'Friends' to the end
By Frazier Moore
Associated Press
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| The cast members of the NBC television series "Friends," are, clockwise from top center, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox Arquette, Matt LeBlanc, Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry and Lisa Kudrow.
Gannett News Service 'Friends' Final show 8 tonight NBC (KHNL-8) Parting partying Share tonight's "Friends" finale with friends. Here are free local viewing parties you can attend: Dave & Buster's • 7-9 p.m., Viewpoint Bar Eastside Grill • 7-9 p.m.; also, 5 p.m. tape-delayed broadcast Ruby Tuesday • Mililani Town Center On the Web: See what fans wrote about their favorite "Friends" memories at Gannett News Service's Best of "Friends" Web site. Click on the link at honoluluadvertiser.com. |
The reason can be boiled down to a pair of words: Six and Equal. As a final display of this splendid alchemy, the series' one-hour conclusion airs tonight on NBC at 8 (preceded by a one-hour retrospective). With that, a fine-tuned, never-fail comedy machine will be dismantled for its principals to go their separate ways.
Joey (Matt LeBlanc) will be heading to L.A., to pursue his acting career next season as the title character of an NBC "Friends" spinoff.
Monica and Chandler (Courteney Cox Arquette and Matthew Perry) are likely to flee for the suburbs with their adopted babe in arms (the mother was going into labor at the end of last week's episode).
The real nail-biter: Will Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) really take the glamorous fashion job and move to Paris with the child she had with Ross (David Schwimmer)? Will Ross, in love with her since high school, be left heartbroken in Manhattan?
As for Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow), already rewarded with her happy ending when she was married — outside the Friends flock — to Mike, could there be a last-minute twist? Say, for instance: We discover to our shock that she's actually an equities broker in Seattle who once went out with Frasier Crane! The past "Friends" decade has all been Phoebe's dream!
When "Friends" premiered on Sept. 22, 1994, it ranked a robust 15th place. It was tied for eighth place for the 1994-95 season, and it's been a top-10 show ever since, claiming the top spot for the 2001-02 season.
A show about six people, "Friends" arrived during a rash of sitcoms that showcased, however tortuously, established standup comics. Consider the top five hits of the 1993-94 season: After first-place newsmagazine "60 Minutes," they were the Tim Allen sitcom "Home Improvement," "Seinfeld," "Roseanne" and Brett Butler's "Grace Under Fire."
And only six months earlier, Ellen DeGeneres, yet another standup, had arrived with her signature sitcom.
Consider also other hugely successful sitcoms like "Cheers," "The Cosby Show," "M*A*S*H," "All in the Family" or "Mary Tyler Moore." Before "Friends," there had never been a sitcom that showcased an ensemble of co-equals both in billing and by narrative design, and maintained that equilibrium throughout the show's run. "Friends" did it for 10 hit seasons.
And despite TV's time-honored habit of ripping off hit formulas, no "Friends" clone has ever caught on. It's hard to even think of any flopped attempts (maybe "It's Like, You Know," which had a brief run on ABC in 1999).
"A show with six people given equal weight, all equally involved in story lines — that was a key part of the show's conception," says David Crane, who created "Friends" with fellow executive producer Marta Kauffman.
"I don't think we thought of it as radical," he says of that balancing act. "It was only when we got into it, we realized: There really is no lead! No one character whose point of view you were supposed to be following, no single character you're supposed to be going through this journey with."
The advantage: "If the characters are interesting enough, you can go on six different journeys."
Of course, the magic of "Friends" wasn't simply its sextet, but also the magic little world they shared, observes Syracuse University television scholar Robert Thompson.
Most sitcoms rely on an authority figure: a parent, a boss, a domineering spouse or even a bossy pal. But "Friends" took place in a realm free of authority figures, says Thompson, likening it to "The Brady Bunch," of all things, "if Mike and Carol had walked around the corner for a pack of smokes and never come back."
"The theme song says 'Always stuck in second gear,' and they were: In their 20s, between adolescence and adulthood," he says. "And that, of course, is the dream of everyone: To maintain the ethos of life in a college dorm, beyond college."
Another distinguishing factor of "Friends": lack of conflict among the characters.
Where the plots and humor of most sitcoms depend on characters butting heads (or at least zinging each other with put-downs), the "Friends" friends "really care about each other, and act like it," says David Bushman, a curator at the Museum of Television and Radio.
