You know when you feel down or you’re sick and you just want to watch something comforting and easy, something you don’t really need to pay too much attention too but something that’s fun and cheers you up? Films or tv shows that turn that frown upside down? What are your go to entertainment avenues to cheer you the fuck up?
That’s the question I pondered these last few weeks. The
reason being, and believe me, im not going to be using this write up as therapy,
but I have, especially this year, found myself feeling down and disheartened quite
a bit, there are reasons for this that I’m not going to go into but it started in
early December of 2023 When we had some
absolutely devastating news, myself and my brother both found ourselves seeking
out something familiar and fun to just binge watch. For that we turned to The
Simpsons. As a man born in 1983, I grew up through the 90s as a pre-teen and
then the dreaded teenager years and during this period, The Simpsons was a big part
of my TV watching habits.
So in our time of feeling down we returned to the one
constant we have had through the majority of our lives, the show about a yellow
skinned middle American family and the other residents of Springfield. You see,
the simpsons, no matter how much you deny it, those seasons between 3 and 11 has
some of the best sitcom writing ever committed to screen and its animated. Two years
ago when the flu hit me pretty hard, I turned to another animated show. This
one was a first time experience for me and I fell in love with that series.
That show was Bobs Burgers. I binged the living shit out of Bobs Burgers and it
was at the time when the BB movie had recently released. So having caught up completely
with the Belcher’s and their brood of eccentric offspring, I gave the movie a
shot. I loved it and watched it three more times. It was comforting as there was
nothing harmful or offensive in the series and each episode felt like a good
time.
Back to The Simpsons. Sure Homer’s delightful escapades
throughout the town of Springfield were easily accessible due to every season being
available on Disney+, but I guess it was the nostalgia of those earlier, laugh
a second episodes that really hit us and dragged us in. So in conclusion…. Nah I
ain’t finished yet!
So yeah, I guess, The Simpsons is one of my “comfort shows”.
Another show that I find comforting and again, I guess this is due to nostalgia
from a young age, is the show FRIENDS. Ive been feeling a little down, well
actually I’ve been feeling quite a bit down lately and instead of turning to The
Simpsons ive turned to Friends, the show about 6 20-somthings living in New
York. The global phenomenon hits so much more now, especially as a 41 year old
as I can relate much more to the characters of Ross, Rachel, Monica, Phoebe,
Chandler and Joey, than I could back in the 90s when the show first aired and
even more so now after the shock passing of Matthew Perry which, when the news
broke, I found myself rewatching clip compilations of the show. It’s the
familiarity with the characters that I find comforting, the different
storylines and threads that evolved over ten seasons, like Monica and Chandler
getting together, the will they won’t they, on again off again relationship
between Ross and Rachel and the fun banter and aloofness of Joey and Phoebe.
But as a 41 year old rewatching the series, I can clearly see the deeper writing
of the show. Joey is supposed to be the dumbass but while he is portrayed as a
bit of simpleton, Joey is probably the beating heart of the show. He cares deeply
about his friends and will do anything to make sure they’re happy. This is
shown through-out the series but is brought to the forefront about mid way
through the series. These episodes are standouts and shows his character’s development.
The episode with Monica and Chandler’s wedding, where he’s supposed to be on
set to film a WW1 movie with Gary Oldman but hes also supposed to be
officiating the wedding, and more prominently in a few episodes later when they
find out that Rachel is pregnant but Joey doesn’t know, he thinks Phoebe is and
decides to step up and marry her to make sure that the baby has a father to grow
up with. Its these things that really do make Joey out to be the heart of the
show. Then you have Chandler and Monica, both characters are consistently unlucky
in love, Chandler with Janice being the biggest continuing story thread and Monica
and Richard (played by the cool as ice Tom Selleck), the big pre-Chandler
romance of Monica’s. Those two characters who haven’t found the right partner
find themselves drawn to each other and they then become the shows strongest
couple, even if Monica as a character drastically changes from pre-London to
Post London Monica. They also deal with the problem of having a child, neither
of them are capable of reproducing, and that can be absolutely crushing news to
a really nice couple. What makes their romance stand out as opposed to Ross and
Rachel is that they have a good healthy relationship, you can clearly see in both
writing and the performances, especially Courtney Cox, that Monica and Chandler
deeply love each other and that after their tumultuous previous relationships,
they each finally find their soulmate. It’s really great writing.
Ross and Rachel on the other hand, we know they’re meant to
be together, but their attitudes and personalities are so opposite that their
relationship becomes super toxic. And its not just post first break-up, it
plays through-out the shows 10 seasons, culminating with them finally realizing
they need each other and love each other and its taken them ten fucking years
to come to that conclusion. The biggest problem with Ross and Rachel is how
toxic they are towards each other, they bicker, they argue and at times
legitimately come across as absolutely hating each other, they get jealous of
who the other one is dating, like Ross and Julie, Rachel and Joshua, Ross and
Emily, Rachel and Mark, Ross and Mona, Rachel and fucking Joey, yeah that was a
terrible idea on the part of the writers, with Rachel even going to London on
the day of Ross’s wedding to tell him she loves him. It’s massively frustrating
to the point that it still goes on even after they have a child together, but,
and this is a huge but, their relationship finally gets to a point at the end
of the series where they realise after all the shit they went through, all the
bickering and all the jealousy, that they really are meant to be together. The
finale sets up an extremely emotional and crowd pleasing reconciliation and
after all this time, the toxicity of their on again off again relationship can
finally end and they can hopefully live a happy life together.
