‘FRIENDS’
September 1994- May 2004
On May 13th 2004, it was a sad and emotional day for the fans of the show. This day will be forever remembered and fans will never forget that fine group of friends, who were worldly famous for talking about their lives while drinking coffee at Central Perk. This show will be marked down as one of the most watched and wealthiest television shows’ of all time.
So now there will be no more ‘Mister Sarcastic’ Chandler Bing, no more ‘The Guy Who Sleeps With Women and Never Calls the Again’ Joey Tribbiani, no more ‘lectures that put you to sleep’ Ross Geller, no more ‘exchanges gifts for store credit’ Rachel Green’, no more ‘I like to clean everything seventeen times a day’ Monica Geller, and last but not least the ‘ditzy blonde vegetarian’ Phoebe Buffay. But the one character we will never forget is the guy who makes innocent coffee for his coffee fanatic customers including the group of friends I have mentioned above. If you watch or have watched ‘Friends’ before you may also know him as an ‘I Love Rachel Green’ fan. He may dye his hair to that shiniest white hair, but in the end we finally see his true colours. Yes that’s right, in the last episode ‘Friends’ that was written, Gunther (the man he is) confesses his undying love to Rachel in front of the man (Ross) he holds hatred over. However it is more jealousy than hatred because Ross is the man that Rachel has loved throughout the past 10 years it was aired for.
The reason why I think ‘Friends’ is a well-related television show around the world is because we can relate to the show in our everyday lives, which brings us a sense of reality. Meaning you can imagine yourself actually on the show and ‘in their shoes.’ But the show would not be the same (for example, humorous) without their audience/fans and their influenced attention to the show. ‘Friends’ was thrived and in need of a large audience, just like every other television programme or film. So the reaction to a character is inflicted to how the audience will respond to it. For example, a sad moment in the episode of ‘Friends’ was when Monica and Chandler got to hold their adopted twin babies. The audience reacted to this as they could feel the character’s emotions of joy and sadness.
What if there was no audience? Then what would be the point in having the show? What draws the attention to the production’s targeted audience is the continuous humour throughout its ten years of showing. Because without the humour, there would be no show! ‘So have no fear, because Perry is here’, is what the writers would have been saying as it was Matthew Perry (who played Chandler Bing on ‘Friends’) who created most of the humorous jokes and his cheesy pickup lines for his and other characters of the show. We may just think of this show as just a plain old ‘funny comedy’, but it was the way that they used the humour, that gave out underlining specific messages. Some messages were more serious than others, and they used that time to have a sad moment, but because the show I was supposed to be a sitcom, they needed to add humour to it. The most serious messages have tried to reach out to their ‘fellow audience’ are Theft, Suicide, Death, and Adoption. On the last episode of ‘Friends’ we see that Monica and Chandler receive their two twin children through adoption, as they could not conceive their own. The message adoption was used through out this episode to promote to their audience that why abort when you can give hope to people, who can not have children and also giving the ‘child’ a chance to live.
After the last episode in season 10, ‘Friends’ has finally come to its end. So for the emotional fans of ten years, it will be a sad year. But with the help of TVNZ we can now watch reruns on TV 2 at 6:30pm weeknights. This will be a great way to say good-bye, one last time, before putting it to sleep for good. As a source once said, “ This will be one show that will be truly missed.”
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