Friends

A regular ironclad barrage of laughter, life situations, and also my favorite series of all time. Each character is precisely characterized, each has their own weakness that they can be caught on, and surely everyone knows someone who hits on girls constantly, makes nerve-wracking jokes, loves science, never misses a fashion magazine, adores cleaning, or is just plain out there. It's hard to say whether Friends would succeed today as well, but whenever I start watching from the beginning, I find myself at the first episode, questioning whether I could believe that it would go so far, for ten absolutely beautiful years. Very few creations hold so much truth in them, that you can recognize yourself in them, that they are from life. Watching the last episode is like letting your best friends leave. (11.01.2006)

Friends was and remains the flagship of all sitcoms and from the beginning, the series had exceptional commercial success practically wherever it was shown. Top screenwriters were involved in it and that amounted to the teamwork of ten to twelve screenwriters and the series also had strong advertising support. Its success was based on the model of six well-defined contrasting characters, and it relied on humor derived from the attitudes and thinking of teenagers, which the characters still maintained in adulthood. The immutability of the behavior of the famous six is typical even in later seasons. They still fall in love, break up, argue, and reconcile, as if they were sixteen years old, even though they are in their thirties. A child or marriage is merely a backdrop. The laid-back atmosphere that radiated from the series, along with plenty of wordplay and the performances of the main characters led to success. I would give the first season 95%, but over time, the series somewhat became repetitive with the same patterns. Overall impression: 65%. (14.06.2006)

Friends can be described absolutely perfectly with one word: contentment. Everything is just so cute, pleasant and content. A gag here, a snappy comeback there, the chemistry between the actors. Each character represents a certain type of humor, so luckily it isn’t the same type of jokes on all sides, so you never get bored. Although it isn’t a "must-see-every-episode" thing, and certainly isn’t the best sitcom of all, but for calm relaxation it’s ideal. In other words, it serves its purpose to the full. (16.03.2022)

Never-ending reruns on TV actually made me adopt the series as my own. Then followed a few years of rest and doubts whether it had aged too much, but now for its twentieth anniversary, I'm planning a rewatch. That's because recently I've seen some gems again like The One Where Monica And Richard Are Just Friends and I had to watch it three times. Courteney Cox and Tom Selleck are among the best straight couples that make me blush. And then Joey and Rachel were reading "The Shining" and "Little Women" and decided to put those books in the freezer because it was all too much for them... Classic. (03.02.2009)

The best sitcom of all time that was ever recorded in sitcom history. All seasons are great, even though the end of this series will always make me sad every time I see the last episode. I can watch it over and over again and never get bored. And whoever doesn't like Friends is a boring stick in the mud. (22.01.2019)