I'll Be There For You — 'Friends: The Reunion'
Our 'Friends' gathered for one last time to show us that real friendships never die.
There’s a brief, heartwarming segment in HBO’s Friends: The Reunion where fans share personal notes of how the series impacted their lives. These testimonies are undoubtedly the most sincere moments, without being artificial or constructed, in this special episode.
They work wonderfully - even outside the international nostalgia - because all of us share some kind of personal and emotional connection to the show. We all have different reasons why we relate to these six goofballs.
In my case, Friends was my go-to procrastination activity in the mid-2000s. One of my high-school classmates lent me all ten seasons, and I watched them after school every afternoon instead of studying. It was literally my guilty pleasure. I’ve seen a bunch of episodes on TV before, but that was the first time I binged the entire show from back to back in the course of a few weeks. Let's not talk about how that affected my school performance.
Since then, I haven't seen a minute of it. So I was a little surprised by how much this reunion worked on me on a nostalgic level. It was able to bring back all the joyful memories, heartfelt moments, and pure fun from an era when I had no idea life was gonna be this way. I was a kid, full of hope, passion, and hunger for a kind of future that seemed unlikely to happen the way it did.
As one of the creators notes, Friends is about that life period when your friends are your family. It's the most obvious and accurate description ofthe show, but I’ve never thought of it like that back then.
So, watching this reunion was a perfect, timely reminder of how definitive those years had become for many of us - being unaware of their influence on how we'll turn out as people. That's the beauty of it. We can only realize the significance of that time as we become older - like a lot older.
I must admit, though: there's an eerie and bittersweet element to see how time treats people. In this case, specifically, how time treated the cast of Friends who were, at one point, the most famous celebrities in the world.
Every one of them is in their fifties now - and minus the chubby, uncle-like Matt LeBlanc - they all seem a bit worn-out and exhausted by the life-long fame the show gifted them. It's hard to ignore and not to wonder about how many Botox injections/surgeries each of them had over the years. As if they tried to beat time by artificially stretching their twenties-look as long as they possibly could. This isn't cynical criticism from me, though. It’s simply an observation.
We, as un-famous mortals, can only imagine how challenging and demanding their career has become once the series ended. The weight and pressure they had to carry whenever they landed a new job. To prove, over and over again, they can still be playing different roles without the audience seeing them only as a copy of their Friends’ character. And not everyone managed to overcome that barrier without casualties along the way.
‘Friends: The Reunion’ is nostalgia at its most harmless and sincere form, where we don't have to pretend we’re having fun because it happens naturally.
But this is a special occasion that clearly focuses on the celebration of their past success. It’s like a high-school reunion where you feel simultaneously excited and terrified right before you get to meet your once best pals after a long time. It’s odd at first, but as the episode progresses, the nostalgic vibe shifts into a pleasant and warm sentiment that tells you: You’re home. You’re among friends. Relax now.
As the six of them meet and greet each other, there's a natural, sensible chemistry that strikes us immediately. It’s a bond that connects them on a level that’s as close to a work-family as it possibly can be. The way they hug and joke and laugh and cry is just so hard to be faked that it must be real - and I really believe it is.
There are interviews, bloopers, table reads, quizzes, emotional confessions, and a bunch of other things - a fashion show, really? - that are clearly here for the hype and don’t always work. But at its core, this reminiscence can reignite the experience we all had watching Friends at different times in our lives. It's nostalgia at its most harmless and sincere form, where we don't have to pretend to have fun because it happens naturally.
There’s only one thing missing - which usually happens in a reunion when you’re standing in the corner, half-drunk, trying to catch a quiet moment with someone - and that’s some self-reflection. We don’t get to hear about what our stars are currently doing or what difficulties they went through in the last seventeen years.
There’s no dialogue about Matthew Perry’s struggles with drug addiction or Jennifer Anniston’s divorces. Matt LeBlanc doesn’t talk about the experience of how it was to play himself in Episodes for five seasons. David Schwimmer doesn’t share any details about his detour as a director in Hollywood. And we don’t get anything from Lisa Kudrow and Courtney Cox either.
Instead of the ridiculous fashion show and some meaningless cameos, I would’ve loved to hear about some serious stuff they had to deal with in the past.
On the other hand, it’s kind of appealing that this special occasion was about nothing else but laughter and enjoyment. That, after seventeen years, the cast still shares a profound, unbreakable, endearing love for each other just the way they did back then. They’re still there for each other - not constantly but always when one of them needs it - and that’s just such a kind and reassuring thing to see these days.
It gives us hope to believe that friendships can remain intact even after nearly two decades. If we take away nothing else but that sweet feeling from this reunion, it was already worth the watch.
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