No longer Friends

A still from Friends

I discovered Friends much like the rest of my generation — a few years before the show came to an end in 2005. Those were the days when our consumption of international entertainment was dependent on the few cable channels which would broadcast these shows, and the hope that our parents wouldn’t be in the living room when the “adult jokes” would come on. While Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, the antique-but-fresh-for-India Full House, and 3rd Rock from the Sun were all fun to watch, Friends was on top of the list for me, despite the fact that some of the jokes took a good five years to dawn on me.

Friends defined my generation. It encouraged us to define our own values and assured us that it was okay to be who we really were. What’s interesting is that there are still younger people out there who are watching it, and deriving the same life lessons I did. I’m not alone when I make the statement that I knew Monica (Courteney Cox), Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow), Ross (David Schwimmer), Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Joey (Matt LeBlanc) as well as I did my own friends. Even today, when I’m having a slow, or an awful day, I take to the Internet and watch carefully drafted compilations of “Chandler Bing’s best jokes”.

Over the years though, there have been many requests from fans, asking for a

Friends reunion, either by way of a new episode or a movie, requests which the show’s creators have vehemently denied. So when news came that the cast of

Friends have reunited for a TV show which pays tribute to James Burrows (one of the directors of

Friends ), the Internet went into a frenzy. “The reunion’s going to happen!” was the collective squeal on my Facebook timeline. A photo of the cast (minus Matthew Perry), together with the cast of

The Big Bang Theory , released yesterday, creating an even bigger buzz.

I’d like to place on record two things — the “reunion” is of the cast members, not the characters. They’re going to talk about Jim Burrows, and it’s more likely to be a somewhat touching yet boring documentary about the man. The second is that I’m very thankful that there is no “reunion”, and that I was not one of those fans who wanted a reunion movie or even an episode, because it destroys the perfect ending and the perfect lives that the show, and consequently, the fans imagined for them in the final episode. That is one reason. The other, and perhaps more truthful reason is that I don’t want to see the cast, now older and with grey hair — it isn’t just a reminder of their age, but of mine as well.