“OUT Magazine” wants us to remember Friends was homophobic

To its credit, Friends did air a lesbian wedding, between Carol (Jane Sibbett) and Susan (Jessica Hecht), but it primarily served to underscore how uncomfortable Ross was with his ex-wife’s new relationship. In addition to notoriously not allowing the newlyweds to kiss — in fear of upsetting censors — the episode also featured Chandler propositioning a lesbian wedding guest, and Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) blurting out, “Now I’ve seen everything!” during the ceremony. The outburst is allegedly because of a client who died on Phoebe’s massage table earlier in the episode, but it’s hard to ignore the pattern.

Interestingly, when creators David Kauffman and Mara Kauffman reflected on the storylines they regret, neither of them mentioned the show’s homophobic history. (It’s hard, though, to argue with that subplot where Phoebe dates her twin sister’s stalker — because yikes.)

Friends will always be an enormously influential touchstone of its cultural moment, one that paved the way for shows like New Girl, How I Met Your Mother, and Happy Endings. But while the two shows may feel lightyears removed in their politics, it’s almost physically difficult to remember that Will and Grace premiered in 1997 — just as Friends debuted its fourth season. That comedy, although itself imperfect, helped pave the way for LGBTQ+ acceptance, while Friends made queer people into punchlines.

None of that should stop anyone from binging Friends, but if your LGBTQ+ friends don’t join you, there might be a reason for that.

I've never even watched "Friends," and it confounds me that anyone would ever want to.

Victim mentality. It wasn't homophobic, there just weren't any gay characters. There weren't any black characters either but I don't see anyone getting on the racism bandwagon.

Will and Grace premiered 1998.

Friends was the Donald Trump of TV shows.

[quote] I don't see anyone getting on the racism bandwagon.

Plenty of people have pointed out its racist assumptions over the years.

Yes, it is very important — with the lens of 2019 — to scrutinize every TV show, movie, play, opera, and work of literature and art, and then criticize almost all of them for not being “woke” enough. 🙄

Uhhh, I thought that the coffee shop guy was gay?

The coffee shop guy in love with Rachel was gay?

not only it's homophobic and racist, also it has nothing to do with New York, the show always strikes me somewhere in a midwest/flyover country, a city like Milwaukee fits perfectly.

Odd the article doesn't discuss David Schwimmer.

[quote]Yes, it is very important — with the lens of 2019 — to scrutinize every TV show, movie, play, opera, and work of literature and art, and then criticize almost all of them for not being “woke” enough.

Friends got shit about the lack of diversity even when it was on the air.

R6 lol watch this!

r10 I always viewed Friends as a small town white persons dream of NYC. The show was made for and catered to them. In reality, the area the Friends lived in had many Hispanics and even blacks in the 90s.

I love Friends.

R3, there were lesbian characters.

Friends was NYC for Flyover Americans. It had nothing to do with the real NYC, but what flyoverstans imagined living in NYC would be like.

Lesbian women are always welcome in straight peoples bubbles. Gay men are the issue r16

There weren't any "LGBTQ+" characters because, thankfully, when Friends started there was no such thing as "LGBTQ+" (not that there actually is today in the real world).

[quote] Yes, it is very important — with the lens of 2019 — to scrutinize every TV show, movie, play, opera, and work of literature and art, and then criticize almost all of them for not being “woke” enough. 🙄

It might be news to you, but people have been critiquing pop culture and art for literally thousands of years using the standards of their own day.

Not really, r12. Only towards the later seasons was there comment about there not being any black people and so they got Ross a black girlfriend, but the whole "diversity" drive is really a thing of the 2010s. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, if you had black people living the lives represented in Friends, black people would have criticised the show for having completely unrepresentative black characters because black people didn't live supposedly white lives like those of the characters in Friends.

Homophobic and criminally overrated.

r16 guest characters, they didn't have the balls to have permanent gay or black characters. Middle America could deal with a funny quirky gay or black character occasionally but not every episode. That would be too much for the precious pumpkins.

Yes r20, Aristophanes is often criticised for not having enough black, Asian or LGBTQ+ characters in his comedies.

I Love Lucy had no gay characters! How dare she! The Brady Bunch had no gay or black characters! How dare they!

R21 false. Critics were criticizing the show for its lack of diversity since around 1996. They finally gave Ross a black girlfriend due to the pressure from people. The attacks started years before they added a black character.

PS Aisha Tyler’s character was supposed to be white, it was Schwimmer himself that stepped in and demanded she be played by a black actress. He met and liked Tyler so much he demanded it be her. He said a very educated and worldly character like Ross would not be someone who is limited to dating white women. Ross liked intelligent women, hard working women And beautiful women, and there are non White women that are those things.

He also said Joey would not be limited to white women either.

R21, didn’t Oprah famously talk about the lack of black friends early on?

R24, they were recurring guest characters who were in the show the whole way through, a married lesbian couple with a kid. It's not even about having the guts to have permanent gay or black or Asian characters because that's not what people demanded from TV then and would not even have been considered realistic. The idea of a gay character living a Friends kind of lifestyle with a bunch of straight friends was pretty unrealistic and representations of blacks or Asians as part of a mainstream culture and not more exclusively part of a black or Asian subculture was not what black or Asian people wanted at the time.

Go watch some Spike Lee movies to get an idea of how things were back in the mid-90s.

"Critics were criticizing the show for its lack of diversity since around 1996."

Links, r26?

I don't know r27, did she? I don't recall that and why would she single out Friends, since that's exactly what every other show was like back then? Did Oprah ever call out anything for a lack of black characters?

I missed the whole friends phenomenon. In the 90's I was working and was never home in time to catch it. (for the gaylings, DVRs didn't exist, just fyi) When I do catch it switching channels, i feel angry at it and I don't know why. I don't think it's funny and I don't get all the love that people have for it. I feel the same way about Sienfeld. It's so NOT funny.

R29 use google.

I don't get why people bash TV shows of years past. Most people WERE uncomfortable with homosexuality. And even the young straights most likely democratic voting used the gay people for laughs. These shows were only being realistic in portraying the average straight person. We've made so much progress that we have forgotten how engrained homophobia was into society. I'm not gna bash fictional media that have to portray a certain level of realism.

Gays still make most people uncomfortable

It wasn't a terrible show but it's just a silly sitcom. I have no idea why it was so popular and generates so much discussion to this day. It must be in reruns more than any other show. It's on virtually all the time on at least several channels.

r33 Oh honey, you got some self loathing going on there

OUT?

How quaint.

There were mostly white women up for the role, and they were gonna pick a white woman when Schwimmer stepped in and wanted Tyler as the love interest.

He jokes about the shows lack of diversity to this day, and seems to be the one that was most offended by the white-washed NYC Friends was.

Ratings! They had to rate well. In order to rate/sell well you represent what appeals to the masses. You don't make money by making something that only appeals to 2- 10% of the population!

r34 exactly why the actors still make $20 million a year off this show.

There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that Friends was more homophobic than some of its contemporaries, especially since it has new life in streaming media.

What is this "Friends"of which you speak of, Eldergays?

In what world is being aware that most straight people only tolerate gays "self-loathing". I am a realist. I hate people that pretend shit is something it isn't.

Don't watch it, very simple.

The show was "woke" enough for 90s standards, showing how ridiculous was Ross with his homophobia. What they want now? Cancel a show that ended a decade ago?.

Millenials are more obsessed with Friends than Gen X was. They are why the show won't die.

[quote] Friends was more homophobic than some of its contemporaries

Which of its contemporaries are you thinking of? What show in 1994 was less "homophobic"?

Marta Kaufmann needs to stop all the queerbaiting she does on Grace and Frankie. I do not know why Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin put up with that shit if there is no intention of getting them together.

Marta Kaufmann is a cunt!

R45, the article OP provides lists two—The Golden Girls and Roseanne.

Why are you Friends fanatics so touchy?

Didn't they live in the Village? The Village was more Hispanic, black, and gay than straight whites in the 90s.

r48 and both those shows came YEARS before Friends.

Watching people try to make this show seem important is painful.

It was popular because it was pleasant, unoriginal and bland. It was nice. Just shut up and enjoy it!

r37, Not only white washed. But fake. There is no way even in crime ridden 90s NYC could they have afforded those apartments. Didn't they live on the Upper East side. Was Rachel's dad paying all of their rent. and joey didn't really blow up as actor into later seasons.

None of them seemed like New Yorkers except Joey and Ross. But wait, the characters were mostly college transplants right?

R50, which means that there’s no excuse for Friends to be more homophobic then, right?

The Nanny wasn't homophobic. Were Seinfeld or Fraiser? I don't recall.

List of 1990s American television episodes with LGBT themes

So Golden Girls gets a thumbs up for a brother of Blanche who appears once and is never seen or mentioned again...let's just ignore the stereotypical queen in the pilot. But Friends which regularly featured gay married characters is condemned?

Roseanne's entire episode about her gay panic moment is great, but minor jokes about Joey and Chandler being a gay couple are not?