Most of what goes on between these six, says Bushman, is friendship demonstrated in funny or touching ways.
In place of conflict is something more subtle, but just as powerful: a subtext of sexual tension pushing and pulling at these three red-blooded guys and three lovely gals who, as the song pledges, will "be there for you."
Sometimes it's more than a subtext. Besides the courtship and marriage of Chandler and Monica, and the Ross-and-Rachel romance, Joey had a fling with Phoebe (although he thought she was her twin sister, Ursula) and made a play for Rachel, among other connections. Turns out, staying just friends isn't easy. (For the record: Siblings Ross and Monica maintained proper decorum with each other.)
No reports ever surfaced of actual romance among the six "Friends" stars. Nonetheless, their real-life friendship clearly stayed in synch with that of their characters. And lucratively so, especially at contract negotiation time, when their unified front won them most recently a reported deal of $1 million per episode and a piece of the show's syndication profits.
Detractors of "Friends" (and they do exist) call the series shallow, contrived and too cute by half. But no one disputes the co-stars' chemistry, or their skill for giving their characters an authenticity that flourished far beyond the bounds of the show's basic formula.
Look no further than quick-witted, self-deprecating Chandler. "He could have been just a comic device," says Crane, "but we had Matthew in the role, so we could eventually turn Chandler into a leading man."
The casting process was onerous, Crane recalls. No way could one character fade into the woodwork, or vanish from the show altogether, if the star didn't work out. Nor could any one of them overwhelm the others. The pressure to get the right six actors was huge.
So Season 10 comes to a close, but "Friends" will be remembered for its popularity and endurance.
Still, in between the tears and hype, "Friends" invites a game of what-if:
What if one of the stars, or one of the characters, had been a dud? What if a feud among the cast had led to someone's defection? What if one of the actors had exited along the way in pursuit of even greater stardom, as several of them were tempted to do? What then?
"Would we have introduced a new 'sixth friend'? The answer is no," says Crane emphatically. No need. "The other five would have been so strong. Besides, I don't know if there's any magic in the number six."
Maybe not. Except this time.
• • •
Ad spot on sitcom finale fetches up to $2M
Advertisers are paying up to $2 million for 30 seconds on the "Friends" finale tonight, making it the Super Bowl of sitcoms.
That puts the one-hour finale, which NBC has estimated will draw an audience of at least 50 million people, second in price only to the Super Bowl this year. CBS took in $2.3 million for a half-minute of ad time on the Super Bowl.
The Academy Awards took in $1.5 million per 30-second ad spot on ABC.
"This is one of those rare media events," said Charlie Rutman, president of Carat USA, a major buyer of advertising time for large companies. "It's a program that has captured a generation and a lifestyle for 10 years. It's become more than just a television program."
Some of the companies advertising in the finale, like Hewlett-Packard and Gatorade, are debuting new commercials today, just like companies do for the Super Bowl.
Hewlett-Packard's ad will show how the company's technology helped create the animation for the upcoming "Shrek 2" movie, said Scott Berg, director of worldwide media for the company.
Debuting a new ad "makes it that much more special and it sets you apart from those on the stage who might just be running more typical ads," he said.
Gatorade will be continuing its series of ads featuring a youngster who gets to play sports with his heroes. The new ad will feature Jason Kidd, Lisa Leslie and Yao Ming.
The "Friends" finale is considered invaluable not only because of the large audience, Berg said, but because viewers will likely pay closer attention than on many shows. There will be less channel surfing during commercials, he said.
Hewlett-Packard bought ad time for "Friends" a year ago, enabling the company to get lower prices than those who waited, he said.
"The annual Academy Awards come up every year," said Rutman. "The idea of something coming up with so much hype and so much interest — it's like the sun, the stars and the moon all getting lined up at once."
NBC is surrounding the one-hour finale with additional programming: a one-hour special with show highlights preceding it and a two-hour "Dateline NBC" special last night. In addition, the show's cast will appear on the "Tonight" show tonight.
The network said advertisers are being charged a higher premium for these other shows as well.
Bob Flood, head of national broadcast advertising buying at the firm Optimedia, predicted the "Friends" finale won't match the reach of shows such as "Cheers" and "M-A-S-H" when they ended.
"This is a much more competitive landscape," he said. "But clearly, NBC is putting a lot of promotion behind this to ensure that it's going to be a ratings success."
— David Bauder, Associated Press
