funny article by a Washington Post TV critic, noting that the critic was taking a TV show "Friends" far too seriously. This is conspicuously evident when the critic didn't find any humor in the paranoia that spread on an airplane when Rachel told her seat neighbor that her silly friend had just told her something was wrong with a non-existitant, ridiculous-sounding plane part. That was funny precisely because people are vulnerable and are not protected by emperical cynicism. If we can't find humor in human fallibility, we're less likely to check our fallibilities.
Predictibly, the critic made an easy claim that Seinfeld was a "superior" TV show. Hmm. Superior in its cynicism yes, superior in its sense of silliness possibly, but just outright superior? That's just engendering snob appeal.
I remember how Seinfeld's ending episode made fun of its own sad characters--leaving them whining in jail with their dark attitudes. Now Friends ends its show with births, human and animal babies, good sex and commitment. Well, is that just too good to be cool? Is that just too pleasantly meaningful and emotional to appeal to educated, hip people? And whoaa...people actually become richer than Oprah producing this good stuff?!! Isn't that something to celebrate not deride?
I was not an avid Friends watcher, so maybe that's why I was happily surprised when Rachel got off the plane to return to Ross. As the show ended my husband and I both felt a sense of the time that had passed in our own lives, graduate school, divorces, deaths...a generation lived. This was not something either one of us expected to feel. We used to be married to very cynical people, neither of whom wanted children. This seems to be an endemic issue with our generation. As I've noted below, many people care only about their cynical friends, things and jobs. I'm not sure what caused this. To be honest, I think it's just a "hip" attitude. We let ourselves be defined by this kind of attitude in the late 80s. It just sucks as one gets older, less cute, and wonders why there's no family around, no reliable friends.
We hope that this is not an end to telelvision shows that cast a positive light on the best of human relationships--ironically, even as he derisively (with a hint of the anti-feminine) classifies Friends as a soap opera, positive television is something the cynical critic seems to wish for...in the remains of the day.
