Friends

For my birthday last year I got the wonderful new complete Friends dvd box, which has all the seasons and more importantly, extras. As I am one of the few people in this world (I know only one other who does this) who watches and likes audio commentary with movies or series, this must be the biggest benefit of the thing. So I have steadily been working my way through the seasons, going very slow (I'm at the middle of s03 now, and my birthday was in October) and realising that even though Friends has been on tv here for at least 10 years, there are still some episodes I have never seen. Amazing.
Now I know Friends is a generational thing, because most of the people in their late 30s and 40s that I talked to never watched it or never liked it, while most teens nowadays will hardly appreciate it, because it's not nearly as fast and dirty and disturbing as popular series today (True Blood, Glee, to name a few examples). So it's roughly people who are between 20 and 35 that like it and love it. Which is interesting, because they were between 10 and 25 when the series came out, and in the first season, most of the characters are 25 (this seriously troubled me, because most of them already have a job and a house and some sort of mature living situation, whereas most people I know at 25 are still adolescent students. Then again, it is (was?) still possible to just go to uni here in the Netherlands, whereas in the US, you need to have a big trust fund or give them your first-born to be allowed in), so they were watching people their same age or older. Slowly but steadily, the younger watchers are starting to reach the same age as the charcters, and when I started watching this dvd box, I actually was the same age as the characters were. The actors in question were naturally all at least 5 years older then the part they play, but we're talking the 90s here, so no problem there.
What you always do when watching friends is discuss who resembles which person you know in real life, something that already started in secondary school, when some friends thought I was a Monica, others that I was a Phoebe, and others again that I was a Ross. Having met a true Monica, Phoebe, and Ross since then (seriously, it does not matter what these characters do, there are 3 people in the world who are exactly like them) I can now say for sure that there is no character in Friends that I am exactly like, but I do have some parts of most of them. Interestingly, I also know a Chandler (who was called a Chandler in secondary school and never lost the label), but no true Joeys or Rachels. Many people have parts of them, but most of them are more intelligent, or less self-absorbed.
Having done that for years, there is a thing I noticed that has changed; the character I like best. When I was younger, I used to like Rachel, Phoebe, and Ross, because they were kinda smart and interesting. Joey I thought was an arrogant sleazeball, Chandler was just annoying, and Monica obsessively annoying. But now, after years of watching, my opinion is reversed. Rachel has become self-absorbed and shallow, Phoebe you sometimes just want to slap when she refuses to respond normally, and Ross is really manipulative and mean. While Joey, Chandler, and Monica have a depth of character that I never realised was there, and most of their actions are founded on their insecurity (about their intelligence, success, looks, attractiveness to the other sex, etc), which the others don't seem to have.
I thought about that, because it was strange, and then I realised that what I partly have come to appreciate more is not the character, but the actor playing that character. This idea mainly came to me when Matt LeBlanc was on Top Gear a few weeks back, and I realised that I never would have watched that a couple of years ago, because he must be this self-absorbed arrogant guy, but now that I like Joey more I did watch and Matt was really nice and sweet and smart. It must be interesting to play someone so shallow, slow, and stupid when you are a pretty smart guy yourself. Same goes for Courtney Cox, it must be weird playing someone who is fat (in the flashback episodes), insecure, and compulsive when you are reckoned to be one of the most popular women of the time. And Matthew Perry, really, he must have had the hardest time, being the youngest and also being addicted to so many things and going through rehab during filming. It's sad how the funny people are often those who suffer the most. Anyway, playing Rachel or Phoebe or Ross, by contrast, seems really easy, because they somehow miss a huge depth of character, and are basically stereotypes. The others are stereotypes too, but have a more realistic psychological foundation, which to me makes them more interesting, but also a bigger achievement for the actors. Lastly, of course, Jennifer Aniston has been one of the most popular women of all time, while Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer got by perfectly fine without Friends, so they somehow seem to "need" it less than the others.
Now it seems as if my liking the characters is based on some sort of sympathy vote, but that's really not true; the liking came first, and the motivation simply followed. I like Chandler because he is a funny guy, not because I'm constantly thinking "gee, I wonder if Matthew was already addicted to Vicodin at this point". Still, it's interesting to look back on the series you watched in your teens, and see how your opinions about them changed, and thus see how you have changed, and in what different way you now watch them. I wonder what I will think about Friends in 10 years time, when I will actually have lived the same "agespan" the characters have.