In the seventh season of FRIENDS, a few hours before Monica Geller and Chandler Bing's wedding, Joey walked in excitedly in the purple walled apartment where the girls were planning for the big day. He informed them that he got a part in a complicated film based on World War 1, and he was too excited to fight the Nazis. Rachel Greene corrected him and said, Nazis were defeated in the Second World War. When he tried to reconfirm who fought against whom in the first World War, the characters maintained an awkward silence.
In another earlier season of the show, a bookseller paid a visit to Joey at his apartment. After hours of lecturing him on the importance of books, Joey tells the seller, that he is a man sitting in his living room during the peak working hours of New York. Does such a man have the money to buy a set of Encyclopedias? 'There are a few things books cannot teach you,' Joey had remarked.
FRIENDS taught us that intelligence comes in all shapes and sizes and having knowledge of dinosaurs, social or political activists worldwide, or data processing does not necessarily mean that you qualify to be better than the rest of the group.
Monica had been the control freak of the group, but she didn't have the quality to dominate her staff at the restaurant, despite being the head chef. Rachel took bad decisions when it came to walking in or out of marriages, yet she was widely successful in her professional life. Joey knew well how to keep a girl impressed, got the hint when a girl liked him but he didn't know that the Netherlands was not the same as Neverland. Ross despite holding a PhD, did not know how to flirt. Before getting into a relationship with Monica, Chandler used to believe that the first fight between couples meant termination of the relationship. Phoebe, despite her independence, chose to date a guy who manipulated her into sex, forgot her name, and never called her back. In other words, each of these characters had their own share of upsides and downsides. and that had been the attractive quality of the series.
FRIENDS: The lives of six common New York-based Americans
One needn't have to be particularly intelligent about the political happenings in the US to understand FRIENDS. Neither did the show widely explore the New York culture, Vs Los Angeles culture, that is often experienced in the works of Woody Allen. There are few shows that needn't have to be a commentary on the politics of the country, they can only be presented as they are.
The six characters, Rachel Greene, Monica Geller, Phoebe Buffay, Ross Geller, Joey Tribbiani and Chandler Bing lived as simple neighbours who chose to be in their social knit because that is what adulting is all about. No matter how much we fight with our close friends, we all want them to remain in the same circle.
Friends highlighted the importance of having best friends, personal lives even during the busiest of schedules in New York. Out of all the members who are expected to make a guest appearance, David Beckham, Tom Selleck, Reese Witherspoon, BTS, it was Malala Yosafzai's name that caught our attention.
Why is everything turning into a political commentary?
Off late various American shows, and films have converted into a commentary on the present state of the country. In Wonder Woman 1984, Princess Diana kept saying, 'I hate guns', but that failed to match with the context of the film. A superhero saying 'I hate guns,' is a privileged thing to say, and it does not have the same emotion as watching Bruce Wayne (who watched his parents die in the dark alley,) hate the guns.
In the popular Netflix show, Fuller House, which had been a reboot of the television show Full House, young Tommy had said, that he will never take the name of Donald Trump in the house, indicating that he was a curse on America, something akin to that of the nude scenes of Game of Thrones.
The Marvel-based television show, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier too ended up being a commentary on the political atmosphere of the country instead of sticking to the original scripts of the novel. Meanwhile, WandaVision, which had released a few weeks prior to The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, remained much more popular, since the makers chose to stick to the script of the show rather than use the show as a means to comment on the political atmosphere.
Have we FORGOTTEN the real meaning of ENTERTAINMENT:
In the year 2001, the makers of FRIENDS reshot an episode of the show, which had made fun of blowing up a building. It was the year when the horrific 9/11 took place, the horror had shaken the country, New Yorkers lost their loved ones. FRIENDS had been their only source of comfort. The comfort arose since the show had been a short throwback to everything that New York used to be, or could be when the world becomes a right place again.
There's one thing Americans and mainly Hollywood folks need to get straight. The world has moved on from the 2020 elections where Former US Donald Trump lost to Present US President, Joe Biden. The former President was banned from most social media platforms, and now hardly anyone talks about him. That is because, the world HAS moved on, and dear Hollywood so should you. Else it is getting next to impossible to enjoy anything new that you have to bring to the table.
If you really want to go back to things how they were, maybe the makers can go back to the old episodes of FRIENDS and revisit the times when guests such as Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, Robin Williams, Susan Saradon, Bruce Willis, Brooke Shields, Ben Stiller, Isabella Rosselini, Billy Crystal, Jon Favreau, Winona Ryder, Kristin Davis, Sean Penn, Anna Farris, Dakota Fanning, Gary Oldman, casually entered the show as secondary characters, and made their mark, without making any political comments on the US. It wouldn't be completely imbecile to make a reunion happen and keep it solely about entertainment and good laughs.
