The Shrine

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Well, I would by lying if my first reaction was not "thank god it's over" because when you have two people living in the same house who love different shows that happen to be on at the same time, you have problems. Generally we watch Smackdown and then tape friends and watch it later. My initial reaction, one that I had years ago was "Why didn't they finish the series in 2001 when it was still exciting and people watched it because of that excitement and not just because of habit?" Because of this I felt this new episode lacked the same impact that the finale of Seinfeld which ended at a very good time (it is possible that it could have gone on for another season, or they could have filmed about 100 more episodes and just stuck them in there). Friends, in my opinion, began to go downhill when it became too much of a drama. The older episodes were far more spontanious and creative, but of course, as characters develop, they usually fall into the sort of formula which Friends did (luckily this hasn't really yet happened to the Simpsons because that's a show that I can still get excited about even though when I began watching it, the original series of Ninja Turtles was still relatively young; also to add, it never happened to Seinfeld).

Anyways, onto the actual episode. If I were to compare it to anything, it would certainly have to be Shakespears "As You Like it", essentially it was just like that, everyone lived happilly ever after; fairly typical for a lot of sitcoms of this style (unless it happens to be Seinfeld). They of course ended it off with Ross and Rachel,: let me do this in short:


Ross "I have to tell Rachel I love her, oh my god! She's going to Paris forever and I'll never see her again"
Phoebe "Lets rush to the airport right now and stop her!"
*Drive, speed*
Ross: "Oh no! This is the wrong airport, we're too late!"
*sadness*
Phoebe: "We can still call her"
Ross: "We can't do that! I don't want to do it that way."
Phoebe "You have no other choice, she leaves in 20 minutes!"
*Grabs the phone* 'Rachel, get off the plane, I have a bad feeling about the flight, something is broken."
Crowd "Her friend says the fillangee is broken"
*Everyone exits plane, giving Ross and Phoebe time to get to the other airport*
Ross: "Rachel, I love you! I love you so much."
Rachel: "Ross, I don't know what to say" *tears* "But I have to go to paris Goodbye!"
*Ross goes home listens to answering machine* "Ross, I have been thinking about it, I love you, I love you, I love you, what am I doing here, I have to get off the plane." "Mam sit down, you can't leave," "I have to get off the plane!" "It's too late"
Ross listening to the answering machine and yelling at it: "Let her off the plane!"
*Answering machine ends, Ross its upset he doesn't know what happened* "Let her off the plane!"
Rachel (who just opened the door to his apartment) "I got off the plane" *tears, love happiness, the end*

Now how typical is that? =P

Anyways, as far as Ross/Rachel moments go, it's still not going to top the best episode dealing with those two characters, the one with them looking through the glass at the cafe, everyones seen it I'm sure. Anyways, due to this coming up short from the older episode, I can't help feeling somewhat dissapointed; but my dissapointment is very very limited, because I really stopped caring about this series about the time Monica and Chandler proposed to each other. After that I just didn't really feel the show was at all anything special anymore. I didn't really watch it until later on either, not until 99 when I began dating Vanessa, I watched it beforehand, back when I was in grade 10, but that was back in the day when I actually loved sitcoms (now they bore the hell out of me, they're just a medium to commercials and ads towards us).

All in all, better a late finish to the series than NO finish to the series. Like I said, I felt the excitement surrounding it was gone a long time ago; it wasn't just me either, it was everyone who I watched it with tonight, it was just a vibe I picked up on. Of course the ending still got the awws from the girls, but they were forced. All in all, Friends may go down as being the top Sitcom of our generation, but I still give that crown to Seinfeld, despite how out of place the jokes might seem in this decade compared to 10 years ago when the show was the shit.

Now please!!!! Please!!!!! End Survivor forever!!!!!!</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Friends is the stereotypical representation of the "sit com" and it embodies everything I hate about American's version of it. If more Brits came to America to make sitcoms, or if more Americans were influenced by British comedy (like Matt/Trey from South Park), I might actually start watching it.</div>

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I thought the show was great its entire 10 year run. And that's saying a lot for me cuz I'm very picky about my shows. I tried watching some Seinfeld recently and I discovered that I don't find it that funny anymore.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Seinfeld had a fairly ingenius concept where they took 4 people with very negative attributes, and made a show which entirely surrounded them; they constantly made fun of just about everything to do with society at that time, and human traits in general. However, society has changed, and a lot of what is in Seinfeld has lost a lot of its relevence.

Friends on the otherhand, chose a different route, they chose to essentially just take what was popular in the first two seasons and rehash it over and over again, like look at the final episode as a near example, didn't we already essentially see this 10 times before in one form or another? Whatever it was, I felt that after season 7, that I just lost all excitement for the show, but even by season 7 I was already tired of it. I admit, I watched the first couple of seasons, took a break, and began watching it again during University (which is incidently the time when I somehow always began missing the Simpsons, which is a show I still love as much as ever; I caught a re-run of the Homer-Mindy episode a couple nights ago which was definitely a very entertaining half hour). But anyways, back to Friends; primarilly the reason it was so popular was due to that it did surround character relationships with one and other on a fairly original level at the time (but noiw it seems there are a number of copycats), and I do not want to take that away from the series. Essentially though the series was going to finish up a few years ago, they extended it because of all the people who watched it out of habit, and they could still pump ads that way even though the excitement of the show was dead; remember Home Improvement? It's just with about every episode of the last few seasons, I found an enourmous amount of them to be predictable, and they didn't seem to have the same sort of energy as they used to; Ross and Rachel who used to be my favourite characters back in the first few seasons became boring; Chandler and Monica who were my favourite characters around the middle (well, I always liked Monica the best in High School if you remember anything about Courtney Cox in the 90's, know what I'm saying? =)). It just seemed that even though the cast was still there the relationships became much more focussed, instead of it being Ross and everyone else, it became Ross and Rachel, same deal with Chandler and Monica, they kept Chandler/Joey around for giggles, but essentially anything that happened between Joey and anyone else seemed kind of forced, and Phoebe, she's just a character on the side for the most part. I just found that to be kind of stale compared to the first few episodes.

Unlike Seinfeld back in the 90's, Friends is not the sort of show you could watch again and again and pick up something new or find something funny in a different sort of way each time you watched it.</div>

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>All I know is that I the show made me laugh all 10 years. The reruns still make laugh and I could watch them again and again and enjoy it and I can't anymore with Seinfeld. Now ask me about Friends in 10 years and we'll see how it works out.</div>

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Friends had some excellent writers, and I would say that it's a lot like Seinfeld in that it's probably one of the most stylistically unique sitcoms ever made even though the setting remains pretty mundane - though it's harder to say that nowadays, seeing as how it's also been the most imitated sitcom in the past decade after the Simpsons and Seinfeld.

The show had become little more than a soap opera ever since that whole Ross and Rachel thing though. I'm glad it's finally over. Now we just have to suffer through a season or so of that insipid "Joey" spinoff until the hype wears off and it's cancelled as well, and then we can at last lay Friends completely to rest.</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>That's why God invented 24 and HBO, they're at least good shows with substance</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Oh, the finale was last night.... Whatever. The show got boring and repetitive ages ago.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt "Times New Roman"; text-align: left; '>Married with Children was the last great sitcom if you ask me.</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>None of those are comedy, though. Sometimes I don't like to be depressed or "on the edge of my seat".</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>There was always Sex and the City :-) (I hated it, BTW)</div>

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>...can't forget Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I hear is great</div>

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>Geee...women with sexual addiction problems. How is that comedy?</div>