And I'm not touchy. I don't give a shit about Friends. I just think this kind of lazy, bashing a popular show for clicks, kind of writing isn't all that deep or meaningful.

Is the homophobia rooted in the Chandler's gay dad who becomes a woman and is played by Kathleen Turner? (which is pretty funny when you think about it.)

r52 Ross, Monica, Chandler and Rachel were all from Long Island. Joey was from Queens, and Phoebe grew up on the streets of Manhattan. They were all NYers, but not from NYC, minus Joey (Queens) and Phoebe (NYC).

Chandler learns to get over his discomfort and accept his dad. It was pretty homo-supportive. (trans-supportive)

[quote]I just think this kind of lazy, bashing ... for clicks, kind of writing isn't all that deep or meaningful.

You just summed up OUT magazine in a nutshell. This is what they do.

David Crane is gay. He created the show and oversaw the episodes. He wouldn't let homophobic shit be on this show. The article is essentially "clickbait".

This show and SATC are why NYC is in the awful position it is in now.

R61, that’s faulty thinking. Gay people can absolutely be homophobic, as DL proves constantly.

r52 they lived in West Village, which was very Hispanic, Gay, and Black in the 90s.

Many DLers worship homophobes.

[quote] The Nanny wasn't homophobic. Were Seinfeld or Fraiser?

Wow. The '90s had some incredibly mediocre television. Kids don't realize how good they have it these days.

There were no autistic people on Friends! How dare they!

As a Texas gayling, I didn’t want to see the “real NYC.” I wanted to see a nice fun group of people having a good time.

[quote] Not really, [R12]. Only towards the later seasons was there comment about there not being any black people and so they got Ross a black girlfriend, but the whole "diversity" drive is really a thing of the 2010s.

No less than Pope Oprah told the cast “You guys need a black Friend” when she had them on her show in the first year or two.

The gay press also gave them shit from jump. I remember the Advocate basically getting Marta Kaufman to admit that during development, Chandler had been gay until Matthew Perry refused to play it.

Weirdos on twitter also say Friends stole its concept from Living Single because white people have no culture and steal what they have from black people.

Matthew Perry was and will always be a cunt.

What is white peoples culture???

Why was Matthew Perry so homophobic. Maybe he really is closeted. Has DL been right all along.

No he's a fat cunt with three chins!

Here's an interesting factoid. I knew a girl who was a writer's assistant on friends and the writers of the show were convinced that the character Ross was gay and/or Schwimmer was gay. This assistant complained about this (and other inappropriate discussions in the writer's room) to the producers and they fired her ass for causing trouble. She sued. They settled. But that would never happen today.

(And I knew her before she worked on the show. This lawsuit made the news and I read about the settlement in the trades, which is when I realized i had worked with her years earlier. At the time of the settlement, I thought, "she just committed professional suicide and she will never work in Hollywood again.!") Don't know what happened to her.

I always feel sorry for gays that believe being homophobic = being gay. That would mean almost every straight person is gay, which they aren’t.

r76, I'm with you on that. there are many aggressive homophobic guys who are not self loathing but just down right ignorant and repulsed by homosexuality.

It's possible to both enjoy a show as a product of its time and critique it as a product of its time (and thus susceptible to all the prevailing cultural trends and prejudices of his time).

That said, the humour in Friends was always pretty bland from what I remember.

r76 Sweetie, I feel sorry for you if you live in a place where almost every straight person is homophobic or you think they are. Move, there's more liberal places to be.

That case made the news, R75, and Schwimmer was basically outed. But now he has a baby with a girl.

Liberals are just as homophobic. I don’t get how no one sees this.

[quote] It might be news to you, but people have been critiquing pop culture and art for literally thousands of years using the standards of their own day.

That doesn't mean it's right to do so.

I pointedly dissuade my own students from such immature presentist assumptions. Otherwise I get papers from my students that say things as stupidly ahistorical as "misogyny, racism, and transphobia in Elizabethan England MUST. BE. STOPPED!!!"

LOL R82 "misogyny, racism, and transphobia in Elizabethan England MUST. BE. STOPPED!!!"

Do you point them to the physics department to help them develop a time machine?

R81 - I’ve never met a liberal who was openly homophobic.

R84 pay closer attention.

[quote]Middle America could deal with a funny quirky gay or black character occasionally but not every episode.

I was a series regular!

Well r14 it was clearly Rudy Giuliani's and Bloomberg's dream of NYC.

r21 Living Single and Girlfriends would like a word. . .

Yes, but will anyone bother remembering OUT magazine once it finally, deservedly folds?

Joey should have had a Blatino Husbear!

R64 is wrong - West Village was practically all white in the 90's.

I don't see the point of this type of writing - Nico is 27 years old. How the hell was he influenced by Friends or its supposed homophobia? Friends was actually progressive for its day.

How does OUT feel like this is worthy of publication? What else are they going to look at with today's lens? There are serious topics to cover and they greenlight this piece of bullshit?

OUT probably doesn't pay its writers, R91.

How was Friends progressive for its day, R91?

[quote] tourists flock to New York to this day to share a coffee on the couch at Central Perk.

When did they put a Central Perk in NYC? I lived there from 85-2009 & no Central Perk. Tourists used to as where it was — and I’m not talking overseas tourists. People from upstate & CT used to ask. Where did they put it?

I was finishing up the Christmas tree this Christmas Eve when WNBC News was on showing LEGIONS of people who decided to come to NYC on Christmas Eve to go to midnight mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral.

Not the people who actually had tickets, but people from all over the country (including the tristate area) who decided to pop into the city & attend midnight mass at the last minute. Like the church is sitting there empty, waiting for people to show up at 11:30 pm, first come first serve.

“Heya ma, lets goinda duh ciddy & goda midnight mass, waddaya say? Make a real holiday of it. Lookit the tree & go ice skatin in the pawk aftawoods, maybe goda Central Perk, git some hot chawklit or cawfee.”

I think there's a difference from complaining about LITERAL VIOLENCE of trans women of color being excluded from Shakespeare and looking at a fluffy sitcom from twenty-five years ago that even at the time had some problems.

Star Trek's been doing it for 50+ years.

The only time friends pissed me off was when Ross fired the male nanny for being too 'sensitive'. And Rachel, like a dick, just accepts it. In fact I don't like Ross altogether, who would make their girlfriend give up a job in Paris for them?! Ugh.

Friends was progressive - it had a lesbian wedding in the first or 2nd season. There were not gay weddings on TV then - ever. It also had an inter-racial couple 2nd season - Ross's Asian girlfriend.

It was not common to see Asian actors or actresses on TV period - and there certainly weren't any inter-racial relationships. Then Aisha Ross was another later girlfriend.

This may not seem progressive today - but what other #1 show had that? Compare Seinfeld with Friends - Seinfeld was 10x more homophobic by the same standards. And no diversity at all - ever. Yet everyone wants to pile on Friends for some reason.

No black people won awards from Friends. Every black guest star should have won the Emmy, but didn't. THAT is the travesty.

West Village in the 1990s was over 50% white. Now it’s over 80% white.

but but but some on DL swear only black people are homophobic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

R99 - stats? I lived in the West Village in the 90's. It was very expensive then and very few people of color lived there or could afford to live there.

You're mistaken. No way was it just half white. Now Chelsea or East Village in the early 90's were much more diverse.

I'd like to add. People say Friends stole from living Single. I don't agree. Living single was very much female centered and the 2 male leads were very much just supporting stars around this very female show. The early season presented Kim Fields and Queen Latifah as the stars. Friends was very much an ensemble show from the start, and the male characters had equal screen time. I feel like Living Single was more realistic in portraying black professionals in NYC. These characters were lawyers, writers, journalists. Friends--who were this band of neurotic white people who all seem like NY transplants, living in these grand apartments with no apparent disposable income.

However the chemistry on Friends was much stronger, and resulted in better sitcom plot setups and running "gags". I've had my black card revoked for this, but to me Friends is funnier.

Max on Living Single is better than all 6 friends combined.

I think people are upset by Friends’ success as the top streaming offering from Netflix. They see it as retrograde entertainment of an era with values and permissiveness that are no longer exactly mainstream.

And I think the success owes largely to those same factors - people largely look back fondly to a time not so long ago that was not dominated by finger-wagging and endless judgment and scorn leveled at the social representations in the work.

I never liked Friends, but I don’t begrudge those who do.

I think I return to The Office for similar reasons.

The Office had people of different races. Realistic.

R101 how convenient the biggest naysayer on this thread lived exactly where the friends did. Lmaooooo. Please.

Agree R102 - a 4 person comedy has been around forever (I Love Lucy) - and Living Single was really 4 females with 2 male minor players that got promoted to more airtime in latter episodes. To be honest, it was primarily Queen Latifah as the only real lead role - her apartment, her work setting.

