Why Sitcom friendships are the scam of the century?
Even though I hate being the bearer of bad news, I want to start by putting a harsh reality out there. Every beautiful friendship that gets you hooked on a potentially mediocre sitcom is nothing but a big fat lie. After binge-watching the popular sitcom Friends for the 20th time or so, I tried to pay closer attention to the seemingly perfect friendship between these six young, attractive New Yorkers that got the world hooked and made the show the most-watched TV production in history. Even though I’m a big fan of the show and I can identify an episode from a 2-second clip, I can’t be a mindless fan without any critical thinking. Therefore, I will deconstruct the sitcom model that “Friends” perpetuated into comedy shows until this very moment without angering the hordes of fans who cherish the show (including myself).
It’s mind-boggling to think about how “Friends”, a sitcom that started three decades ago, inspired the most popular modern shows like How I Met Your Mother or even The Big Bang Theory. While these two examples are a bit different from the popular sitcom, they have overwhelming similarities, such as the adorable bromance, the basic main character that falls in love with a beautiful (out of his league) girl, the neat freak, the womanizer or pervert, and the “weirdo”… It’s almost like Friends ignited a revolution into the world of comedy and concocted a magical formula that every writer adopts in hope of replicating that success. However, the immeasurable world domination of “Friends” is unfortunately built on a confusing illusion that the show talks about Friendship. While that premise is the image the writers and producers tried to sell, it’s far from what the show delivered in its 10-season run. The way our world is engineered is incompatible with such a fairytale.
Undoubtedly, the success of Friends is not just based on how good the writers and actors are but rather how much young adults in their mid-twenties crave the support system that the show is putting forth. But was that support system even realistic? As an adult in his mid-twenties (more like late twenties, but it’s more comforting to say mid-twenties), I understand the importance of this transitional period in life where our friends become the family we choose for ourselves. But from my experience with similar big groups of friends, it is very different, and in some cases, the group can even end up imploding into a thousand shattered pieces. So, I’m going to deconstruct five different assumptions in the show that contribute to the unattainable friends’ group.
- Where’s your family?
A question that never stopped to baffle me… I know that we’ve seen, more or less, the parents of all characters, but in the world, I live in, people feel a social obligation to spend the holidays with their families. However, for ten years, the group spent every Thanksgiving and Christmas together… I know that different cultures in the world define family obligations differently, but one thing is for sure: unless your family is toxic, you are more involved in their lives, which clearly takes away from the time you can spend with your friends (especially to celebrate important holidays)
2. College friends vs. adult friends:
When I was still in college, I remember feeling that I’d reached the climax in terms of friendship (which was the case on certain levels), but the harsh reality is that after you graduate, you go off to doing your own thing making it very unlikely for you to live in front of the apartment of your ex’s roommate’s sister. I mean, what are the odds, for god’s sake… So when we graduate and enter the professional world or go to grad school, we will not be able to take our best friends with us. Humans evolve in different directions, and that’s simply a fact. As an adult, you will make new friendships that will have completely different dynamics for obvious reasons.
3. Ex’s hanging out with each other
Well, this show and many other similar ones keep taking this idea to the next level. Anyone who tells you they are friends with their ex is either lying to you or still in love with that person (or the opposite, so they enjoy the attention). I’m not going to say it’s impossible since there is an exception of 1 to 10 million, maybe… but it’s extremely unlikely in the structure put forth by the show.
4. Busy lives
I wish I had as much free time to sit around at coffee shops and hang out with friends, but the fact is I can’t! Why? because I have a job and multiple other obligations to tend to… I remember this one iconic scene where the group was talking about how their respective bosses don’t like them, and then Joey says, “Maybe it’s because you’re all hanging around here at 11:30 on a Wednesday”. I wish I had such a flexible job, but even post-COVID with a hybrid position, I wouldn’t be able to casually hang with all my friends who also have this kind of flexibility… what are the odds?
5. A group of cliques or a big group of friends?
One harsh reality that some friends eventually learn to accept is that a big group is just a collection of smaller cliques that feel more comfortable with some people compared to others. I noticed that big groups of friends tend to have an expiration date. That date isn’t conditional on marriage, kids, or moving away as much as the variance in defining friendships. If you and I perceive friendship the same way, we will align our expectations and hence avoid disappointment. A big group of friends has statistically less chances of having their expectations in check (no actual available statistics, but the sentence felt cooler with the word “statistically”). That’s when these social groups eventually end up accidentally inviting in a great foe known as gossip. One early sign of doom for that group is two or more people gossiping about the others, and the rest is history.
What sitcoms fail to demonstrate is a realistic approach to finding friends. So the next time you feel bad about your friendships and relationships while romanticizing the show “Friends”, I want you to think of it as fiction because the likelihood of experiencing it is as high as getting a letter from Hogwarts…I’m still waiting for mine, in case you were wondering!
