《老友记》缘何已成明日黄花？_BEC初级作文

《老友记》缘何已成明日黄花？

Friends ended less than a decade ago, but it's already a relic of a bygone era--a critically respected network sitcom that enjoyed massive ratings. That's the central irony of the Must-See TV show's legacy: It was one of the last programs to enjoy a national audience before cable and the Internet fully segmented audiences, but the show itself prophesied that fragmentation through its 10-year-long portrait of increasing social segregation.

Friends started out as a somewhat realistic (for network TV) exploration of metropolitan young (white) people, in the same way Roseanne sought to capture (white) working-class Midwestern life. In their original treatment, creators David Crane and Marta Kauffmandescribed the show as a look at "a time in your life when everything's possible," when the future was "more of a question mark." It was a Girls before Girls--Monica and Rachel are 24 when the show begins, just like Lena Dunham's Hannah--but much more optimistic because the economy hadn't yet vomited all over itself after another binge-and-purge cycle. Thus, it's no coincidence that so many of the complaints lodged against Friends--unrealistically expensive lifestyles, pervasive whiteness, youthful frivolity, all that sex--are now being recycled by the anti-Dunham crowd.

Crane and Kauffman contrasted their show against traditional living-room and workplace sitcoms with a then-innovative, now-rote concept. "It's about friendship, because when you're single and in the city, your friends are your family," read the original pitch to NBC. (The peacock execs were apparently so uncomfortable with the idea of a show about twentysomethings that they suggested the creators add a middle-aged man to dole out fatherly advice. Perhaps that explains that NBC also-ran sitcom where Ernest Borgnineplayed Jonathan Silverman's BFF?) The great achievement of Friends' 10 seasons is that Crane, Kauffman, and executive producer Kevin S. Bright convincingly carried the sexy sextet through several life stages: marriage, parenthood, divorce, and the rocky, too-often humiliating road to a fulfilling career.