Friends was a 6 person ensemble, 3 male and 3 female, and all leads (eventually). It's not a good comparison - at all. Friends saw Gen-X'ers struggling or talking about having no money - despite the great apartments. Most other shows never talked about that and it spoke to Gen-X'ers dealing with the down economy of the early 90's.

[quote]Max on Living Single is better than all 6 friends combined.

You misspelled Regine, hunty.

R105 - lived on Charles Street. Just because you pulled stats out of your ass without any knowledge doesn't mean you're right.

West Village was practically all white - particularly where their apartment was located.

[quote]Weirdos on twitter also say Friends stole its concept from Living Single

Warren Littlefield wanted a show on NBC that would be the white counterpart to Living Single, which was a big hit in the urban market . This has been confirmed by many people who worked on the show, including Queen Latifah.

You think it was a coincidence that they asked Lisa Whelchel and Nancy McKeon to audition for Friends?

[quote] People say Friends stole from living Single.

Neither of these shows was as good as the sheer genius of Babes!

I never saw this series during its heyday, watched a bit a decade or so later in syndication, and distinctly recall an episode where Rachel reunites with a gal pal from university, and it's vaguely alluded to that they got it on. Her old chum goes out of her way to deny it, and Rachel tries to prove it actually happened, and that she didn't imagine it. This sort of plot doesn't seem very homophobic, at the time, nor in retrospect.

Very mainstream audience this show originally had. It certainly was a product of its time, but honestly believe they pushed and played with the social boundaries more than a bit for an American television network. This show didn't run very late in the evening, which I have been told is a consideration regarding content in the U.S.

R111 that’s the episode with Winona Ryder

Friends was essentially a sitcom for young white Jewish professionals. It sucked. The - ahem - actors were.. embarrassing. Aniston was the Vivien Leigh of the cast, and that says a lot about the rest. It jumped the shark after the 1st season. Hard pass

R112 - good memory - and in the end Winona does remember it and professes her love for Rachel.

Here's the tricky part - all the male leads on Friends have been rumored to be gay. There's been more than just speculation.

The writers may have been going in overtime to hide that fact - but it certainly wasn't necessarily homophobic.

Even at the time, I was really uncomfortable with the way they handled Chandler's father.

THERE WERE NO UGLY PEOPLE ON FRIENDS! HOW FUCKIN UGLYPHOBIC!

Oh yes there was r116. Lisa and David.

I'm probably the only person of my generation who has never watched a complete episode of Friends. I've only seen random clips of the show, and from what I've seen I have no idea why this show was such a cultural phenomenon. Really dumb and sophomoric.

Lisa Kudrow was the only one who had any real talent. I never paid much attention to her until she played Valerie Cherish on the Comeback, and she just blew me away with that.

I remember a compilation video of Friends "homophobic" moments on a gay site a decade ago. People didn't react well because the video was clearly an overreaction, but of course that was before woke culture.

Friends never was a great show, it's bland and even if it has its moments it was extremelly overrated back then, but i find the critics really blindsided. It's like when you criticied Jane Austen because the women in his novels never look for a job.

It was a product of its time, shows were pretty white back then, and gay characters were on a very special episode and you never look them again. In fact i think the show was gay friendly for the time.

And frankly, this all straights are homophobic are extremely ridiculous, maybe it's because i'm european but in my country most straights are not homophobic at all. IN every country there are a good bunch of homophobes and racists, but the whole every straight hate us cames from a very low self esteem and a victim mentality

There were no people with FUCKIN CUNT SHIT FUCK Tourette's on CUNT FUCK SHIT FUCK Friends!!!

r96 I hate Ross and the from what I saw of that show could not understand why anyone liked that character.

At the beginning of it's airing I'd hear women talking about having a crush on Matthew Perry. So I got curious and watched and have to say I was shocked so many girls thought that sour looking giant headed guy was something to crush on.

Sorry r102

Black card revoked.

I never thought the show was that homophobic. The first season Ross's ex and her fiancée were important characters, and the show treated them as if they were extremely sensible and that Ross was the one bothered by their relationship (not because he was homophobic per se but because he found it humiliating to have been left for a women). The jokes about Chandler and Joey being gay were jokes everyone was making at the time.

I don't even think the show could justifiably be called transphobic. The character of Chandler was transphobic to his father in the first episodes with her, but he did come around and treat her with respect as the show went on.

Back in the days when network sitcoms ruled. Does anyone under a certain age range even watch network sitcoms anymore? Can you even name more than one or two?

FUCKIN SHIT FUCK CUNTSTAIN SQUIRREL CONDOM

Friends came out when I was in late primary school. All the prepubescent cool pretty girls watched it and used to pretend they were Rachel and Monica, the less pretty zany ones said they were Phoebe. It was pathetic. They'd play Friends in the playground and pretend their boy crushes were Joey, Chandler or Ross. They probably shouldn't even have been watching it. Stupid bitches.

David Schwimmer has BDF. I think he's fabulous.

I always wanted to watch Ross and Rachel fuck

R128 I always wanted to watch Joey and Chandler fuck! Weird!

Think the big question is: why is anyone reading OUT Magazine anymore? That magazine is all just woke clickbait these days, and this piece sounds like just another typical article for them. Who the fuck cares about Friends when seen from the woke perspective of 2019?

[quote]I have no idea why it was so popular and generates so much discussion to this day.

It was a well-written show that had funny and likable characters. It's really not more complicated than that.

[quote]As a Texas gayling, I didn’t want to see the “real NYC.” I wanted to see a nice fun group of people having a good time.

That's what this show was all about and why it was popular. Those who are trying to critique it as some sort of social commentary are really missing the boat.

R26 Did Schwimmer forget Ross had an Asian girlfriend in the early season? well, I guess by diversity, what they really meant is there was no "black".

[quote]there were lesbian characters.

Of course - because that’s “safer” than having gay male characters (as usual).

Of one of the few episodes of this piece of shit show I saw, I remember the whole episode was spent on laughing at Joey’s “man bag” because it was supposed to be SO hilarious that a man carry a bag (god forbid!).

This piece of shit show was dry, bland, unfunny, racist, and homophobic.

Friends is a flyover idea of NY, hence the homophobia.

The series is fantasy that whites ate up as real.

NYC has its own homophobia.

Let’s all agree to hate Friends for the right reason. It wasn’t fucking funny and it was tedious.

End of thread

It’s amazing how unrealistic all these 90’s sitcoms that took place in NYC were. According to Seinfeld, Friends, and Sex and the City, NYC is 99% white with the occasional person of color here and there.

And nobody drank, partied or used drugs on a recreational level.

R139

Yeah, but they wanted people to watch the show right? They didn’t need no damned Jimmy JJ Walker “dynomitin all over their well written scripts. They had their show “Amos n Andy” and they blew it.

🙄

Seinfeld always had POC on the show, they just weren’t main characters. I was a NYer in the 80s & early 90s & believe me....there were no black people in my neighborhood & I lived 6 blocks south of Harlem. I remember wondering why there were always Help Wanted signs in shops, but no black people working there. It wasn’t until late 90s they started hiring black kids & then it was too late. All the shops closed down when Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond, Staples, Computer City and CVS opened. We had a zillion Rainbow pharmacies, Love Cosmetics, locksmith/hardware stores, clothing stores, tailors, Israel electronics shops, diners, pizza shops, the Wiz, Crazy Eddies, greengrocers, bagel shops, hair salons, barber shops, shoe repair, bakeries.....then rents got so high that only CVS, Duane Reade & Dagostinos could pay rent.

Everyone always remarks about the big apartments the underemployed (except for chandler & Ross) characters had on Friends, but no one ever mentions the characters never wear the same outfit twice and they are wearing a different outfit in almost every single scene they’re in. Phoebe is supposedly the poorest & she’s wearing $1k outfits/jewelry in every scene she’s in, not to mention they all have different $300 haircuts/hairstyles/hair color in every episode. Plus Phoebe’s & Rachel’s nose jobs during the show.

My friends tell me to remember Out Magazine is homophobic.

The show was very popular in sophisticated European countries.

R143

So, you’re saying it wasn’t realistic? You want realistic? Who the fuck wants to watch six morons working at Mickey D’s and living in the same fourth floor walk up studio?

r109, That's not stealing however. Friends no more stole from Living Single, than Empire stole from Dynasty. All art is inspired, especially commercially driven mainstream television.

Phoebe and Rachel went both ways. What more can you ask

White people won't leave black culture alone! They're always taking, taking, taking because they have no culture of their own. Friends residual checks should be sent to the Living Single cast.

r118, Friends was a cultural phenomenon because people still watched network tv. People did not watch sitcoms on cable, or streaming platforms or youtube-- the latter two didn't exist. You had this young, good looking cast-tv good looking not hollywood with an undeniable chemistry. They were actually funny. Yall have to remember this was all before edgy comedy, and realism in comedy or dramedies. Sitcoms did not need to save the world, speak to any political agenda, be woke, or have an intense realism. Also one had to reach the widest possible audience. People have to understand, back before the internet, well the internet existed before friends but I'd say before the 2000s popular shows had a wide demographic; hit shows not have a niche audience like they do today. Fox started that with its debut but even its "black" shows had many white viewers or they would not have been able to sustain on air.

