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Prax150 t1_iuifs8z wrote

There is a narrative that the show was a ripoff of Living Single, which was basically the same premise but with an all-black cast that came out a year earlier. Friends wound up overshadowing its legacy. Whether or not it was representative of the reality of living in the 90s in New York is of course debatable, as is whether or not that actually matters since it's a sitcom. But I get it's important for people to look at the history and get the full context of something so culturally pervasive. Like Friends is the show from that era that people remember even though it's arguably not very good and derivative. It's lowest-common denominator and every era has a show like that that sticks when, if given the proper attention, other, better, more representative and/or inclusive shows could do the same. Friends has Living Single. The Big Bang Theory has Community. Modern Family has Parks or Veep. Friends' impact on similar shows is probably more destructive since it was at the acme of appointment/watercooler viewing whereas those more recent shows eventually all live more comfortably in streaming.

Like, ultimately it's just a middling sitcom with a much bigger following than it probably deserves, but I don't know how much that really matters. It's not like it's copaganda, it's just white people hanging out mostly with other white people, who cares.

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gtreble9 OP t1_iuihwmo wrote

Comparing BBT to community is crazy, the settings aren’t even similar

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Prax150 t1_iuinuf3 wrote

I think you missed the point I was making. More popular shows targeting similar audiences overshadowed better, arguably more niche shows.

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CableCoShow t1_iuil5qn wrote

It was not derivative or middling. Mimicking a general concept doesn't make it derivative. Can you imagine there only being one 'odd couple'-type show in the history of television?

It was a cultural phenomenon because it broke new ground in terms of content and writing. For comparison, as popular as The Big Bang Theory might have been, it was not a cultural phenomenon like Friends. Friends was obviously helped by the media landscape at the time, but you can't fake your way into being culturally influential to that degree.

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Prax150 t1_iuinpno wrote

You're drastically downplaying the similarities to Living Single, but even if it was just the basic concept, that still makes it derivative, by definition. On its own being derivative isn't necessarily bad, of course art is iterative and there are tons of shows that are great are also derivative, I just don't think the quality of Friends makes up for that. But I already admitted that this is my subjective view.

Whether or not it was a cultural phenomenon is not up for debate and I never suggested it was, but, again I don't know how that proves anything about its quality. A ton of people liking a mediocre thing doesn't make it retroactively better. Of course it was more popular than The Big Bang Theory but, again, as I pointed out, that could be at least in part attributed to its timing. Friends was perfectly timed culturally with the popularity of appointment viewing. It's pre-DVR, largely pre-internet, and at the apex of NBC's Must See TV. People watched Friends Thursday nights because that's just what you did on Thursday nights. When TBBT, Modern Family etc came on it wasn't like that anymore. We'll never know if they would have been as popular if they all came on at the same time but the culture around TV was already different.

And I would love to know what you think was groundbreaking about the show. I don't think Friends did anything that Living Single, Seinfeld or other similar shows hadn't already done. The biggest difference I can think of is how Jerry and co never dated people of colour whereas Ross did. But as the Living Single debate has long proven I don't think that undoes the quote-unquote "problems" with Friends and race. If Friends is "groundbreaking" for being sex-positive etc in the mainstream then so is TBBT for what it was doing for nerd culture, or Modern Family for gay couples on TV.

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Latter_Feeling2656 t1_iuivpyj wrote

"You're drastically downplaying the similarities to Living Single, but even if it was just the basic concept, that still makes it derivative, by definition."

One of the issues with this argument is that nothing much of Living Single was original, either. The free floating cast of peers had been long established by Seinfeld and even shows like The Golden Girls. The long-running romances come from Cheers and multiple clones. One show can't be said to copy another if they both just trace back to common ancestors.

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Prax150 t1_iuj33hx wrote

> On its own being derivative isn't necessarily bad, of course art is iterative and there are tons of shows that are great are also derivative

This was literally the thing I said right after that part of my comment so, yeah.

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CableCoShow t1_iuirdfn wrote

Your entire comment was tearing down Friends, so you were using derivative as a pejorative, and there was nothing negative about its use of a similar concept. Did Living Single rip off Three's Company? A Different World? Seinfeld? MTV's Real World? Wait, The Golden Girls? Changing genders, ages, setting, or adding characters doesn't make it a completely new thing. It's silly to say there's anything negative about using a concept.

The changes to women's lives that started in earnest in the 1970s had culminated to a new level of independence in the 1990s and that's what Living Single and Friends were reflecting. No one ripped anyone off. It was where society was at that moment.

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Prax150 t1_iuj3c30 wrote

> Your entire comment was tearing down Friends, so you were using derivative as a pejorative, and there was nothing negative about its use of a similar concept.

I said a bunch of things about Friends but you decided to fixate on that one word because it's seemingly the only thing you can refute.

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CableCoShow t1_iuj49v2 wrote

You're either young and weren't around before and after the show started, or you're a revisionist with a bad memory. Everything you said is known to be false by anyone who lived then and who knows anything about TV production and writing. I just can't waste time grabbing examples and news articles, etc.

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Prax150 t1_iuja4st wrote

So you're just not going to address anything I said and throw out ad hominems claiming that I can't have an opinion about Friends because you perceive that I'm either too young or too old to remember the nuanced history around the show? Wtf are you even talking about lmao

I do like how I'm apparently not worth your time to actually address what I said but worth enough of it for you to try and insult me. I'm sorry I don't like your favourite show as much you, I guess?

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CableCoShow t1_iujbqn1 wrote

How did I insult you? I said you're either analyzing this without being there and basing it on modern perception, or you have a warped memory and sense of what came before and how Friends was different. You can't just put any show in Thursday night and have it become a hit for a decade. That's idiotic, if you want to be insulted now.

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