Seeing as how earlier entries in this series covered books dealing with SEINFELD and FRASIER, it seems only natural to now turn to FRIENDS, which (along with the two previously mentioned TV shows) I place in the Holy Trinity of the great 90s sitcoms, that glorious decade and lost golden era where the sitcom reached its apotheosis and cultural zenith (though there are a few post-FRIENDS sitcoms that I also rank highly, mainly THE OFFICE [American version] and HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER). My fandom of this show is a running joke amongst some of my friends, but I do not exaggerate when I tie FRIENDS with GAME OF THRONES as my favorite TV show of all-time. My brothers and I began watching it in 1998, about halfway through season 4, and because by that point in time the show was syndicated we quickly caught up with what was going on via reruns. Actually, the first episode that my brothers and I ever saw was a rerun, 1995's "The One With Two Parts," which was aired as a repeat on February 19, 1998: the night we started watching FRIENDS. As to just why I like the show so much? That's a complicated question. Partly it's because, like the film REALITY BITES, the show serves as a time capsule for a decade I'm still somewhat nostalgic towards (having grown up as a teenager during that time period, I obviously view those as my formative years). Also, and simply put, it's just one of those sitcoms where the acting, the writing, the set design, and other factors too numerous to name seemed to magically fit together into a harmonic whole. Many shows strive to achieve that kind of perfect alchemy, but few succeed. FRIENDS was one of those success stories, obviously. In fact, unlike SEINFELD (which was almost the definition of a sleeper hit), FRIENDS was almost precision-designed to be a hit from Day One, and how that came to be is itself a very interesting story, which leads me to the book under discussion today.
Although a fair number of books on FRIENDS have come out over the last couple of years, Saul Austerlitz's GENERATION FRIENDS, published in 2019, is one of the better ones. Although he did not interview any of the six core cast members, he did interview the showrunners/creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman, executive producer Kevin Bright, and many of the various writers/directors/crew members/guest actors of the show, including director James Burrows, prop master Marjorie Coster-Praytor, Tate Donovan, Jessica Hecht, costume designer Debra McGuire, and many more (the writers in particular contribute a lot). At over 300 pages, it's fairly comprehensive, and is divided into four parts. Part One is 4 chapters long and covers how the show originated, the casting process (one of the most interesting chapters: Courtney Cox was of course the perfect Monica, but it's interesting to imagine an alternate universe where Janeane Garofalo, the showrunners' original choice for Monica, actually joined the show rather than turning them down, to focus instead on what by all accounts was a disastrous experience on SNL), the filming of the pilot episode, and so on. Part Two is 7 chapters long and covers seasons 1 through 3: some interesting chapters in this section include chapter 8 (which deals with how Monica's apartment and the Central Perk coffee house were designed, Rachel's iconic haircut in the early seasons, and how the characters' outfits/costumes were created), chapter 10 (which focuses on the initial contract negotiations), and chapter 11 (which captures some of what went on in the writers' room, and how certain episodes and jokes came about). Part Three is 6 chapters long and covers seasons 4 through 7, and some of its chapters focus on specific things like how the show was produced, an analysis of "The One With The Embryos" episode, an entire chapter on the Monica/Chandler relationship (while on the subject, there are no less than 6 chapters devoted to the Ross and Rachel relationship, scattered throughout the book at various points), and the "Lyle vs. Friends" lawsuit. Part Four is 8 chapters long and covers the final three seasons. Here there are chapters dealing with the controversial Joey + Rachel pairing, another chapter on the show's complex contract negotiations (which makes for very intriguing reading), a chapter on the final episode . . . meanwhile the penultimate chapter covers what the show's creators and stars got up to in the years following FRIENDS, while the last chapter explores how the show attracted a new generation of Millennial fans long after it ended (and some of whom weren't even born when it first aired), and also analyzes the show's cultural impact on pop culture (both in America and abroad).
Unlike some books in recent years that have come out on the TV show (such as Kelsey Miller's lightweight I'LL BE THERE FOR YOU), Austerlitz's book is less concerned about scoring points with the social justice crowd by griping about the show's "...deviations from contemporary liberal orthodoxy" (to quote Austerlitz's text) and more about just giving the reader a lot of behind-the-scenes information on how the show was made, so for that reason I would highly recommend this book, and it even taught me, a FRIENDS obsessive, some things about the show that I had not previously known (for example, in season 5 the writers wanted to introduce a big twist in which the whole gang would temporarily uproot and move to Minnesota). I also agree with the author's notion that, though in some ways predated by SEINFELD, FRIENDS was one of the first major sitcoms that realized that audiences had evolved and were capable of watching shows with story arcs that extended for entire seasons (a concept that some TV critics at the time seemed resistant to), and that the days of sitcoms being stand-alone shows where people tuned in for 30 minutes and quickly forgot about afterwards was in decline.
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