Never saw it. It was too white for me. Buffy, ST: Voyager, and Xena were my shows in the 90s

Out magazine can suck my gay cock. They are a trash magazine with an inflated sense of relevance and their hot takes are horrible

r134, How is that homophobic? People laugh at that stuff all the time, that aren't bigoted. It has nothing to do with being gay, but being feminine.

[quote]Seinfeld always had POC on the show, they just weren’t main characters.

Seinfeld featured 19 POC characters. My favorite was Rebecca De Mornay.

r143 You're a moron! The only tv shows with characters wearing the same clothes are Pee Wee Herman and Little House on the Prairie! Now, go be dumb somewhere else!!!!

I did get some kikis from watching the White girls come in to work on Mondays with their laughable versions of the ‘Rachel’ hairdo.

Allegedly, "The Rachel" hairdo was the result of a drunk and hungover hair stylist who fucked up her hair which then led to a whole hair trend!

"Friends was NYC for Flyover Americans. It had nothing to do with the real NYC, but what flyoverstans imagined living in NYC would be like."

James Burrows was from LA. Friends is the Hollywood version of life in New York. Had it been a genuine look, the characters would have been much more miserable.

Hollywood people know exactly what life in NYC is like. It was a show tailored to flyover Americans. They knew what they were doing.

R26 I thought one of Ross's first girlfriends was Asian so who thought he was/could be racist?

He drooled over Rachel most of the series (whether they were together or not).

R151 Buffy was super white for an L.A. show..

Hispanics didn't exist near Sunnydale.

More importantly, Friends was comedyphobic and opposed to creativity and talent.

R56 Blanche's gay brother Clayton returns in another episode with a boyfriend which Blanche has a hard time accepting.

West Village was mostly white but it was not all white during the first few years of this show. It still isn't now (at 80% white), but its worse now than then.

"Worse." LOL.

Seinfeld was neither racist nor homophobic. As already pointed above, it had many POC guest/recurring characters, and of various socioeconomic statuses (Lawyers, judges, etc.)

And for homophogica, the whole "not there's anything wrong with it" episode pointed out how ridiculous homophobia is; anyone with at least avg IQ could've figured that out.

Friends was an X-gen phenomenon. Nobody else cares.

The people who call Friends homophobic seem to forget that the majority of the jokes centered around gay people had the homophobe as the butt of it. Ross is portrayed as weird for having a problem with Carol being a lesbian, just as Chandler is portrayed as weird for having a problem with his father being gay and his mother being in tune with her sexuality. The joke is their backwardness. But, of course, anything that isn't black and white goes over the heads of new society, so that fact gets lost on them. I mean, for God's sake, there was a whole episode about Ross having a problem with his son playing with a Barbie where the joke is that it's weird for him to gender toys and care about what toys his son plays with. You're all a bunch of morons.

R166 You're expecting too much from them, the idiots who read articles like this and take them seriously don't have the brainpower to understand satire.

I love how the person that wrote this article cites Rosanne as a better of Friends as far as political correctness and minority representation goes. That alone should tell you that whoever wrote this is full of shit.

R170 they’re right.

R170 I hate Roseanne’s guts, but her 80’s/90’s Show WAS better in terms of being inclusive and representing all groups of people.

To further make a point, “Roseanne” took place in a small town in Illinois and had WAY more diversity than “Friends” which took place in NYC.

Make that make sense.

R171 and R172 are right. In fact, I believe it was Roseanne Barr herself that threw the first brick at Stonewall.

R163 is so fucking drunk they’re posting Golden Girls crap on a Friends thread. How do you even do that?

R174 You're the drunk one.

I corrected R56 who said The Golden Girls only had Blanche's gay brother pop up in 1 episode never to be seen again.

He was a well rounded gay character for the 2 episodes he appeared & his sexuality was treated with respect as well as for laughs (NBC wasn't PBS after all).

You should reread R56 before making yourself a bigger fool that you did above.

New Yorkers should be thankful that the show didn't portray real life in New York

“In reality, apartments in the Village are molecular. They’ve been chopped up. They are tiny, tiny, tiny. Most young individuals who are bartending or waitressing are living in a three-bedroom share and splitting the rent of an apartment that’s probably 800 square feet at the most. They’re on top of each other.”

The Ross and Chandler napping together episode was an elaborate parody and send up of guys on the down low. It was hilarious and erotic. Plus it addressed straight guys affection for each other and how that can make them uncomfortable. It did these things simultaneously cause art.

And that stupid person writing in OUT can't pick up any subtlety because all they can do is apply ideological analysis in a cookie cutter fashion. Not even smart ideology or analysis like you might have found in 1930s Soviet Union just crude analysis and categories. This is where we arev today and I feel sorry for anyone who has grown up on a steady diet of it because they have entered idiotocracy territory.

I meant Ross and Joey napping.

I also don't get the FRIENDS is a rip-off of LIVING SINGLE. That seems to be a modern revision. As a POC myself who was 14 in 1994, I remember that it was ELLEN (who was then titled THESE FRIENDS OF MINE) that was deemed the inspiration for FRIENDS, down to the title. THESE FRIENDS OF MINE was a mid-season replacement during the 1993-1994 TV year. When the second season debuted in the fall of 1994, they had retooled the show to focus mainly on Ellen DeGeneres, but FRIENDS seemed to pick up on its premise and ran away with it. In fact, during ELLEN's second season (and FRIENDS' first season; it debuted in Sep. '94) the ELLEN characters pointed out how much FRIENDS had borrowed from ELLEN, including the furniture outdoors during the opening credits.

[quote]The people who call Friends homophobic seem to forget that the majority of the jokes centered around gay people had the homophobe as the butt of it.

What about having Chandler's father, who's supposed to be gay, not trans, being played by Kathleen Turner? Chandler's not the butt of that one.

Any gay man they had on the show was always a stereotype. Always.

R180 - Good Job - I was thinking the same thing, but couldn't recall all of the facts.

Yes - Ellen's show "These Friends of Mine" was on earlier and at one point was actually called "Friends" in pre-production.

I've read some articles comparing Friends to Living Single and the comparisons are ridiculous. Phoebe was supposed to be a rip-off of the ditzy character Kim Cole played. NO. Phoebe's quirky character had been Ursula on Mad About You for 4 years prior to that. It was a neat way to weave the two shows together.

Having 2 guys live in an adjacent apartment (both Living Single and Friends) is a common element in sitcoms. It opens up more stories without the characters leaving their apartment.

R180. That is not a modern revision. People were saying that when I was taking media studies in college ten years ago, as well as during the 90s. I think it all started when it was revealed by some 'behind the TV' special that NBC execs wanted something like Living Single for the network as a vehicle for one of the white chicas from Facts of Life. That was the whole motivation of Friends. Doesn't mean it was ripoff however. It ended up being a completely different flavored show.

FYI white people had no idea Living Single even existed.

R185, True. But your creators did. Carry the fuck on now cunt.

Living Single was a very niche show.

[quote] Any gay man they had on the show was always a stereotype. Always.

Why do people say things like this? Was Chandler's gay co-worker who knew he wasn't gay a stereotype? Was Chandler's co-worker who was gay and waaay out of his league a stereotype?

R185 Bullshit.

White people watched Living Single. Wtf.

[quote]...they lived in West Village, which was very Hispanic, Gay, and Black in the 90s.

I've lived in NYC for thirty-eight years and that is the stupidest non-observation I've seen in years.

No, it was nothing of the sort. Even going back many decades the West Village has always been a very white neighborhood.

R191 is Back I see.

They didn’t just rip off [italic]Living Single[/italic], they ripped off [italic] Full House [/italic] even more, practically beat for beat. The only difference is they made the girls the same age as the guys and they made Aunt Rebecca into a monkey.

LS is a more believable look at Detroit then either of those two shows are about their respective cities, and it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as either of them, but I didn’t feel obligated to watch every week.

I know many white people that watched Living Single back in the 90s

How ironic. Out Magazine, which posts articles about how if a gay person doesn't want to sleep with someone of the opposite sex (no matter what they're trying to pass themselves off with), they're bigoted, is calling something homophobic.

[quote] What about having Chandler's father, who's supposed to be gay, not trans, being played by Kathleen Turner? Chandler's not the butt of that one.

And now they both packed on the pounds!

[italic]Who’s the fucking Boss?[/italic] had a gay cast member and he was the worst one on it.

R197 I didn’t know that was the title of Danza’s show.

[quote] How ironic. Out Magazine, which posts articles about how if a gay person doesn't want to sleep with someone of the opposite sex (no matter what they're trying to pass themselves off with), they're bigoted, is calling something homophobic.

Hey, at least they are writing about gay subject matter again. And at least they are calling out how unfunny and problematic this show is, unlike the fucking Advocate who put Matthew Perry on the goddamn cover when it was still on the air!