What I will say about Ross is that David Schwimmer is an absolute
master of physical slapstick comedy and he’s really not given the credit for his
spot on comic timing, line delivery and facial expressions. I will champion the
shit out of Schwimmer’s amazing comic performance as Ross until my final breath
and should be listed alongside great slapstick physical comics like Jerry Lewis,
Jim Carrey, Rowen Atkinson and even, believe it or not, Jackie Chan. He can
even drama the fuck out of a role too with great serious performances in Band
Of Brothers and Feed The Beast (2016). His return to slapstick Physical comedy
was inevitable and his role in 2020’s Intelligence, a British comedy series,
showed that 16 years after Friends ended, Schwimmer still has the physical comedy
down like the master he is. The Independent published a great article in 2019
titled FRIENDS: DAVID SCHWIMMER IS MOST UNDERRATED ACTOR IN SITCOM, a bit of long ass title but it’s a very interesting
read as well as Cush Jumbo’s podcast Origin’s With Cush Jumbo where the actor
explains how he had such rigorous theatre training and how he had to finely
tunes his skill. It’s a really fascinating listen.
Phoebe is the outlier of the group, she’s not connected to others
in the same way as Ross, Rachel, Chandler and Monica who all share a history
before New York. Ross and Rachel knew each other when Rachel was in High school
as she is Monica’s best friend and has had a crush on her since then, Monica
has knows Rachel since high school and is Ross’s sister, Chandler was Ross’s friend
from collage and met Monica and Rachel in the late 80s when Ross brings
Chandler home to Long Island one Thanksgiving. All we know is that Phoebe knew Monica
in New York and before Rachel, lived with Monica in the iconic apartment.
Obviously, we, as people who have seen the show, know Phoebe’s life story, her
mother died when she was young, she was homeless for a time and has done many
illegal things back in her youth as a way of surviving the mean streets of NYC,
but where does Phoebe fit in? Too me Phoebe is us, the Audience, watching the
live of these people unfold in real-time over the course of ten seasons. Yes,
there is her obvious storylines like the romance with scientist David, her
being the surrogate mother to her brother’s kids and her finding some sort of constant
in Mike at the end but for the most part she is the outsider of the group, she’s
aloof, hippie-ish, creative and at times comes across as a female Joey but what
I love about Phoebe is she acts like the puppet master of the group. She’s a
hard character to define when deep diving Friends and I know a lot of fans of
the show used to ship Phoebe and Joey but to me their relationship is a best
friend relationship, neither have a romantic relationship with each other even
if Joey has kissed Phoebe multiple times, each time being a result of helping
each other out like the time she said she hadn’t had the perfect kiss, Joey
kisses her and there’s no romantic spark as it’s one friend helping out
another, I absolutely adore their platonic relationship and it comes across on
screen as maybe, Joey’s real best friend isn’t Chandler, it’s Phoebe.
Friends has it's flaws like most do. Continuity changes and characters changes are the most obvious. Much like The Simpsons, a show that retcons or adds new information that contradicts previous episodes, Friends does this same thing. Remember That 90s Show? no not the Netflix revival series of That 70s Show, i'm referring to The Simpsons episode from Season 19 that for some reason, changes the 18 season long history of Marge and Homer starting in the 1970 to Homer and Marge meeting in the 1990s when Homer for some unknown reason, was part of a Grunge band. A complete disregard for anything that came before that fans had considered cannon in The Simpsons lore, was flushed away in that one episode, Friends does this too, not so much to the same degree as the Simpsons, Friends continuity, especially Chandler and Rachel, is quite frustrating. At first, from the opening scene of the first episode of season 1, Rachel is introduced to the group after leaving Barry at the altar, we're lead to believe this is the first time they met but wait, in Season 3 Episode 6, a flashback episode, we see the group minus Rachel in Central Perk but when it was a bar not a coffee shop. In walks spoilt Rachel and her spoiled Rich bitch friends yet Chandler who, we'll see again in a flashback later in the series, doesn't recognize Rachel from a few years earlier which brings me to this....in episode 8 of Season 5 we're shown Ross bringing Chandler home to Long Island one thanksgiving and meeting Rachel at Monica and Ross's parents house, Chandler mocks Monica for being fat, then the following Thanks giving, Chandler returns to their house for thanksgiving only to find Monica has shed all the pounds and now looks hot and Monica plans to seduce Chandler. So there are 3 different instances of Chandler and Rachel meeting but each one sort of contradicts the other. Taking into account that the show's first episode is set in 1994 and Chandler and Rachel first met in 1987 at Ross's parents house and then again in 1988 and the first flash back episode takes place only 3 years later in 1991, you'd think that Chandie would have recognized Rachel having spent Two thanksgiving episode and a night of partying at Ross and Chandler's University dorm. I know you could put that down to character development and story progression but it's just a bit confusing. Also who the fuck ever wanted to see Rachel and Joey get together, we all know it should have been Joey and Phoebe.
This article originally started as an outlet for me to talk
about comfort viewing and how comedy can lift you out of a serious slump but its
become a deep dive into the intricacies of early adulthood and group dynamics amongst
a small group of friends. I’m not a sociologist, I work in a supermarket, I left
school at 17 with barely any qualifications and a dream to be a film maker. My
life never went in the direction I wanted it too and that is my fault, however,
I developed an interest in writing, late into my 20s, especially writing about
stuff that interests me like films or television shows, I learnt to look deeper
at what I was watching and started looking at how the show is written, the
dialogue, the characters and the structures and I envy any writer who is able
to tell an entire self-contained story in 22 minutes. Writing is a hard medium
to master and I still have a long way to go. This is the first article I think I’ve
written this year and I hope whoever reads this enjoys my words. Ive been
writing film reviews for fourteen years and while I originally had a format in
which I would write, talk about the films plot, characters, music and cinematography
and then ending with a conclusion, I found that format to be exhaustive and that
I would end up repeating myself, so I decided to go freeform and just journalism
the living shit out of an article.
Thanks for reading…
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