Friends forever, means you'll always be my friend ... The Manolos sounded in Spain, when American television conceived the greatest - and perhaps the last - global sitcom phenomenon with an approach that settled, precisely , in an apology sum of friendship . It has been 25 years since Friends came into our lives and the link that the series created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane managed to establish with several generations remains in force. I'll be there for you , six colleagues promised us in the 90s. And here they follow.
It was specifically on September 22, 1994 when the American network NBC aired the first chapter of Friends , a series that changed the television comedy forever. As Carlos Pott emphasizes in the Sitcom book : comedy in the living room (Ed. Rag Language), one of the hallmarks of this format is that “the room in which television is seen is the same as this one sample". And there arises the first Friends revolution: there is a lounge, but the traditional house that had dominated the classic sitcom scene until then is replaced by a modern Manhattan apartment.
"The central theme of Friends is the birth of a community that replaces the verticality of the family," Manuel Guedán points out in the same book. "Unlike the problems grow , forced parents or Blossom , in Friends parents are not a warm and stable core in which to seek support when things get complicated," adds the writer. Or as Marta Kauffman , mother of the creature, summed up: « Friends is about that time in life where your friends are your family».
Indeed Friends revolves around a universal concept such as friendship and faces a recurring theme in fiction: the complicated passage of young people into adulthood . But he approaches it with a look that reveals the social paradigm shift that came in the 90s. The jump to maturity at that time is a longer and more complicated process than it had been in previous times. The young people go through the university, become independent before forming their own family and look for each other to travel this transitory path.
But what was the key to Friends' success? The answer seems an alchemical mystery. It is true that it addresses a universal issue such as friendship with which it is easy to identify, but what series is not a universal issue? «Its charm may be the mixture of very powerful scripts , characters that are cool and a successful casting », summarizes in conversation with this newspaper Alberto Caballero , creator of comedies like Here there is no one who lives , The looming or The people . "There are very few people who can write scripts as fine as those of Friends and all its actors had a lot of charisma," says the Spanish producer and screenwriter.
Global phenomenon
With these tricks Friends managed to triumph all over the world. In Spain, its emergence coincided with the birth of private channels and its viewing had the added satisfaction of being able to enjoy one of the few open content offered by Canal + , a modern coded window for the majority of the audience and in which the Small cracks of free access added an incentive to look.
Friends was not only one of the most watched television series, but it became a cultural phenomenon of the 90s . As American journalist Kelsey Miller recalls in her book I'll be there for you (Ed. Harper Collins), Rachel's haircut was copied by more than 11 million women in the UK alone, according to a study that conducted a hair products company. "The series became a first-rate aesthetic reference," Miller notes: "It had left the field of television to spread everywhere." Suddenly, people from different countries began to dress as Americans in their twenties, had unstable jobs and was left to hang out in a cafeteria.
"It was the definitive series of Generation X, " says Miller. According to the American journalist, Friends beat other series because, despite its often absurd plots and impossible approaches, "it reflected the real life of ordinary people, only a little bit improved." His excessively sweetened tone was a product of his time. The 90s were dominated by widespread optimism. It was the US from Bill Clinton . "A time of affordable luxury, when people began to order an extra-large coffee with skim milk and no foam instead of a simple coffee," Miller summarizes: " Alexis Carrington Dynasty said goodbye to the screens with her robe of skins and its 48-room mansion, and Monica Geller arrived, with her GAP jacket and her two-bedroom rental apartment ».
According to Manuel Guedán, television networks realized at that time that "the purchasing power was increasingly in young people and how advertising is essentially directed at them ." Thus, although the audiences had not turned their backs, fictions starring the elderly began to disappear ( A crime has been written , The Golden Girls , Matlock ...), to give way to a more profitable generation.
Then, in many countries, Friends- style series began to be produced. In Spain he appeared in this wake Seven lives and later his spin off , Aida . Nacho G. Velilla , one of the creators of these comedies, explains how they traveled to Los Angeles to learn about the development process of the triumvirate of the sitcoms of the moment - Seinfeld , Frasier and Friends - and apply it in our country. «Comedy here until then were funny characters telling jokes. The house of the messes or Hands to the work was seen », the producer and screenwriter reminds this newspaper. «In Spain we used to scale directly from the joke; we made fun but insubstantial series, ”he says. "In the US we realized that they were starting to work from the line of drama and then incorporate comic situations or gags," he concludes.
Diego San José , scriptwriter of comedies such as Eight Basque surnames or Vota Juan , confirms how before "hybrid genres gave some fear in the offices of the directors of television networks." As he says, "executives were reluctant for comedy to look at other genres." Something that changed coinciding with the arrival of payment chains. "Comedy no longer had to be fun constantly," he concludes.
Classic format evolved
Formally Friends remained faithful to the canonical format of the sitcom . All the hallmarks of this genre are preserved in the series: perfectly measured 22-minute chapters, prologue and epilogue, plot divided into acts adapted to advertising cuts, cadence of jokes per sentence calculated almost mathematically, archetypal characters without nuances , restriction of spaces in closed sets, filming before a live audience that bursts into laughter ...
However, Friends introduced certain developments that evolved the genre without leaving it. «Until then the sitcom was a kind of sketch-comedy where everything was self -closing chapters. Friends introduced the cliffhangers - resource at the end of an episode or a season with which a plot is left open to engage the viewer - and narrative lines of emotional cut in continuity (such as the relationship between Ross and Rachel) more typical of the series dramatic and of the soap operas ”, explains Nacho G. Velilla.
The last of its 236 chapters was aired on May 6, 2004 , but the series never quite left. In more than 130 countries it is still replenishing and is one of the most desired content by the new streaming platforms that do not hesitate to disburse millionaire amounts to be able to include it is their catalog. Friends has thus managed to transcend time, despite the stigmata that it drags: it has been branded homophobic - its jokes about gays would hardly be accepted in a current comedy - and racist - portrays an impolutely white New York except for a fleeting girlfriend of Ross in the last season. Far from becoming a relic of the past, it has also conquered the millennial public.
After Friends, telecomedy gave way to reality TV as the dominant genre of television. In summer of 2000, it was premiered at CBS Survivors and in May 2003 the NBC announced the premiere of The Apprentice by Donald Trump . Nevertheless, the genre, which opened in the 50s with I love Lucy has not died. With their new keys evolved from the turning point that marked Friends have arrived The Office , Louie , How I Met Your Mother or The Big Bang Theory . They are our new colleagues to have a laugh. But old and good friends never forget.
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