I agree this article is ridiculous click bait...I think by and large Friends meant well and try to be as forward as they could within their limits (it was an 8pm #1 show in the mid/late 90s after all). For the most part the joke WAS on whoever was a bit phobic / had the gay:trans anxiety etc.

Compare it for example to Two and a Half Men (over a decade later, mind you), that seemed to get a huge kick out of inserting a cheap gay joke wherever they could. Seriously, the characters could be talking about the fucking weather and in would come a gay joke, WTF. And that asswipe Charlie Sheen enjoyed making them a bit too much.

Why not go after that show (if you’re gonna go after any, that is)?

[quote] James Burrows was from LA. Friends is the Hollywood version of life in New York. Had it been a genuine look, the characters would have been much more miserable.

You mean like [italic]Seinfeld[/italic] which was also shot in LA?

R200 is an Uncle Tom and so is anyone not offended by this unfunny anti-gay shit show.

I have been subjected to anti-gay hate speech for criticizing the show. I was even kicked out of college for refusing to sit through a scene from it! It is very much anti-gay in both intent and effect.

They didn’t start transing kids en masse until after this show and [italic]sWill & disGrace[/italic] slithered onto the air with their unfunny jokes and homophobic subtexts.

I'm confused why the author keeps saying the show was "really, really homophobic" and then gives really tepid examples of said "really, really" homophobia.

I also hate the "This is your reminder" lazy headline Buzzfeed-esque writing.

I remember when Friends came out and people seemed to love it and had viewing parties etc. I never really watched it nor did I get the appeal (same with Seinfeld) but I saw a few episodes.

This 27-year old author can fuck right off.

R179: Stupid, pandering, and derivative. [italic]Diff’rent Strokes[/italic] ended the episode with Soleil Moon Frye by having Mr. Drummond fall asleep on the couch with her character’s father.

R204, he’s right and you know it. You fuck off. The 27-year-old author is welcome to watch [italic]The Golden Girls[/italic] with me any time he wants.

Or if you prefer a show with an actual gay male cast member, there’s always the Franklyn Seales years of [italic]Silver Spoons[/italic].

Actually, r206, I don't know it, considering I just said the opposite and those are, in fact, my beliefs.

How about giving non lukewarm examples of this "really, really" homophobic behavior on Friends which ran with 236 episodes, the majority of which must have been "really, really homophobic"?

So millennials trashing a harmless show from 25 years ago because it doesn’t abide by the insane PC standards of 2019, Snoresville. This generation doesn’t have any original ideas, it is quite pitiful.

[quote] More importantly, Friends was comedyphobic and opposed to creativity and talent.

This. Nobody complains about the lack of blacks on [italic]Cheers[/italic] because the show is funny and they’d hired people who had written for black shows. And because [italic]St. Elsewhere[/italic], also set in Boston and premiering on NBC in 1982 (with a crossover in 1985) had a multi-racial cast and a great one, too. If this show were the least bit funny, the nobody would care, so it isn’t. It falls flat for the same reason every TGIF and T NBC show falls flat: the writing is poor and the acting makes it even worse. This showed that an adults show can be even stupider than any kids show. [italic]Hey, Arnold! [/Italic] was a more believable depiction of New York City in the 1990s, and that was a cartoon on Nickelodeon!

r209 it has nothing to do with how funny or not the show is since that's mostly subjective. It's the popularity of the show. Cheers was popular but never popular the way Friends was.

R208, it is not harmless. That is the fucking point. being exposed to this glorified hate speech does have a measurable negative effect on people. Stop saying that when it is clearly done plenty of damage over the past quarter century. There is nothing about the show that is defensible on any grounds what so ever. Stop telling us to be tolerant of other people’s opinions when you refused to be tolerant of ours.

Is = Has

So the "really, really homophobic" behavior (of which there are no real examples) on Friends is now "glorified hate speech"? Go back to Twitter with that nonsense.

Shut the fuck up, R211. You're either a shit stirring troll or a complete fucking moron. Possibly both.

No, R214, you shut the fuck up and stop trying to defend hate speech just because it had a goddamn laugh track attached to it.

[quote] Cheers was popular but never popular the way Friends was.

Are you motherfucking kidding me? Comparing the two shows is like comparing the Mona Lisa to dogs playing poker! And before you try to argue that the latter is more popular than the former, have you seen the lines at the Louvre lately?

This thread is proof of why George Jefferson was right then and now.

[quote] No, [R214], you shut the fuck up and stop trying to defend hate speech just because it had a goddamn laugh track attached to it.

Ok, shit stirring troll it is. And a really lousy one.

r216 No, I'm not kidding you, because in terms of popularity, Friends was wildly more popular. Take your trolling back to Twitter.

R219 is a paid shill of Warnermedia.

Friends is to Cheers as dog shit is to caviar.

I agree with r218, you aren't a very good troll, r220.

[quote][R216] No, I'm not kidding you, because in terms of popularity, Friends was wildly more popular. Take your trolling back to Twitter.

85,000,000 people watched the finale of Cheers compared to 55,000,000 for Friends.

And it had a much, much higher share.

[italic]Cheers[/italic] won the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy even when it got lower ratings than shows shut out by the Emmys altogether.

[quote] Friends was the Donald Trump of TV shows.

They even stole the title, too.

r223 they're pointless comparisons because the two shows didn't air at the same time. When Cheers ended, Friends began.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason black people weren't on this show is that it sucked and they wanted nothing to do with it?

They even had Paul Benedict (Mr. Bentley from [italic]The Jeffersons[/italic]) on one episode!

They killed this show by trying to turn it into a [italic]F(r)iends[/italic] ripoff with an Asian roommate. Before that it wasn't half-bad.

Elliott Gould ruined my show!

[quote]85,000,000 people watched the finale of Cheers compared to 55,000,000 for Friends.

[quote]And it had a much, much higher share.

1993 was very different from 2004. No internet, no 5000 channels on cable.

Pretty much every attempted defense of this show depends on one or more logical fallacies:

—Appeal to popularity

—Appeal to authority

—Appeal to shut up/because I said so

And also on racist dog whistles about so-called "political correctness" which 1000% of the time are just cover-ups for actual racism.

Read R162 on this thread for an eye-opener regarding this show's antediluvian views on race:

r232 just finished her freshman Logic class as part of her Bachelor of Arts degree. I'm thinking you didn't pass.

They didn't just steal from black people: they stole from Tootie. That is unforgivable. And consider they asked both Lisa Whelchel and Nancy McKeon for the leads.

Recipe for success in a racist world:

—Steal the basic premise of a black show/movie and take the black people out of it.

—Deny everything when called on it, then turn around and blame the accuser.

—Profit at the expense of those you fomented prejudice against while crying crocodile tears that are too little, too late.

We seem to have a new troll who literally never gets off DL.

People who are obsessing over alleged homophobia and racism on a TV sitcom that ended 15 years ago...need to get a life.

Donald Trump is currently President of the United States. There are more pressing issues to be concerned with.

r236 I'm thinking you were dropped on your head as a baby

R238, the same network that put that show on the air gave Donald Trump a show.

BBC had a NBC Friends-inspired sitcom "Coupling", a hit in UK, which NBC later tried to remake but failed in the US, American primetime is simply too G/PG rated, can't handle BBC's raunchy, non-pc and hilarious jokes.

It is not alleged, it is very real and tangible, and I have been on the receiving end of it. Gay people would be better off if this show had never aired, and so would every racial and religious minority group!

R241: Yet they made a success out of [italic]The Office[/italic], which is a far superior show to [italic]F(r)iends[/italic] and doesn't need to have disembodied voices telling you where to laugh.

I have never known anyone who liked this show who didn't have some kind of serious moral or mental defect.

I always thought "Coupling" was actually called "Coupling Manchild" because the way the network ads were run on BBC America (and the poor layout of the titles). Imagine my surprise when I discovered they were separate shows, years later.

Julie Andrews and Jennifer Aniston are two of the worst people in Hollywood, and I'm tired of their psychotic fans jumping down the throats of anyone who is unimpressed with their output and feels the need to explain why neither of them have ever lived up to the hype.

What a bunch of nuts and assholes. I never watched the show in the original run, but only in re-runs. I was never offended. It's stupid to go looking for offense when none is intended.

A tv show about a group of people in their 20s was hardly an original idea. Friends didn't have much in common with Living Single, and that premise had been done many times before.

Then you're a racist, R247, if you can't see what's so offensive about it, and you double that racism by projecting your own stupidity onto those who actually are smart enough to see what's racist about it.

It's the nineteen fucking nineties and they go out of their way to avoid black people. All their lasting friendships are white. The message of this show is that in order to be friends you basically have to be clones of each other. The 25 years before that saw the floodgates opening for integrated shows. Some were better than others but all of them were better than this stupid and unfunny mess of a show that panders to the delusions of white heterosexual gentile supremacists who look at those things as things for all the world to aspire to.

The more you dismiss valid, legitimate concerns about racism in media as stupidity and oversensitivity, the louder we will speak out against them until garbage shows like this are removed from the air forever.

Even today, groups of young people in NYC are pretty damn white. Go into any bar with a younger clientele. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Just for the record, I don't want reparations for [italic]Silver Spoons[/italic]. I want male cast members of [italic]Silver Spoons[/italic] as reparations.

There were no gays on [italic]The Cosby Show[/italic], either. The show on in that time slot before that had a gay black Jewish star: [italic]Gimme A Break![/italic]

I think some people are confusing spots, or clubs they used to frequent within a neighborhood for the actual ethnic makeup of the neighborhood itself. Some locales have people who hang or party there, and then theres the actual residences living there.

r193, ??????????????????

Living Single took place in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The more the racists keep flapping their gums in the defense of this glorified blueprint for ethnic cleansing disguised (badly) as a sitcom, the more you keep proving me right, and the more you make so-called "political correctness" look like a good thing. Would you want to be friends with any of the main cast members? I wouldn't. Even the name of the show is a misnomer. To call the show that is to make a mockery of friendship itself.

r209, If the show was unfunny then it wouldn't constantly be showed on television around the globe still 16 fkin years after going off the air. I'm not saying Friends is the greatest sitcom ever or even on the same level as Seinfeld, 30 Rock, Atlanta but its pretty darn entertaining and humorous.

No it's not, r256. I invented Friendship and I say it's not.

Isn't The Cosby Show the most highly rated sitcom of all time with the exception of series finales? I mean Friends was a phenomenon but it didn't consistently have the highest ratings like Cosby, right?

The Wokes get pissed if every stupid tv show doesn't look like a fucking UN meeting.

Save it for the cross-burning, Adolf!

Leave it to Norman Lear to discover a black boy who wasn't gay but could sing and dance the same year he foisted a gay white boy on us who couldn't do anything at all. At least not that can be discussed with ladies present.

r262

??????????????????????????????

Good going, baldy, hiring these hacks to sabotage your TV comeback on purpose!

Speaking of racism, look at this thread where someone says Courteney Cox called Webster the n-word when both their shows were taping at Paramount:

R265, are you referring to Webster the fictional character from the series that ran from 1983 to 1987?

The show ran until 1989, R266, and its last two seasons in syndication overlapped with the years she was on [italic]Family Ties[/italic].

I'm still surprised someone who generates fewer laughs per minute than Tina Yothers ever got another show.

Again, Webster was a fictional character.

Played by the very real Emmanuel Lewis, R269. He and Marc "Skippy" Price were friends, and when he heard about it he went to the head of Paramount TV and he tried to have her fired. He owned a piece of his show so he had some clout. They used the NDAs to keep it quiet.

I didn't read this thread but I'm not surprised that it's turned into race-bitching somehow.

Anyway, "Friends" was always trash and I'm happy to now also call it homophobic trash. "Friends" sucks and everyone who likes it also sucks.

And as for the dance Alfonzo Ribiero supposedly "stole" from her, she more likely than not stole it from some black girl she saw doing it in Alabama.

INTERRACIAL FAT GAY SEX!

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[quote]I Love Lucy had no gay characters! How dare she!

She spoke out in favor of gay rights in 1980 when AIDS was a diet candy. And I still can't believe Frank Nelson was str8. Even so, that was the 1950s. This was the 1990s.

[quote]The Brady Bunch had no gay or black characters! How dare they!

They had Robert Reed, and that's good enough for me. And as for people of color in the world of Brady, Marcia had a black friend in the Davy Jones episode, there was a Latino girl in an episode where Peter threw a party, the variety show had Redd Foxx on to bury the hatchet over [italic]Sanford and Son[/italic] kicking their butts in the ratings, and in the 1990 hourlong dramedy Jan adopted an Asian girl.

The decade that ended with Robert Reed playing the father of six ended with Billy Crystal as a gay crossdresser dating a football player.

I can't tell how many of these responses are real or satire. Some of you should really be making a living as comedy writers. I'd like to see your reboot of Friends.

Why reboot it when the original sucked to begin with?

To make it less sucky. Duh! Cast it with all one-legged, bi-polar trans sex workers of color. It'll instantly be better.

No, it still won't be funny.

[quote]Some of you should really be making a living as comedy writers.

The generation that made hits out of this and [italic]Full House[/italic] is the same generation that grew up to declare war on comedy altogether.

Sorry, but this show does not deserve to be counted among the League of Actually Funny Sitcoms (LAFS).

r280, You do realize kids were not watching Friends. They may have group up with it in syndication but some of you don't realize this thing called 'time". Time is a very real thing. Use logic. The people who made friends a hit are middle aged and older now. I would even say older millennials who may have been young teens was on air was not watching it religiously every Thursday night. Teens specifically stop watching tv and actually go out on the evenings. Yes we grew up on it, but we didn't factor into the ratings of Friends.

Friends was one of the least homophobic sitcoms.

Roseanne had Nancy come out as gay, then back to men, women, men etc. The last season had an episode where a gay guy makes fun of lesbians.

Seinfeld had Elaine seduce a gay man and one of George's girlfriends leave him for a woman, then leave the woman for Kramer.

The Golden Girls had Blanche's brother come out as gay and Blanche constantly making gay jokes.

There are plenty of other examples but Friends was not homophobic.

About its lack of diversity. Where was the diversity on The Cosby Show? Family Matters? The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air?

Only white shows are accused of lack of diversity. In a way, it says that what white people create is so great, that the whole world has to be included in everything they do. The diversity cultists are the true white supremacists.

it was still a time where being gay was thought of as something to be ridiculed;

when Joey referred to the duck and the chicken, the superintendent, thinking Joey was referring to himself and Chandler, shrugged, 'oh, I thought it was the other way around.' something like that.

Nobody would have blinked twice if Rachel and Monica got a good night's sleep snuggling next to each other but Ross and Joey doing it? Scandalous! We must keep that hidden!

Not sure which guy FRIENDS stars are gay or not; I've heard all three; one, two...but it's easy to see why any or all would remain closeted since it's something to be ridiculed.

My god, some of you are tiresome. It must be so exhausting to be so offended by something like Friends.

Actually it was one of the most homophobic ever.

Why should black shows have to pander to white people's prejudice? Why should black shows be forced to cast white actors when white shows make excuse after excuse for their whiteness. [italic]Family Matters[/italic] and [italic]Fresh Prince[/italic] had plenty of white guest stars on it as well as Asians and Latinos as well. Hell, most of the writers for the former were probably white. The latter had Winifred Hervey (Stallworth), who wrote for [italic]The Golden Girls[/italic].

[quote]The Golden Girls had Blanche's brother come out as gay and Blanche constantly making gay jokes.

And then in the end she accepts Clayton's relationship with Doug while Sophia, who is old enough to be her mother and not even born in the US, tells her to be more accepting.

If you're not offended by this shit, then you can just turn in your GayCard right fucking now.

[italic]Married with Children[/italic] had an out lesbian in a major supporting role who also was allowed to direct several episodes and is also both integrated and funny.

One of MwC's creators was black.

2, 4, 6, 8, TV's got to integrate!

Your lives must be even more miserable if you get offended by the fact that some people just do not find this show the least bit funny.

[quote] If you're not offended by this shit, then you can just turn in your GayCard right fucking now.

OK, here. Have that imaginary thing that for some reason you are the arbiter of.

[quote] Your lives must be even more miserable if you get offended by the fact that some people just do not find this show the least bit funny.

Good thing no one said that.

[quote]Only white shows are accused of lack of diversity. In a way, it says that what white people create is so great, that the whole world has to be included in everything they do.

Yet more proof everyone who said the show is racist is right.

There were plenty of white people on black shows. [italic]Sanford and Son[/italic] had Officer Hoppy, [italic]The Jeffersons[/italic] had Tom Willis, Harry Bentley, and Ralph the Doorman, [italic]Diff'rent Strokes[/italic] had Mr. Drummond, Kimberly, the three housekeepers, and his second wife and her son. Everybody else on [italic]Webster[/italic] was white except for him, his Uncle Philip, and a couple of his friends. [italic]Punky Brewster[/italic] had more blacks than whites in the credits in season 2, the year T.K. Carter was a regular. Even [italic]The Cosby Show[/italic] had Peter the fat kid who rarely talked.

Meanwhile, everyone else on [italic]Gimme A Break![/italic] was white except Nell, her family, Addy, and Angie with the possible exception of the wannabe Mexican Marty/Esteban from the New York season. So was everyone from [italic]Benson[/italic] but Benson himself.

Meanwhile, shows about white families actually hired black singers to sing their theme songs. Just ask the Bateman siblings. [italic]Family Ties[/italic] got Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams while [italic]Valerie[/italic] got Roberta Flack.

Even [italic]Small Wonder[/italic] had Reggie, and he put up with a lot of shit from Jamie that had nothing to do with race and everything to do with him being a spoiled brat. Yet the Lawsons refused to live in a gated community after the people they would have to live with made racist remarks about him.

TV was becoming integrated in the 1970s and 1980s, yet in the 1990s it got more fragmented. Part of this was technology making multiple channels possible. But another part of it was white people trying to act defensive over things they have no business being defensive about.

Friends was only slightly progressive for the time in history that the show aired. If the show were to happen today, much would be different. I think it's okay to acknowledge this.

[quote]Isn't The Cosby Show the most highly rated sitcom of all time with the exception of series finales? I mean Friends was a phenomenon but it didn't consistently have the highest ratings like Cosby, right?

I get where these arguments are coming but people always neglect to mention that things change from decade to decade. 106 million people watched the finale of M.A.S.H. but it was also 1983. That would never happen now. Less people watch the big three networks now than they did back then. It's just not possible these days.

The highest rated telecast of a scripted series in 2019 was the finale of The Big Bang Theory with 25.75 million viewers. That would have been laughed at a few decades ago and now it's the top of the heap!

[quote]The early season presented Kim Fields and Queen Latifah as the stars. Friends was very much an ensemble show from the start, and the male characters had equal screen time.

Living Single was also meant to be an ensemble. However, just like Courtney Cox was well known prior to the show (as well as a couple of other cast members although I'd place Courtney at the top), so were Queen Latifah (rapping), Kim Fields (The Facts of Life), Erika Alexander (The Cosby Show) and Kim Coles (In Living Color.) Only the men were fresh faces to many black audiences.

Also Friends was a "true ensemble" at the beginning and then after Season 3 when the cast forced it on the show. In Season 2 Schwimmer and Aniston were paid more than everyone else because their story took center stage.

NBC had no trouble integrating its shows in 1968.

It was not a phenomenon; it was pure unadulterated hype, like advertising for a product that doesn't actually exist or do anything.

A show that actually showed gay characters in the mid 90's, sure it was a safe lesbian romance, but it was something. It's just stupid to go back in time and decry shows that were just representing where society was at at that time.

I knew this show was bad when in a discussion on Sitcoms Online, a soap opera fan who hates it argued with a fan of this show who hates soap operas … and won!

Some of the show's faults could be forgiven if it were funny, but it isn't.

R282 those black sitcoms did always have white extras and guest stars. Always.

If anything, the article OP posted is too damn easy on the show for its faults. It invented nothing. It created nothing. And it ruined everything. Like the 1990s itself, it took everything bad about the 1980s and made it worse. There is nothing to aspire or relate to in any aspect of this show. The characters are emotionally false vessels for unfunny pseudo-jokes that degrade the spirit rather than uplift it. They're basically saying "conform or die."

Archie Bunker's life is neither inspirational or aspirational, but it sure is funny. Same with Al Bundy.

The Tates of [italic]Soap[/italic] have all the things you just can buy, and the show is hilarious, but would you want their life? Probably not unless you wanted to be stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated, bludgeoned, dumped over a proposed sex change that you didn't even go through with, jilted at the altar by someone who coerced you into having sex with her and getting her pregnant, kidnapped by aliens, possessed by the devil, kidnapped by ninjas, trapped in a previous life, or shot by a firing squad.

The biggest failing of this show is not an ideological one but an artistic one: it is neither funny nor believable. It is a lie sold to the gullible in order to maintain an unacceptable status quo. As far as I'm concerned, if [italic]Amos 'n' Andy[/italic] is no longer suitable for rebroadcast, then neither is this.

Soap was before my time, but I've seen a few episodes and it wasn't all that funny. I guess for the 70s it was racy and made people who watched it feel cool and "with it."

r302 you need to unclench. Friends wasn't a great show, but it wasn't bad for the times. To say it was racist is ridiculous.

If it weren't for so-called "political correctness," there'd still be slavery, segregation, and sodomy laws.

In case it hasn't been pointed out yet, DL is very misogynistic, but I don't see anyone getting too upset about it.

"Just repeat to yourself, 'It's just a show, I should really just relax.'"

No, it's not "just a show." [italic]Too Close For Comfort[/italic] is "just a show." It wasn't great, it wasn't terrible, it ran a few years and then ended. Nobody gets upset about it anymore for not representing everybody in San Francisco because it is not constantly shoved in your damn face everywhere with crappy merchandise and insipid gossip about the private lives of the stars. Although I'm sure the CDC is interested in Jm J. Bullock's personal life.

R307, I was raped for laughs—remember that?

Nope. Did they even get to that episode on DVD? Rhino for all intents and purposes went out of business right around the time they released an uncut season 2 after a cut season 1. They must have thought the syndicated and ABC episodes were all the same length.

The idea of Jm J. Bullock having sex with a woman is laughable in and of itself, which is more than I can say for any aspect of this show. And he was in [italic]Spaceballs[/italic] and [italic]ALF[/italic], so I'll give him that.

Jm J. Bullock! Now, that's a name I haven't thought of in years.

The attempted defenses of this show do not hold any water. Just give it up. Its time has come and gone, and now it's time for it to pass away into the oblivion and obscurity it deserves to be in.

r311 Friends is just as popular now as it was back then. It's not going anywhere.

Do people not realize when Friends started in '94 that most shows didn't have any queer representation? Considering their peers, Friends was mostly queer-friendly in keeping with the times. Most of the scripts wouldn't get produced in 2020 because we've come further but give me a break. Friends wasn't homophobic. Contrived drivel? Yes.

The word is gay, R313.

I'm a black straight/bi guy and I love Friends.

No you're not R315.

The show was stupid then and it is stupid now. Once Trump is gone, PC is going to be back with a bloody vengeance.

[quote]So Golden Girls gets a thumbs up for a brother of Blanche who appears once and is never seen or mentioned again...let's just ignore the stereotypical queen in the pilot.

You can't even get your facts straight. He appears twice, the second time to introduce his male fiancée who is anything but a stereotype, and the other girls don't have a problem with it. Even Rose seems more accepting in the second episode in the first. Maybe that's because she's no longer being used to closet him.

You also forgot Dorothy's friend Jean, Laszlo the artist and his boyfriend, and of course Pat and Jean the image consultants who don't believe in labels

Stop projecting [italic]Friends'[/italic] numerous, fatal, and irredeemable flaws onto superior shows.

Pat and Kathy, I mean.

[quote]OK, here. Have that imaginary thing that for some reason you are the arbiter of.

You would seriously give up your homosexuality just for this godawful show? Not only does this show suck, but its fans are bigots and assholes. That was reinforced when the spinoff's ratings tanked once they added a black friend.

dreary, little tv show and not even funny. It was and is fantasytime for whites who don't even notice black or gay people. Seinfeld was at least very funny in its prime and still is.

I could take or leave [italic]Seinfeld[/italic], but Julia Louis-Dreyfus was and is a better actress than any of the women on this show.

What about when Chandler got penetrated by his father-in-law? He sat naked on his father-in-law 's dick in the sauna because he couldn't see due to too much steam. Pure homophobia!

Someone mentioned Soap, I have watched a few clips on YouTube, the language like the use of word "homo" maybe outdated, but consider this was aired in 1979, a positive and normal gay character on tv is truly ground breaking, not to mention the scenes are hilarious.

Here is another one

If NBC wants to convince us that Friends is not anti-LGBTQIIAA+, then it needs to convince the six principal cast members to transition sexes or AT LEAST swap genders ASAP. We will accept no less!

To be honest, i don't think people really care about this at all, apart of the perpetually outraged on twitter.

Friends was a huge success back in the day and it's a big success in reruns in a lot of countries. The show is nothing special, but a lot of people like it

Even more this is the kind of thing that does absolutely nothing for the cause, instead of convince anybody of how harmful was a pretty harmless show the reaction that you get is that gays are always complaining about stupid things.

TV shows keep killing gay characters at the first opportunity, in most of them gays are always in the background and serve no other purpose than support the main straight character. Even supposed gay friendly shows like Skam. skipped the gay storyline in a lot of countries (in some changing it for a lesbian one) even when in the original (and in the countries that kept that gay storyline) it was a big success.

There are a lot to complain in shows that are airing today to focus on how dated was a sitcom of the 90's

Lisa Kudrow is CANCELED! Sure, she can make us laugh, but what is she doing to eradicate the mental illness of keeping the sex organs one is born with? I for one am glad to know now that Kudrow is the same as Hitler.

All of this outrage over something published in " Out"

None of the "Friends" were black, Asian, transgender, Muslim or on the spectrum, either. Can we spare some outrage for that?

R324: Thanks for those clips. I was an out gay teen in the 1980s and I'm glad to have been able to get ahold of the Columbia House VHS tapes of [italic]Soap[/italic]. That set the bar high for gay representation in sitcoms and for quality. [italic]Friends[/italic] and [italic]Will & Grace[/italic], which is basically just everything I hate about [italic]Friends[/italic] only gayer, don't come close.

1990s I mean

I love how people have forgotten the criticism of Friends when it aired. (And R29, why criticize Friends? Because it was the most popular program airing and took place in one of the country's most diverse cities).

And then they use Lauren Tom and Aisha Taylor--who were brought in as a response to the criticism--as proof that the criticism was not justified.

There was a lot of criticism of Woody Allen's all-white New York at the time as well. This is not some new trend. People were asking for greater realism even back then.

[quote]And then they use Lauren Tom and Aisha Taylor--who were brought in as a response to the criticism--as proof that the criticism was not justified.

It was tokenism pure and simple and it only proved the show's critics right.

[quote]There was a lot of criticism of Woody Allen's all-white New York at the time as well.

And what was his response to that? Make a black woman a whore in [italic]Deconstructing Harry[/italic], sending the message that black women are still property to be bought and sold by white men.

R334 It’s interesting that Friends has been held to account for its unrealistic lack of diversity in NYC, but Seinfeld and Mad About You, which aired at the same time, also were and showed mostly white people and no one holds grudges against them. When Seinfeld did include an Asian guest star, all the jokes were about her being Asian. When they included Middle Eastern immigrants, they were always waiters or service people who often were butts of jokes. The characters never really integrated; nonwhite people were for background.

That was of its time. I’m not trashing the shows. But I do think it’s weird that Friends alone is skewered for it.

And then we can flash forward to today, right now. The Real Housewives of New York has been on for over a decade and I don’t think a single nonwhite person has ever been seen on the show—although Luann De Lesseps did dress up in what today is considered blackface, and without much backlash.

Friends hit TV 25 years ago and ended 15 years ago and it’s still the bullseye for resentment. Meanwhile, Andy Cohen and other Housewives producers at NBC maintain a franchise with a shockingly segregated set of casts, and one of them depicts the whitest version of NYC seen on TV since I Love Lucy and—oops, no, Lucy’s leading man was Cuban.

Maybe because New York is a racist city.

[quote] Maybe because New York is a racist city.

Says who?

R336, Friends was the most popular show on television for many years. Mad About You never got that big.

Seinfeld did include a wider range of ethicities in its characters, even if the main characters were white (which may be why it never came in for the same level of criticism).

R335, I do not think Allen ever responded. He did cast Paul Calderon in some film. But when Calderon was unavailable for reshoots, Allen just reshot his whole sequence with a white actor. (Calderon's bio still notes that he worked with Woody Allen). The story of Calderon's casting and the recasting was in the New York papers at the time and it was noted that he had the first significant role played by a black actor in a Woody Allen film.

[quote][R334] It’s interesting that Friends has been held to account for its unrealistic lack of diversity in NYC, but Seinfeld and Mad About You, which aired at the same time, also were and showed mostly white people and no one holds grudges against them.

Does Long Island count?

Nope, that was just New York state. Not NYC proper.

Agree that this is a clickbait story.

Surprised no one mentioned the ongoing Joey-Chandler story line where they had the whole unlikely bromance thing going on, were all upset and pining for each other when they had a fight and all that. You got the strong sense that a couple beers too many and it would be "Y Tu Mama, Tambien" all over again. It was played for laughs, but there was definitely a wink, as in "yes, we know what is going on here."

"Friends" is at its core a semi-autobiographical story from Kauffman and Crane about three JAPs from Long Island (Moncia, Ross and especially Rachel) and their circle of friends--Ross's college roommate (Chandler) and Phoebe and Joey who they found later. So not surprising there is no diversity.

The "how they afforded the apartment" bit was "solved" with a story line that it was a rent controlled apartment that Monica's grandmother had the lease to.

West Village was Italian prior to gentrification and white and gay in the 70s and 80s and white and somewhat less gay from the 90s onwards as it also became quite pricey. But no idea why someone keeps positioning it as diverse. The crowds on 8th Street were diverse and in the park, but they didn't live there.

Friends is very big with teenagers now, who all watch the reruns on Netflix. Have heard this from several co-workers/clients about their own kids.

^^I remember being shocked a few months back to learn many DLers had no idea the characters were supposed to have been Jewish (or half-Jewish as the case may be), Rachel in particular, as they literally gave her every single Jewish American Princess stereotypical trait ever from the nose job to the job as a buyer for Bloomingdale's to the doctor daddy who paid for everything to marrying a rich guy she didn't love.....

After Mabel King left for a three-picture deal with Universal, [italic]What's Happening!![/italic] added a white man and his son who had a crush on Dee. And then it was cancelled.

The West Village was very white in the 90s, as I remember it. If you went out and about in the WV to bars, restaurants, stores etc. it was white white white.

Set in the 90s in NYC

—Just Shoot Me (all white)

—The Nanny (all white?)

—Caroline in the City (all white)

—NewsRadio (one sassy black woman! Progressive!)

—Veronica’s Closet (one black guy! Actually progressive!?)

—The King of (all white) Queens

—Will & Grace & Karen & Jack & No Blacks

[quote]The Nanny (all white?)

A Jew marrying a gentile, and Daniel Davis was gay. They had Ben Vereen as a guest star once, so not 100% white.

Meanwhile, Chicago played locale to plenty of sitcoms with both black and white casts: [italic]The Bob Newhart Show, Good Times, Webster, Punky Brewster, Valerie[/italic] and [italic]Married With Children[/italic] all come to mind, and I'm sure there were others.

Bottom line: [italic]F(r)iends[/italic] is racist and if you don't agree, then so are you.

Real bottom line: Friends is too dumb to watch and if you don't agree, then so are you.

That too, R350. It insults my intelligence in ways [italic]Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch,[/italic] and [italic]Small Wonder[/italic] never did.

I never watched this show. I didn't find anyone attractive at all.

R350 is so well-read and erudite, he makes Diane Chambers look like one of the Sweathogs.

[quote] I never watched this show. I didn't find anyone attractive at all.

I never found anyone attractive on a lot of shows I watched on TV. But trying to sell the most boring, basic people alive as sex symbols reeks of dishonesty and the influence of organized crime.

R353 I admit I always liked Diane Chambers as a kid.

Even soap threads are more fun than this. This show didn't just kill sitcoms, it killed soap operas, too.

Matthew Perry was kind of handsome before the drugs and booze took over and totally destroyed his looks. I always thought Matt Leblanc looked like an ape, and David Schwimmer was uglier than a dog's asshole.

Schwimmer sometimes looks like David Muir’s less attractive brother.

The show was one of the most overrated pieces of shit to ever air on television.

You really don’t think Matt Leblanc is attractive?

Why does Friends seem to trigger DLEGs?

I always thought of it as sort of a fluffy sitcom, kind of like a 90s version of the Brady Bunch, only they were six friends, not six siblings, and about as deep.

But it seems to get some very angry and over the top reactions from DLers.

Thoughts?

No, I think he’s repulsive.

R361 maybe it's because "Friends" success and popularity changed the tv landscape, not in a good way though, networks tried to emulate its formula and play safe, the sitcoms in 90s and early 2000s were dumbed down due to it.

Given DL and time that's probably correct R363, but that was also 20 years ago and the whole sitcom genre moved on since then

Exactly, R363. Its undeserved success has resulted in one copycat after another, each one worse than the last, but none of them as bad because none of them were put on a pedestal the way this unmitigated shit has been for no good reason. Is the show just a front for illegal activities by the Greek and Italian mafias? What's wrong with this show is the same thing wrong with every other bad sitcom in history, only worse.

[italic]The Mary Tyler Moore Show[/italic] and [italic]All in the Family[/italic] raised the bar for sitcoms in a huge way: it essentially forced them to grow up. [italic]The Brady Bunch[/italic] was the last successful show out of the gate before that happened. But even shows aimed at children responded by getting darker and edgier to the point the FCC would let them. The casts were also starting to get integrated, and there was a huge debate on who was considered a good influence for blacks; nevertheless, the Emmys honored more black actors and actresses than the Oscars. The roles for women were changing, too, since women were no longer being defined by their husbands or children; sometimes they didn't have any! And even gays were starting to come out on the air, which was a battle in and of itself. [italic]Friends[/italic] just feels like a negation of all that. The characters are two-dimensional kidults, not three-dimensional adults like [italic]The Golden Girls[/italic] or [italic]Cheers[/italic]. It's aimed at people who don't care if their comedies are funny as long as they are all-white.

Why do people (ppl) watch shows they don't like?

I don't understand I've read the countless fanfics describing Joey and chandler's blossoming relationship and it's an inspiring love story ....

Blecch. I'd rather see Eddie and Dexter from [italic]Silver Spoons[/italic] get it on on that train.

Jeez, bitter much R202. The show was a massive hit, and STILL IS for a reason. It was funny, the chemistry was great as were most of the actors. LeBlanc was especially underrated...

R365, you're mistaking it with Seinfeld.

[quote]Why do people (ppl) watch shows they don't like?

To make OTHER people miserable, if we can follow their "logic"!